Third Sunday in Advent Dec 13 2009 Nancy Meehan Yao
Candle of the Shepherds
Zephaniah 3:14-20 p 767
14Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! 15The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. 16On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. 17The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing 18as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. 19I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.
Philippians 4:4-7 p 955
4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Did you hear it? There it is again- sing aloud! Shout!- last week we talked about singing- how can we keep from singing, I asked. This week, the words in the text are an imperative- a command- sing! Shout! Jerusalem is described as daughter Zion, and she and all the people of Israel are to sing- why? Because God is in their midst, and God has removed their shame from them.
There is lots of talk about Joy at this time of year. The pink candle we light today in the Advent wreath is sometimes called the joy candle. In the early church, Advent was like Lent, a time in which we prepared our hearts and souls for the Christ, with extra prayers, and fasting, and meditations upon our sin. This Sunday, the Joy Sunday, was meant to be a bit of a break from all that solemnity and inward looking-ness.
And yet…we don’t always feel joyful. And if we don’t, then perhaps we wonder what is wrong with us. The tv shows it, the cards proclaim, the ads yell at us that this is the most wonderful time of the year…right?
When Paul wrote to the church in Phillippi, he was exhorting them to rejoice- he says it multiple times- “Rejoice in the Lord, always, again, I say Rejoice” There had been problems in the church, there at Phillippi- some disagreements, some arguing- Euodia and Syntyche, two church officers, are urged to be of the same mind for the good of the church. But Paul writes to them as he sits in prison- and he is the one exhorting them to rejoice in the Lord—always! Do not worry about anything, he says, but in every circumstance, pray…..
We hear the same thing, a command to rejoice, to sing, in the Zephaniah text. Zephaniah was a prophet, speaking to the people of Judah. It is thought to be written during the reign of King Josiah, who was described in the Old Testament as “the last great king”. Josiah was given a scroll, found during a Temple renovation, a scroll long thought to be lost…a scroll with the words of God written on it, a scroll with the law. And Josiah, upon finding it, calls all the people together, to stand and to hear the word of God. And upon hearing the law, the people see their own sin. They are devastated—how had they wandered so far off track? How could they be God’s people when they were so sinful? In the earlier portions of the book of Zephaniah, the prophet does indeed call down woes on them, essentially curses—for their wickedness, for the wickedness of Jerusalem, and for the wickedness of the other nations. But, here, Zephaniah tells them—to rejoice and sing! They are to rejoice because God will take away the judgments against them, because God will be in their midst- right smack dab in the middle of them. The word for midst can also mean “internal”- as in, inside you- that’s how close their God will be to them. God will rescue them, God will remove their shame. In a shame based culture, this was a big deal.
The shepherds, out in the fields, lived with a lot of shame. Because they were agricultural workers. Migrants, wanderers, really, following the sheep and goats, tending to them for the owners, mostly, out in the desert. And because they lived out in the deserted countryside, they could not follow the Jewish religious rules—the rules about keeping clean, the rules about washing your hands before you eat, the rules about when and what to pray, about going to the Temple for proper worship—and they felt shame. In that culture, the world was divided into two parts. Honor or shame—there were no other categories--and there was a fixed amount of honor—it was not spread all over, it was not evenly distributed. It was a closed system. And if the proper people, the city people, the religious people, had the honor, then, of course, the poor, the workers, the farmers and the shepherds lived in shame. But what other choice did they have? They had to eat, they had to support their families—so they incurred shame, and maybe even the anger of God, by living outside of society, by living outside of the rules about how to worship God.
We call today’s candle both the Joy candle and the Shepherd’s candle. The Shepherds received great good news—but first, they were terrified- sore afraid the Kings James version says, in Greek- they feared a great fear- but, also in Greek, the angels brought them great good news- the Messiah, who shall be for all people—them—the people who live on the outskirts of society, the people who are unwashed—the people who can’t follow the rules because their job requires them to be dirty, to handle dirty things, to live with animals….
What was the shepherds’ reaction? Do they stay out in the fields? Do they sit and stare, after the songs and the brilliance of the angels has disappeared from the night sky?
No—they go and see “this thing that has taken place”—just as it was told them. At great risk to themselves, and to their flocks, and to their livelihoods- they leave their sheep and go into town. They risked everything that they had, and all their future, as well, to go see that baby.
And what they saw gave them great joy- a baby, just as the angels had said, a boy who would bring God’s love to all people- not just the religiously observant, not just the rich ones, not just the educated ones, not just the washed and clean smelling ones. To all people—including them.
And what did the shepherds do next? “They made known what was told to them about this child—and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them” the text in Luke says. Why were people amazed? - because of the good news of course—but also because of the shepherds. The angels came not to the powerful, not to those who the society gave honor to, but to the shameful ones, the dirty ones, the unwashed ones. Why didn’t the angels sing to Herod? Or to Quirinius, the governor? Or to any of the other powerful, important, honorable people living in Bethlehem that night?
In our modern world, we do not think about honor and shame in quite the same way the ancients did. We think about shame differently. Shame is the thing that we know about ourselves—our past, something we did, something we are, something that was done to us. Shame is that secret thing, that if other people knew it, they could never love us. They could not stand to be with us. Shame is the thing that we hide, and we fear other people knowing. An addiction? Jail time? Mental illness? Abuse? All of these, we think, are reasons for shame, reasons why no one could love us, reasons why God can’t love us.
I want to go back to the Zephaniah text, to look at a little more closely. Because here’s the amazing thing—it is not just we who are to sing, and not even just the outcasts who are to rejoice. We are told, in verse 17, that God, who is in our midst, GOD will rejoice over us with gladness—that God will sing and rejoice, that God will exult over us with loud singing. This is great, good news—in Jesus Christ, God sings for us, sings over us. In Jesus Christ, we see the lengths God will go to for our joy. God delights in us, and so comes to be with us, to be in the midst of us.
So if you don’t feel joy, if you can’t sing, if you feel shame, if your throat closes every time you try to sing the carols—don’t despair. The good news is this: that God’s love is for everyone. If you can’t sing, then God will sing for you. God will sing over you, God will “exult over you with loud singing.” Jesus Christ is God’s own song. And may the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, be yours.
Amen.
