Zephaniah 1:7-18

21 July 2002

“One of These Days”

            One of Banu’s observations (and complaints) about movies that take place in the future, especially those of a supposedly post-apocalyptic nature, is that they tend to be too dark.  They’re too dark—not only in theme, but they’re literally too dark.  There’s not enough light to see what’s going on!

            Hollywood would have fun with Zephaniah.  Talk about dark!  There’s enough gloom and graphic violence to make Freddie Kruger and Michael Myers look like Richard Simmons!  Of course, the Hollywood definition of “apocalypse” seems to always focus on lots of blood and destruction, as opposed to the biblical sense, which is of “revealing” or “uncovering.”

            Americans seem to love books and movies about the end times.  There are lots of examples of this, including the seemingly endless “Left Behind” series.  All kinds of ideas are floating around about things to come.  There’s even been no small number of cults spring up, convinced that their interpretation of the future is flawless.

            The two prophets we’ve already looked at in July have been rarities in their own ways.  Of Hosea, you’ll recall, we get some intimate details.  I called him the prophet of love, and of love betrayed.  Jonah’s in a class by himself.  Besides the episode with the fish, he shows himself to be an angry prophet; he’s filled with anger tinged with bigotry.

            With Zephaniah, we have a man who, in many ways, comes closer to fitting the prophetic mold—if such a thing can be said.  Like most prophets, scant details of his own life are provided.  There’s a note of interest, however, in the book’s introduction:  his ancestry is traced back to Hezekiah.  Being a rather uncommon name, it’s a good bet that that’s the Hezekiah who was king of Judah when the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel.  Zephaniah likely has royal blood flowing through his veins.

            Still, the thing that enables Zephaniah to stand out from the crowd is his focus on the day of Yahweh, the day of the Lord.  He doesn’t invent the idea—it goes back centuries, some say as far back as the so-called holy wars during the time of Joshua.

            The day of the Lord came to be seen as the event when God would intervene on behalf of Israel, to defeat all their enemies.  As time went on, and bigger boys like the Assyrians and Babylonians started throwing their weight around, this was a day more and more people hungered for.

            A century before Zephaniah, in a case of “be careful what you wish for,” the prophet Amos warns the people about those “who desire the day of the Lord!  Why do you want the day of the Lord?  It is darkness, not light” (5:18).  Don’t be so smug, Amos says.  Don’t assume that the day of the Lord will only be bad news for your enemies.  As corrupt as you are, do you think you’ll escape unscathed?

            Eventually, the day of the Lord became infused with messianic expectation.  That’s one big reason that so many of Jesus’ listeners became disillusioned with him.  They thought he would lead them in getting rid of the biggest boys yet, the Romans.  During the church age, the day has become associated with the return of Christ at the end of history.

            However Zephaniah, who as I said, makes the day of the Lord his special interest, isn’t talking about something in the incredibly distant future.  His message directly concerns his audience, which is during the reign of King Josiah of Judah in the late seventh century B. C., as the Assyrians are getting weaker and the Babylonians are getting stronger.  For him, the day of Yahweh is very much about foreign invasion.

            Zephaniah says some things that, to us, might sound pretty stupid.  For example, in verse 8, when he criticizes the leaders “who dress themselves in foreign attire,” it’s not intended as a fashion statement.  The prophet isn’t imitating People magazine with his own list of the “Best and Worst Dressed”!  Elizabeth Achtemeier, professor at Union Seminary in Richmond, points out that “as a vassal of Assyria, the leaders of Judah have accommodated their ways to those of a foreign culture…Assyria’s ways have become Judah’s ways, and Assyria’s customs hers.”[1]

            Verse 9 has something that sounds equally bizarre.  The promise to “punish all who leap over the threshold” is probably a reference to pagan superstition about evil spirits who dwell in doorways and must be avoided.  It’s sort of like, “step on a crack and break your mother’s back”—or maybe a similar superstition, something about carrying brides across thresholds.  (That practice does not have a romantic origin!)

