Third Sunday in Advent.   Sorry to have skipped last week, but let’s get back to it this morning.  An oddity for three of the four weeks of Advent is that there is no Psalm.   We instead get to hear from two OT prophets and then the typical Epistle and Gospel lessons.

• Zephaniah 3:14-20
• Isaiah 12: 2-6
• Philippians 4:4-7
• Luke 3:7-18

You’re not supposed to put much stock in the little headlines your Bible puts above sections of Scripture, but I certainly like the sentiment as I read the passage from Zephaniah this morning, “Joy in God’s Faithfulness.”  This section of Scripture should be familiar to some in the congregation because it was the topic of our Tuesday morning Bible Study on October 1^st of this year.  While I said we didn’t get a Psalm, something Zephaniah uses here is taken from Hebrew poetry, the way that he uses different ways to say the same thing in verse 14.  Prophets can oftentimes be the bearer of bad news, but the case here is the opposite as we get a glimpse of the promise God continues to make with His people.  Perhaps that’s where we get that heading I talked about earlier.  There’s a line in verse 17 that I really appreciate, the NKJV says, “He will quiet you with his love.”  The Scripture seems to be pointing recently to a calmness above the worry and stress that we tend to live with and in some cases embrace.  Doing a parallel text study of this phrase is interesting, especially considering in the front half of the verse some translations call God a mighty warrior and then we get that peace and quiet by the time the single verse ends.  Jumping of from yesterday’s message, perhaps even war is different with God, so different we cannot imagine it.

My Episcopal Grandfather would call the reading from Isaiah this week “Canticle 9” or maybe even the “Ecce Deus.”  Whatever you want to call it, Isaiah’s words go so wonderfully with those we just read in Zephaniah.  You have to be drawn in with the first few words, that “surely, it is Giod who saves me.”   There is no doubt who it is that saves us, who looks after us, who provides for us and into whose hands it is that we need to put our entire lives.  There is a call to action for us here, to proclaim the Gospel, the deeds of the Lord and to also sing his praises.  I’m certain we will do the singing part Sunday; we just need to figure out how to take the Gospel on the road so to speak.

If I had half a brain, I wouldn’t have already used the hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel this Advent season.  Gosh would the words of that song echo what is written here in Philippians.  Verse six is calling out to me, as again we hit on the stress and worry of life.  The NRSV says, “Do not worry about anything…”  Just as much as I said Sunday that we couldn’t imagine a world without war, is it equally as difficult to imagine a life without worry?  What is accomplished by worry many will ask.  That’s a great sentiment, but just not practical, at least the way we have all been conditioned.  For some reason I think about some of the last words publicly spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.  In his final speech, his last words in the famed “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech were, “So I’m happy tonight.  I’m not worried about anything.  I’m not fearing any man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”  King was assassinated the next day.  In the wake of all he was seeing, he had no worries, no worries because he knew the Kingdom of God was so much greater than the society we had created on this earth.  I wonder when I am in heaven if I will have a sense of my former life and if so, how many of the heaviest things I thought I was bearing will seem so trivial.  Let us not worry but pray and trust in God.

The Gospel lesson keeps us with John the Baptist, and we get the fullest view of his preaching that the Bible offers.  I so love the midsection of this passage, where John is speaking with all who have been disenfranchised by the church and told that they have no place in the kingdom.   Now, that’s not to say that John welcomes them with open arms.  John says that the path is not closed to you, but you must do certain things, live a certain way and just as he’s saying to the Jews, there’s more to following God’s will than saying you’re a follower or being born into a certain heritage.  John is a fiery preacher.  He’s not mincing words and he’s saying that there is a right and a wrong way.  God loves us all, but there is a way we must live if we truly claim to belong to Him.   In a very loose sense, you could say that no one is unredeemable, but no one is above God’s will.