Keep Calm and Carry On.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

December 13, 2015

I.

In today’s readings we hear about 3 different visions of God’s shalom, or peace.  It begins with the words of one of the more obscure prophets, Zephaniah.  Zephaniah worked in the years prior to the exile, during the time of King Josiah who was instituting major and very controversial religious reforms.  After blasting the people for their idolatries and injustices, predicting the familiar disastrous consequences, Zephaniah, like many of the prophets, concludes with a prophecy of great and beautiful hope.  

Following a time of great suffering which the people brought down upon themselves by their prideful selfishness, those who remain, the humble and lowly ones whom the prophet calls “the lame” and “the outcast,” will receive God’s forgiveness and restoration.  “I will deal with your oppressors,” says the Lord.  “I will bring you home.”

The message is that no matter how bad it gets — and did Zephaniah himself even know how bad it would get? — God remains.  And God is all about love, deliverance, healing, renewal, and peace.  

The systems and practices we devise out of our ego-centricity; the fear, hatred, and anger we stoke and express with our violence and threats, our greed, lust, gluttony, and other destructive behaviors; all of these are consequential.  They do damage to God’s creation and God’s people.  They kick things out of balance, and the balance must be restored for the good of all.  But the restoration of that balance will cause immense pain and suffering.  The more damage done, the more catastrophic the correction.

But the correction doesn’t last forever.  And it does not last so long that the people are obliterated and annihilated.  But once the self-righteousness and arrogance of people is trimmed back down to size, leaving just the lame and the outcast, that is, the powerless and  disenfranchised, the rejects and the outsiders, the people dismissed by the former leaders as insignificant and marginal, those are the people God starts over with.  As Jesus would say about 600 years later, the meek, the gentle, the humble, and the broken are the ones who will inherit the earth.

In verses 15 and 16 the prophet affirms that God will take away their fear.  Fear is always, as even Yoda reminds us, “the path to the dark side.”  Fear is what gets us into every mess we ever knew.  

There is no reason for fear because at the heart of creation is the love of the One who breathed it into being at the beginning.  And all that collapses in these corrections is the skyscraper of lies and falsehoods we have constructed and tried to live in, which inevitably falls down because they are made of nothing but our wrong ideas.

But if we dwell in humility and peace, forgiveness and grace, powerlessness and freedom, poverty and righteousness… many of the things Jesus mentions in the Beatitudes, by the way, we will emerge intact when the dust clears and the face of the earth is renewed.

II.

Paul talks about the same thing in Philippians.  “Rejoice in the Lord always,” he says.  “Let your gentleness by known to everyone.”  “Do not worry about anything.”  He is writing to common, ordinary people, people whose lives had been disrupted by the machinations of a huge, ruthless empire, a system of greed and violence that was forcibly extracting wealth from many different nations from Spain to Iraq.

Paul is well aware of what Zephaniah and the other prophets had said.  He knows that bloated, self-righteous, arrogant, wealthy, and violent regimes always fall.  He knows that it is the gentle and humble folk, the ones who rely upon the Lord, not themselves or their weapons or their money, who shall have their strength renewed and rise up with wings like eagles.  

So in this letter he urges the disciples in Philippi to stand firm in the Spirit.  Back in that remarkable hymn in chapter 2, he tells them to be of the same mind that Christ himself demonstrates by emptying himself, taking on human form, and humbling himself.  Last week we talked about repentance as having a new mind; well, here is a description of what that mind, the mind of Christ, is really about.  Practically this whole letter has to do with humility and compassion.  The apostle is gently yet firmly encouraging them to form this new community of love gathered in the name of the One who was executed for treason and yet who now reigns in their hearts.

