Sunday morning worship - Majoring on the Minors: Zephaniah and the God who sings

READINGS: Zeph 1:1-18 and 3:1-20

SERMON/ ‘Because you’re worth it’
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.

I’m sure you’ve seen it on the telly:
The camera is looking at someone who has their back to us.
While we can’t see their face,
we can see their beautiful, long, lush, and shiny hair –
hair so shiny that the light is fairly bouncing off it.
There’s a move of the neck and with it,
the hair flicks, rippling wonderfully, wondrously across the screen:
such perfect, fabulous hair.
The person turns to camera, holds up a plastic bottle and says:
‘Beautiful hair?
L’oreal.
... Because you’re worth it.’

'Because you’re worth it.'
It’s a great tag-line a tag-line that someone like Zephaniah
would be rather pleased with as he ponders God’s dealings with his people.
But let’s start at the beginning.

At the start of our service this morning, I mentioned in passing that Zephaniah’s
message might just be a little more upbeat than some of the previous prophets
we’ve been spending time with.
‘Thank heavens,’ I hear you all say.
Amos was all about justice;
Hosea was all about faithfulness –
and as part of getting God’s message across to the people,
Hosea married a woman who, for whatever reason,
found it hard to remain faithful to her man.
Micah was a man on a mercy mission.
All of the prophets so far having incredibly important themes and messages...
big stuff, but, gosh, it’s.... been... hard... work:
it’s not an easy thing to spend time with prophets –
in the main, they’re pretty full-on kind of people.
Into our prophetic mix, today, we meet Zephaniah:
and Zephaniah’s all about joy –
all about the God who sings,
the God who rejoices over us.
Shiny, happy Zephaniah –
except his book doesn’t exactly start out in a shiny, happy kind of way:
you have to work a little at it, but, keep going, because in the end,
it’s worth it,
it’s awesome.

By now, those of you who’ve managed to be here over the weeks
we’ve been looking at the Minor Prophets,
might be getting a sense that within our books of Minor Prophets,
there’s a wee bit of a common pattern, and, you’d be right.
First, we get a little intro about our prophet.
So, today, in the beginning of the book of Zephaniah, we find out a wee bit
about his ancestry - it’s a bit like the bible meets the show ‘Who do you think you are?’
We find out that Zephaniah is the son of Cushi.
His Grandpa is a chap called Gedaliah...
we get back as far as his great-great grandfather.
We also find out that Zephaniah is living in the time of King Josiah of Judah...
so, he’s a southerner.
And where Amos and pals were mostly living in the 8th century,
Zephaniah is more a 7th century kind of boy.
All of that biographical stuff, just from the very first verse.

How does the rest of the pattern go?
We get into the message itself:
generally finding out what terrible things the people have done,
and how far they’ve strayed from God.
If you like, think of this as the:
‘Okay folks, here’s the thing...’ section.
Then we usually have potential punishment:
with our 8th Century prophets, it’s the Assyrians waiting in the background,
ready to make life difficult –
basically they’ll act us a wake-up call to God’s people –
as a wee nudge to turn back to him.
This is what I call the ‘here’s what’s going to happen to you lot’ section.
And then, we have last part of the formula:
God saying, ‘actually, here’s the thing, while you do deserve to be punished,
I can’t find it in my heart to hurt you, let’s work something out.’
The initial call for the people to repent
ends up with God having a change of heart:
they’ll suffer for a bit, but, he’ll spare them –
it will all work out in the end.
And this last is the:
‘hey folks, although you really, really mess with my head, I really, really love you,’ section.
So, that’s the basic pattern of a prophetic book.
And, Zephaniah’s not that different.
If you read the opening chapters and even up to half-way
through the final chapter,it’s pretty horrific.
God’s had enough and says:
‘that’s it, no more, I’m going to destroy it all.’
Except this time, it won’t be the Assyrians, it’ll be the Babylonians:
seems no matter what the period in history,
whether it’s the Iron Age or the current age,
there’ll always be some hungry for power dictator or empire
ready to swallow up those more vulnerable in the world.

As you work your way through Zephaniah,
there’s list upon list of grievances that God has against the
various peoples of the world.
Remember:
this is supposed to be the shiny happy prophet...
And oddly, having got past all of the grief that God has expressed –
because, actually that’s what’s been happening:
God’s been singing a lament...
in the last half of the very last chapter of Zephaniah,
suddenly, it’s as if the sun comes out and everything is bathed in light.
God has sung through his disappointment,
has sung some very angry ‘I’m going to burn the whole place down’ songs,
and come back to a place of love –
remembered his people,
remembered their flaws,
remembered that they are imperfect
and also remembers that perfection is a process:
these are his people,
created in his image,
and they’ll get it wrong time and time again,
and God will be with them every step of the way, no matter what –
because that’s what love looks like...
it doesn’t wait until perfect has arrived, it wades in:
into all the sorry mess,
and tries to clear a path through,
to point the way,
to say
‘I’ll take your pain,
I’ll bear your punishment,
I’ll delight in you,
I’ll comfort you when it all gets too much,
I’ll sing love songs to you.’
Suddenly, in the last section of Zephaniah,
the radiance of God’s love is dazzling:
is full of hope and promise –
there’s no room for despair,
for God’s love song will lift the people out of it,
will inspire them to see themselves as God sees them –
as intricately crafted beings created by God in love,
and made in God’s own image.
And if you haven’t worked it out yet,
Zephaniah’s message isn’t just to God’s people in the 7th century –
it to God’s people now:
us.

God’s love song of rejoicing calls for a response –
and within Zephaniah, it’s an answering cry of rejoicing:
as God sings a song of joy and love to us,
so we sing a song of joy and love to God.
Zephaniah reminds us that what we find at the heart of worship –
what worship is all about
is our response to God’s song of love to us.
We may have to wade through some tough stuff so that we can get to the place
where we hear the song of restoration, and rejoicing,
where we discover anew God’s love for us,
but the journey is always worth it.
God’s in the restoration business because God loves.
God’s in the business of rejoicing, again, because God loves.
That’s Zephaniah’s message:
that to respond to God in love,
and to choose to rejoice in God,
are the very blocks on which
we should build our lives.

It’s interesting to me that, often, this last chapter of Zephaniah is one
that comes around generally in the season of Advent –
that season of watching and preparing for Christmas.
There’s a great poem written by Madeleine L’Engle, and I make no apologies at all
for the fact that this is a Nativity reflection.
It’s called ‘First Coming’:

He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine.

He did not wait till hearts were pure.
In joy he came to a tarnished world
of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.

He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!...

God, the great singer of love songs to us,
sings the greatest song of love there is,
in sending us Jesus...
there are words of love,
and there is the one true Word of love.
God sent Jesus,
because...
in God's eyes,
we’re worth it. Amen.