“And I Will Change Their Shame into Praise”

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7

Advent 3

Zephaniah 3:14-20

¹⁴ Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! ¹⁵ The 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. ¹⁶ On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. ¹⁷ 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; he will exult over you with loud singing ¹⁸ as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. ¹⁹ I 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. ²⁰ At 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

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Sermon

I said to my sister-in-law in Minneapolis, “It was 70 degrees last week, and that didn’t feel very ‘Christmasy’ to me.”

She said, “It was 70 degrees?”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said, “Do you know what the temperature was up here?”

I said, “Umm…about the same?”

She said, “Oh, only ninety degrees different from that.”

I said, “You mean it was 160 degrees in Minnesota last week?”

No, not exactly. I imagine 20 below felt plenty “Christmas-y.”

Of course that kind of weather is not unusual out in the great and vast expanse of the plains states, from Indiana out to Kansas, and southern Illinois up to the northernmost reaches of Minnesota, the Great Lakes, Wisconsin.

There was an episode in one of those Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, set in the plains in the late 1800s when settlers would go out and build a cabin and be self-sufficient. Pa had set out to go into the nearest town, which was several days’ journey away. One of the things he was going to bring back was Christmas candy for the children.

A big snowstorm came up, and the family waited, and wondered, and worried—no cell phone coverage out there, I imagine—and finally one day, Pa made it back to the cabin. It turned out he had been traveling when the snowstorm hit, and he’d had to kind of dig out a hole in a giant snowdrift, and just wait it out, until the storm cleared. That had taken a couple of days, so in the meantime, on the brink of freezing or running out of energy, he’d had to eat the Christmas candy just to stay alive.

And he told them how he had hated to do that, and he was really sorry, and of course the kids told him they were glad he did. And so they had their Christmas without anything particularly special to make it look like Christmas, but everybody was safe. And home.

That’s about the best Christmas you can ask for.

A lot of families will be looking off into the distance this Christmas, waiting and wondering and worrying, and praying for the safe return of people without whom life, and the home, and the family are somehow incomplete.

And this Christmas dawn will find many who will be surrounded by the trappings of Christmas, and they will genuinely appreciate it. But something will be missing, something will be not quite right, and they will in their way feel not entirely unlike Pa Ingalls, burrowed into a snow drift, isolated from the world, waiting out the worst of their own winter storm and wondering if they’re going to have to go ahead and eat the Christmas candy early, just to survive.

Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. 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; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

When Zephaniah first prophesied, the people of God were in trouble; there was so much corruption, so much injustice in Judah, and the prophecy was that God was not going to allow it to continue.

And it wasn’t too long afterward that Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. The Temple was destroyed; families were destroyed; culture was annihilated; people were scattered to the four winds.

But tacked on to the end of Zephaniah’s prophecy of warning about God’s anger and wrath against the people is—suddenly, almost out of the blue—a radical change in tone. After all the destruction and devastation, God says to the Judeans, “I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord—the remnant of Israel.”

Eventually, the winter storm passed. The candy was all gone, but the remnant had survived; there was still, maybe now more than ever, reason to rejoice.

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, and has turned away your enemies… And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord .

This third Sunday of Advent was originally meant to offer a break from the hard work of self-examination and penitence of Advent; the old church calendar calls it “Gaudete,” which means “Rejoice.” You can light the lighter-colored candle in the Advent wreath; you can read Paul’s happy letter to the church he loved so much in Philippi: “ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

Today is the day for even the outcast, even the loneliest of the lonely, even the soldier on the other side of the world, or the senior citizen incarcerated for the crime of growing old, or the little kid who feels alone and unwanted, to know those angels are singing good news for you:

You are not alone, you are not forgotten. And you are not to live in shame.

Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay

Close by me forever and love me, I pray

Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care

And fit us for heaven to live with Thee there.