There is no room in the Christian community for panic or anxiety.  Paul would have them, as the meme from World War II in Britain that is strangely popular these days says, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”  Unlike the paranoid, fear-mongering flyer I received in the mail yesterday from my dingbat congressman about terrorism.  The motto of that would be “BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!”  How often does Jesus himself say things like, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”?  Or “Be not anxious about tomorrow”?  What’s the first thing just about every angel says upon manifesting to someone?  “Be not afraid.”  

Violence rooted in fear is the very essence of terrorism; we can’t fight this flame by giving it more fuel.  We cannot fight the fires of hatred, fear, and rage by feeding them more hatred, fear, and rage.  The Evil One at work  in the world is counting on and hoping to be fed by more hatred, rage, and fear. 

Paul knows that the enemy is not some other people.  The real enemies are within us.  Our real enemy is our own fear, our own hatred, and our own rage.  If in Christ we defeat those, then we have a chance.

Rejoice!  Be gentle!  Do not worry about anything!  Live in prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving.  That is the way to “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.”  That’s the Way of Jesus.  We can, and usually do, follow some other way.  But the Way of Jesus is peace, non-violence, humility, gentleness, compassion.  Period.

III.

Finally, we come to John the Baptizer’s words in Luke.  He is upset because, of course, the people are living according to their own ego-centric values, which is to say, sinfulness manifest in economic injustice that he later gives advice about.  But they have enough sense to know that something is up.  So they go out to the Jordan River to hear John preach and to have him dunk them in the water as a sign of washing and new life.  

Baptism is not just an empty ritual they go through and then go home feeling better about themselves.  No.  He wants baptized people to live and act differently.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance!” he says, after calling them a “brood of vipers,” which is to say, a nest full of poisonous snakes.  Apparently he wasn’t optimistic about it; snakes don’t bear very good fruit.

So when they ask him what to do he tells them.  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  So it’s about sharing.  Those who have more are required to give to those who have less.  Those are the only criteria he mentions, by the way, a simple quantitative measurement.  That seems pretty straightforward, but we really haven’t managed it.    

Tax-collectors and soldiers also come to be baptized.  They are notorious for using their power to extort money from people.  When they ask John what they should do, John basically tells them not to make a profit.  I wonder what he would tell a bank today?  Last year banks made $30 billion just on overdraft charges.  That is exactly the kind of stealing from poor people that John is railing about.  

It becomes clear again that God does not want us in a system in which we have and use power over each other to enrich ourselves.  If the system gives you power, says John, don’t use it.  If the system means you have more than someone else, give what you have away. 

Then he warns them that time is running out because someone is coming soon who isn’t going to be messing around with nice, cool water.  He’s going to immerse you in fire and wind, so, like Malachi last week, your impurities will be burned off.  He’s going to keep the wheat, and he’s going to incinerate the chaff.  So if you want to go down in flames, keep it up with the injustices and inequalities.  Violence attracts violence.  Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, says Jesus on the night before he gives his own life for the life of the world.

IV.

All three of these readings at least allude to the Day of the Lord, or the Lord’s “coming,” which is what Advent is all about.  And there is a sense in all of them that in order for us to be ready, in order for us to be able to experience and see what God is doing, in order for us to see God’s coming, we have to be already in tune and resonating with it, we have to be on the same wavelength.  We’re not going to be able to perceive God’s coming into the world unless our lives are reshaped and renewed.  We will not know that “peace that surpasses all understanding” unless that peace guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  When we live that peace, we will see that peace.  

This is repentance.  We only see Christ to the extent that we are Christ, if his mind is in us, as Paul says.  Only when our lives are characterized by the same fearlessness and generosity, the same trust and love, the same forgiveness, gentleness, and humility, the same obedience that empties ourselves, the same simplicity and compassion, only when we have allowed the Spirit to banish our fear, hatred, and rage, only then do we begin to get a glimpse of what Advent means and what Christ’s Nativity is all about.

Which is peace.  God’s shalom.  The reign of God’s love in the world, the love that pulses at the heart of all things and holds the universe together.  The love that binds us all together as one.

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