            Yahweh isn’t just any other god.  Most gods simply require that the worshipper offer the right sacrifices, say the right words, perform the proper ceremonies—whatever it takes to appease or flatter the deity.  Zephaniah reminds the people that their God also makes ethical demands.  That is, serving their God requires that they chose between right and wrong, that how they treat each other makes a difference.  That’s the reason the prophet gets on their case about all the “violence and fraud” (v. 9).

            One of these days, says the prophet, it’s all going to catch up with you.  It’s later than you think!  Verse 14 says:  “The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast.”  And Zephaniah reels off the laundry list of gruesome things on the way.  Look at verses 15 to 18.  No one can accuse him of trying to sugar coat his message!

            Still, as with other prophets, Zephaniah isn’t all gloom and doom.  The bad news is followed by good news.  The discipline of the Lord is intended to lead to restoration.  Thus, we hear in chapter 2:  “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord's wrath” (v. 3).  And the last part of chapter 3 ends on such an upbeat note of salvation that most scholars have said that it was probably tacked on later.

            I said that Yahweh isn’t just any other god; well, the day of Yahweh isn’t just any other day.  It’s not something that can be pointed to on the calendar.  There’s a sense in which the day “actually is Yahweh, in which [the] Godhead will take fully visible form.”[2]  Zephaniah and the other prophets, along with the destruction on the day of the Lord, also speak of a remnant that will survive.

Ancient Hebrews thought of time in ways different from ours.  If we insist that the day of the Lord is a 24 hour period, we’ll be hard-pressed to explain how so many transformations—of the people, of the culture, of the physical earth—could possibly take place!

And more than that, we’ll miss the point entirely.  With the day of the Lord, Zephaniah and the other prophets are doing something revolutionary.  Old Testament scholar Klaus Koch tells us, “For the first time [ever], human beings dared to make hope the foundation of their…theology.  The prophets therefore brought a futuristic turn into the thinking of following centuries, a sense of incompleteness and a further purpose to be found in the course of world events.”[3]  For example, people started to believe that, while it’s important to recall the past actions of God and to celebrate them in ever-recurring yearly festivals, what God will do in the future is even more important.

We’re so used to the idea of hope—be it hope fulfilled or hope denied—that we often fail to understand what a giant leap in the evolution of human thought it is.  With the day of the Lord, and with the messianic hope that it inspired, people began to believe that the world itself could be transformed into something new.  And not only the world, but people themselves could be transformed.

We’re used to that idea, as well—or at least, we should be.  Today, in the assurance of God’s pardon, borrowing from 2 Corinthians 5, I reminded us:  “Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.  The old life has gone; a new life has begun.”

Remember the quote I just mentioned?  “The prophets therefore brought a futuristic turn…a sense of incompleteness…”  People today are keenly aware of incompleteness:  in the world and in their own lives.  Sometimes the fascination with things like the rapture is an expression of this.  One danger of this, and the “Left Behind” type theology it inspires, is that it can degenerate into a disdain, and even hatred, of creation.  We can wind up wanting a one-way ticket out of here, instead of heeding the call to be faithful right where we are.

One way this can happen is by not distinguishing the big difference between “the world” as the evil powers at work on our planet and “the world” as God’s good creation.  That’s the opposite of hope.  That’s also the trap of those who desire the day of the Lord as a way of getting back at all those people out there.

The revolutionary message of Zephaniah and the other prophets is confirmed by our Lord’s parable in today’s gospel reading (Mt 13:24-30, 36-43).  The story of the weeds in the wheat reminds us that we’re all called to exist together in this world until the end of the age.  In our epistle reading, Paul says that “in hope we were saved” (Ro 8:24).

         The trick is to remember that we ourselves are part of creation.  And one of these days, we will be redeemed along with that creation.  For us, faithfulness is living an incarnate spirituality (as contradictory as that sounds!).  That means cherishing, not abusing, the creation; that means loving, not ignoring, our neighbors, wherever in the world they are; and that means being guided by the hope that sees a future of darkness, but understands that the light is always greater.

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