What can we say December 15? Advent 3

    Fo Lo, the days are hastening on! Advent 3 presents us with 3 solid texts. More booming threats from John the Baptist as the Gospel – but it’s Advent 3 already! Philippians 4 is profound and lovely – but not very Christmasy or Adventish now, is it? Finally, Zephaniah 3:14-20 is powerful, and is our church’s overarching text for this entire Advent season. I’ll point you once more to my general blog with lots of illustrative, seasonal stuff on preaching Advent, “God Became Small,” and then ahead to my similar blog on Preaching Christmas Eve/Christmas.

   In both locations, you'll find musings on Mary. My sermon this Sunday will be entirely devoted to her, what we know and sense of her, her unique calling that is surprisingly common to us all (God asking her to let God take on flesh in her, to become real through her), how she was a ponderer, how she above all others had to let go what was beloved - and more. This thoughtful, profound 30 minute conversation with my friend Rev. Alisa Lasater Wailoo is providing me with more than enough food for thought. No big moral takeaways. Just reflecting on Mary: that's what I'll do Sunday. She must be pretty darn important and worth pondering!

   Zephaniah 3:14-20. {I preached on this great text 2 weeks early - if you'd like to see/hear what I did with it!} This obscure prophet, during the tumultuous days of the great reforming King Josiah, killed far too young at age 39 (and how many greats died at 39? Martin Luther King, Bonhoeffer, Flannery O’Connor, Malcolm X, Chopin, Pascal), stands up and declares a season of immense hope and joy is coming. Political uncertainty, guilt about but attachment to the false idols that had crept in, confusion, and terror at the impending assaults of the Assyrians and then the Babylonians left the people numb, flailing.

   Our theme for Advent is found in verse 20: “At that time, I will bring you home.” Play on this notion of home, tell stories of home, unearth great quotes about home, it’s sappy but what everybody’s hungry for, especially come mid-December! In Why This Jubilee? I wrote a little reflection on “I’ll be home for Christmas,” noting how many of our carols mention “home.” We have a hankering for home. In our uprooted, mobile society, many don’t know where home even is, or parents have died and the old homeplace isn’t home any more. God placed this yearning in us so we might seek after God, realizing at some point that even the best home, the homiest home anywhere here isn’t quite home enough for our rich, God-instilled cravings. We wait, we long, we yearn for God to bring us home. That’s the message of Advent, right?

   There’s also a weird quirk in verse 17 that I believe I’ll play with – as God let the quirk in for some reason, right? The Hebrew is corrupt, admitting of various renderings and nuances. RSV says “He will renew you in his love.” The Hebrew might just as likely mean “He will betroth you in his love,” a thought-provoking image, but it may also mean “He will be silent in his love.” Boom. God’s love is in the silence, it feels like silence – but isn’t most real love just that way, just sitting, being still?

   And one more option! The Hebrew could just mean “He will plow you in his love.” Yes, the verb meant what it seems to imply – but I might poke around what a plow does, how it cuts and turns but prepares us for new growth. Which is the whole point of Advent, right? Rev. Sarah Howell-Miller (yes, my daughter) wrote a fabulous song called “The Plow” (watch/listen here!). The lyrics gets at the heart of Advent, although it’s not an Advent song proper:

   Pain cuts like a plow into the ground / the ground of your being, the earth of your heart / Watch the soil turn, churning and hurting / Preparing for new life to start.

   Why dig so deep? Why make me bleed? / I’ve grown attached to this grass and these weeds / One day, I’m told, a garden will grow / But all that I’m doing is kicking up stones.

   So, furrow the ground, and furrow your brow / Nobody promised that you’d never fall / Wipe off the sweat, take a deep breath now / And leave yourself spaces for awe.

    Once you complete the tilling and weeding / The barrenness might break your heart / But listen in close, still there’s a pulse / The heartbeat of myst’ry that cannot be known / This desolate dirt, the lungs of the earth / Are sighing in labor and groaning for birth.

     The power of God’s song, the Gospel music: Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached on “How the Christian Overcomes Evil,” deploying an illustration from mythology. The sirens sang seductive songs that lured sailors into shipwreck. Two, though, managed to navigate those treacherous waters successfully, and King contrasted their techniques. Ulysses stuffed wax into the ears of his rowers and strapped himself to the mast of the ship, and by dint of will managed to steer clear of the shoals. But Orpheus, as his ship drew near, simply pulled out his lyre and played a song more beautiful than that of the sirens, so his sailors listened to him instead of to them.

  “Let not your hands grow weak” in verse 16 is similarly tantalizing. Aging parishoners will look down at their laps in immediate recognition. I remember dreading the greeting line at the end of worship at my first two parishes. The men were mostly laborers, with huge, muscular hands, which would inevitably crush my small, weak hands – sometimes making me wonder if they were making a point.

   What are weak hands? Zephaniah is urging the people on in their work, of course – but I wonder if we mis-define hands and their functions. In my first book, Yours are the Hands of Christ, I asked What did Jesus do with his hands? as a clue for what we might do with ours. I told the story of my Aunt Zonia, who had some disability in her hands. They were gnarled, and she couldn’t really hold anything. But I adored her hands. She held mine when I battled a fever while staying with her. She would point to the groceries in the car and ask me to carry them, making me feel useful and needed. She folded those hands in prayer, and managed to flip through her Bible to find stuff. Weak hands? Strongest I’ve ever known.

    Why not let our hands grow weak, but continue to pray, hold onto one another, and do whatever we’re able to do in hope? Zephaniah says “He will rejoice over you in gladness” and “He will exult over you with loud singing.” Our singing echoes not just the angels, and Christian congregations and choirs through the ages. God sings. In my sermon, I’m just going to ponder this, marvel over it, invite my people into a quiet space to relish the thought.

   Philippians 4:4-7. My comments on this last go round still stand. It’s the ultimate in why we read Scripture slowly – and to ponder that Paul dictated it slowly with Roman guards overhearing! Check out my 3 year old blog on how Rejoice! and Have no anxiety! and giving thanks and making requests to God all interlock and issue in something fruitful.

   Luke 3:7-18. Again, I have little to add from last go round, when I tied this text’s “ax at the root of the tree” to Shel Silverstein’s wonderful children’s story, The Giving Tree. As for me, I’ll be giving this Sunday over to Mary, as we light her pink candle and ponder her discomfort, hope, isolation, love and determination. Such beauty. The closest one to Jesus. The first disciple who let him take on reality in her life.

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   Check out my book, geared as a Lenten study for your Church peeps, but constructive at any season, reflecting on various pregnant lines in familiar hymns, with lots of stuff from my preaching: Unrevealed Until Its Season.