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  This is a melancholy time of year for many people. 

I'll Be Home For Christmas - Zephaniah 3: 14-20 - December 13, 2009 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

     This is a melancholy time of year for many people.  Much as we want the season to be all about cheer and joy, Christmastime usually carries a tinge of sadness.  One of the beautiful expressions of that is a song written by Ram, Gannon and Kent, and recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943:  I'll be home for Christmas/ You can plan on me/ Please have snow and mistletoe/ And presents on the tree/ Christmas Eve will find me/ Where the lovelight gleams/ I'll be home for Christmas/ If only in my dreams.  That song, coming out during World War II, captured the longing of thousands of soldiers to be home.

     And I think it captures much of what people feel of both sadness and joy this time of year.  Christmas is a lot of things, but when you come right down to it, for most of us, I think it's about being home.  The joy we picture is being with people we love dearly, in familiar places, doing familiar things - being at home.  The sadness comes when we can't be home, like tens of thousands of soldiers today -- or from longing for a home that is no longer there.  Christmas memories can come with a feeling of childhood innocence, nostalgia for the good old days, and loved ones who are no longer with us.  And we may be in the best time of our lives right now, with much to be grateful for.  But a part of us still wishes we could go back and relive some Christmas from the past.  I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams. 

     Perhaps that's one of the reasons we turn to the Old Testament prophets during the Advent season.  So many of their words that we read are about people who were longing for home - people who were defeated and exiled in a faraway land.  In fact it is nothing short of a miracle that their cultural identity survived.  The reason it survived is that God raised up prophets who kept a central message before those exiles - hold on to your faith, trust in God, repent and obey the Lord - and God will bring you home.

     That is the message of this morning's Old Testament lesson, from one of the little-known prophetic books, the book of a prophet named Zephaniah.  Our scripture from Zephaniah is written to people who have more than just a tinge of sadness or melancholy.  They are desolate -- crying for deliverance.  Despite this, the book ends with words of hope.  In fact, these are some of the most joyful words in the Bible, so it's all the more important to remember that they were written during desperate times, during exile.  Let's take a closer look at what the writer was saying, and notice the reasons for joy:

     The reading begins with an invitation to a party:  "Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!"  Here is the first reason for joy, even in the midst of desperate times:  the relationship is unbroken.  Yes, the people of God had sinned.  Judah had been a shameful nation (Zephaniah 2: 1).  Jerusalem had been a city of oppressors (Zephaniah 3: 1).  The people were exiled and scattered, far from home.  But despite all of that the family connection is still intact.  No matter what they've done, no matter where they have ended up, Jerusalem is still the daughter; Zion is still the beloved child.

     We can't read this without thinking about one of the great stories Jesus told about coming home.  It was a son in that story, who dissed his father and left home, and purposely lived against everything his father stood for.  Then he realized what he was doing, and how he longed for home.  So he fearfully walked back down the road, hoping to sneak into his father's house as a servant.  Surely he would never be welcomed back as a son again.  But as he saw his father running with jubilation to greet him, putting the family robe around his shoulders, the family ring on his finger - he realized with unspeakable joy that the relationship was unbroken.  The love was strong as ever.

     That's reason for joy for all of us.  One of the reasons behind this melancholy feeling we have is that we've seen so much of the failings of humanity.  We had childhood innocence once, but no more.  We've seen too much; we're weary with bad news; we've strayed too far; we've offended God too much; we've sinned too profoundly; the best we could hope for is to sneak around the edges of grace disguised as a servant.  And meanwhile God is saying, every way God knows how, from the prophets to the cross, Come home!  You are my daughters and my sons.  Come home!  Look at the way Zephaniah 3: 15 clears the path:  the judgments are gone; the enemies are turned aside; you will not fear disaster any more.  Come home!  The relationship is unbroken.

