000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

Third Sunday of Advent/Year C 215
Third Sunday of Advent/Year C
Zephaniah 3:14–20
For an introduction to Zephaniah, see Proper 28/Year A. That passage
was about the Lord’s imminent judgment on Judah and all the world: “I
will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth” (1:2). In
today’s passage, an altogether different note is struck: “Sing aloud, O
daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! . . . The LORD has taken away the judgments
against you” (3:14–15). God’s disciplining of Israel and its enemies
(2:1–3:7) has resulted in the cleansing of Judah: “the remnant of Israel . . .
shall do no wrong and utter no lies . . . they will pasture and lie down, and
no one shall make them afraid” (3:13).
Our reading begins in the imperative: “Sing aloud . . . ! Rejoice and
exult!” Although Zephaniah uses warrior imagery to speak of God’s judgment
on Israel and its neighbors, in the end Zephaniah is all about the love
of God graciously given and the grace of God lovingly bestowed. What
Judah had to come to comprehend was that the only way it could understand
itself in any ultimate sense was as freely loved by the God who freely
loves all. Instead, it had wandered off into the worship of Baal and Milcom
(1:4–5) and forgot the teachings of Torah about seeing to it that justice
was compassionately directed to the care of the orphan and the widow.
It committed “violence and fraud” (1:9).
But to understand that we are loved by the only God who is God is
to understand that what YHWH wants is the creation of compassionate
community, one that encompasses all human beings. To love YHWH
is to love and do justice to the neighbor and the stranger as a grateful
response to God’s right-setting love freely given to us. So Zephaniah
announces the most important news in his text: “The 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” (v. 17). The Lord frequently selfidentifies
the Lord as “the Holy One in the midst of you,” whether in the
ark of the covenant, in the Temple, or simply in the midst of the people.
God will freely dwell again within the physical people Israel.
There will be singing and dancing, “as on a day of festival” (v. 18), and
the Lord will be one of the participants. God is organizing a great party
at which God the host will be present. Christians should resonate to this
image; at every Eucharist we celebrate a meal called the Lord’s Supper at
which the Lord is present as the inviting host. The glory of Jerusalem will