     A second reason for joy is also there in that verse:  Yahweh is king.  The Lord reigns.  This is the greatest claim of the Old Testament.  And it is all the more important for the writer of these words, given the fact that the people had seen all too clearly the failings of human kings.  The ones who were supposed to lead them, the ones who were supposed to govern them, the ones who were supposed to protect them - had failed.  It is part of our human make-up, it seems, to put our trust in earthly systems that by nature have to let us down.  Not to pick on our most recent presidents, but they do offer a very visible example of this tendency.  In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president, and there was great fanfare.  This regime would bring sweeping change to America, and people made glowing lists of all that was about to be accomplished.  Most of those things didn't happen; other things did instead; we all know the sad story.  Then in 2000, George W. Bush was elected, and now another group of people celebrated.  There was talk of a permanent reclaiming of conservative values in America, and another long list of anticipated accomplishments.  Again, the reality was less than the hope.  And then last year, Barack Obama was elected, there was great fanfare, and the sense of a whole new possibilities.  And now, less than a year later, we're hearing the same old grumbling beginning to take place.

     The fact is, there is no human messiah to save the day.  There is no magic government; no economic system; no science-based utopia; no military force; no educational promised land; no Enlightened society that can make for perfect life on earth - or even close-to-perfect life.  Everything is tainted by human weakness - or, if we want to be more theological about it - by human sin.  That doesn't mean we don't work for the best human systems we can put in place.  But none of those will ever be the way to salvation.  None of those will alleviate human suffering; none will stand the test of perfect morality; none will be immune to the fallings of leaders with clay feet, and the more blindly we trust them, the more disappointed we'll be.

     But God reigns.  And in a time with little to base any hope on, this great truth was enough.  "Do not let your hands grow weak," Zephaniah said.  "Yahweh is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory."  That's where secret of victorious life lies.  And if you feel weak right now, if circumstances make you feel defeated and discouraged, then it might be the perfect time for you to hear again God's Good News to the ancient exiles of Israel.  Earthly promises may fail us, but God reigns; and lives built on that truth are victorious.

     And so there's one more reason for joy:  God, says the prophet, will deal with the oppressors, will save the lame and gather the outcasts, and turn their shame into praise.  In other words, God will remember the forgotten ones.  When we hear that promise, we're reminded of the prayer of Mary the mother of Jesus, when she realized who she was carrying in her womb.  Her baby was the one who would lift the lowly, and fill the hungry with good things, and so, said Mary, "my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour."

     We light the candle of joy today, not because every refugee is home; not because every homeless person is sheltered; not because every person who is hurting or spiritually adrift knows where to turn; not because every lost soul has been found and offered salvation.  The world is far from that perfect; many won't be home for Christmas.  And yet, we light a candle of joy because God has lifted up a vision of a world that will one day be set right, not by some new human system, but by the birth of a Saviour in enough hearts to turn the tide of cynicism and oppression toward hope and peace and love.  If you and I and many others believe in that promise, then the day will come, says God, that "I will bring you home."  What if you and I embraced that possibility today as the very purpose of our lives, and determined that from this moment on we will not be part of a violent and materialistic and lost world, but instead we will represent Advent hope and new life wherever we can?  For our children and grandchildren.  For the hungry and discouraged.  The homeless and the ones who have lost their faith.  They are daughters and sons of God, who eagerly awaits their homecoming.  What greater calling for you or for me than to be a guide for someone who has lost the way home?

     I've read that some Jewish families, centuries after they were expelled from their homes, as they have so often been, keep as their most prized possession the key to the door of the house they were forced to leave.  They pass that key on from generation to generation - it is the family's most important possession.  That key will never again see the door it once opened.  But they hold onto it as a reminder that the relationship is not broken, that Yahweh still reigns, and that God will remember the forgotten ones. 

     In our Christian faith, we believe we have a key as well.  It is the one who was born to be the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, who eagerly awaits the opportunity to lead us back down that road, to show us the door that opens into the house of God, where we dwell in love forever.  It's not a dream.  It's the reality of salvation through Jesus.  Whatever you are doing to prepare your spirit for the birth of the Christ-child, pray that it will be part of a journey home, where joy and love are like a warm fire where a tired pilgrim can rest and rejoice.  And then get up and go to work so that someday by the blessed miracle of the One who promises great things, the day of the Lord will come, and we'll all be home for Christmas, and not just in our dreams.