Joy in a time of tragedy?

Third Sunday of Advent – Year C

December 16, 2012

Zephaniah 3:14-20

            This morning we lit our third advent candle.  It was pink.  All the other candles are purple, with the Christ candle being white.  So the fact that today’s candle is pink must mean it’s special in some way.  The third Sunday in Advent is the Sunday we celebrate and name with ‘joy’.  I don’t know about you, but after the events of the last few days I’m not sure if I can find much to be joyful about.

            The events that happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday have caused all of us to pause.  I know I hugged my girls a little closer that evening.  When horrific, terrible things happen we want to know why.  In the week before the latest tragedy we learned that the lives of two girls from just a few miles away have also been ended.  We heard about multiple shootings on the West Coast on the news.  We read about the escalation of tensions between Israel and Palestine.  We hear about the continuing events in Syria.  How many other little girls, how many other children, how many other people have lost their lives in the last week?

            It’s crazy.  We live in a world where it seems as if life is suddenly cheap.  It’s easier to get a gun than to see a doctor in many places.  There’s something wrong with that.  It seems as if every day we hear or read about some new atrocity rising up to replace the one from the previous day.  Unless of course it’s not quite as bad, then the old will remain until some new even worse or more exciting tragedy shows up.  Sometimes I don’t want to turn on my t.v. or computer; I don’t need, I don’t want, to see what new terrible thing has happened.

            Today we are supposed to be joyful.  Isn’t that what we heard this morning from the prophet Zephaniah? “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!”  Isaiah writes, “Shout aloud, and sing for joy!”  On any other Sunday I’m sure that we could easily gather around our Advent wreath, around our Christmas trees and sing songs of joy.  We could look at our children’s happy faces and smile with joy, and not sigh with relief that we have not had to face the terrible news that so many have had to deal with in the last few days.  Rejoice, be joyful – after all our candle is pink.

            It doesn’t seem possible.  It doesn’t seem right, appropriate, even decent.  How are we supposed to find joy when everything going on around us seems so dark?  How are we supposed to look forward with hope, when the dreams and hopes of so many have been so brutally snuffed out?  Is it even right that as people of faith we gather to celebrate this Sunday we call joy when joy is the last thing on our mind?  Our readings and liturgical calendar call us to cry out, “rejoice!”, when our hearts want to cry out, “Where is God?”

            We are not the first, and we will not be the last, who wonder about the presence of God in the midst of tragedy, the role of the spiritual when innocent lives are lost.  Two and a half thousand years ago the nation of Israel was in a state of chaos and tragedy.  The king of Israel at the time was Manasseh.  Manasseh was a puppet king for the Assyrians who had conquered the Promised Land.  The Assyrians were not what you would call nice people; and Manasseh was a puppet king in their image.  History and scripture has recorded that he was one of the most evil and wicked rulers that ever sat on the throne of Israel.  In 2 Kings we read how he defiled the temple with false gods, how instead of trusting in our God he turned to fortune tellers and magicians.  How he didn’t lift up those who followed the ways of God, but persecuted them.  We even read how he killed innocent children, how he practiced child sacrifice, going so far as killing his own son.  2 Kings tells us that “Manasseh spilled so much innocent blood that he filled up every corner of Jerusalem with it.” (2 Kings 21:16)  It was at this time, in this situation, in this time of darkness and evil that Zephaniah wrote his words.

            To be accurate, Zephaniah doesn’t start with joy.  The words we read today are the last verses of the scroll; and for most of the preceding chapters it was far from joyful.  Those preceding verses and chapters are filled with Zephaniah speaking in the voice of God, speaking out against the evil that was happening in Israel.  In words eerily similar to the emotions that many of us probably felt on Friday and since, he writes of a day “of fury, a day of distress and anxiety, a day of desolation and devastation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and deep darkness, a day for blowing the trumpet and alarm.” (2:15)

            So often in the face of tragedy and horror we want to make sense of it all, or explain it, or even figure out who to blame for it, but Zephaniah doesn’t do that.  He tells it like it is and what it is: horror, tragedy, suffering.    The setting may be different, but the emotions, the feelings we are experiencing of anger and pain, sorrow, desolation and despair are named by Zephaniah.  But, Zephaniah doesn’t just say that things are bad, he tells us that God is with us in it; that God is experiencing the same anger, hurt and mourning we are feeling.

            Then, at the very end of the book, Zephaniah makes the shift.  Not only is God with the Israelites in their pain, in their anger and sorrow, in their despair and tragedy; God was going to do something about it.  “Wait for me.  I will come.  I will remove the disaster from you.”  Not now. Not yet. Not joy realized, but joy promised. Not joy fulfilled, but joy coming.  Zephaniah does not declare that everything is alright, or even that it will be alright again soon.  Nothing about dead children is ever “alright,” whether two days or 2 and a half millennia ago, whether caused by a mass shooting or an abusive king, or war, or famine, or bullying, or addiction, or suicide, or cancer, or anything else.  He does not tell us to get over it, move on, or be happy.  The prophet speaks of joy because he wants us to know that in spite of it all, God still reigns. How could he speak of joy in the face of tragedy?  How could he not.  How can we not?

            It’s not about thumbing our nose at tragedy or despair.  It’s not about saying that it’s all in God’s plan, or God will make something good out of the bad.  It’s about proclaiming that no amount of darkness, no amount of tragedy can ever diminish, remove, stop the promise of God, that God would come, that God will rescue us; that God will be with us.  Emmanuel.

            The words of Zephaniah share with us the promise of God, “The time is coming when you will not fear evil ever again!  I am in your midst, and I will create calm with my love. I will heal the lame.  I will gather the outcast.  I will change your shame into praise.  I will bring all of you home.”

            In the darkest of night, a flickering candle can scatter the gloom.  At this time, in the midst of our questioning, our gloom, our sorrow, our anger and pain, we need the light of a pink candle more than ever.  The candle promises of light that is to come.  It promises of hope that will never go away.  We need the promise of joy, today, not because the joy is here; but because we need to know that it is still coming.

We may not feel it.  We may not recognize it.  We may not even want to see it, but it doesn’t mean that God’s promise of joy is not there, waiting to spring forth, waiting to become real, waiting to be amongst us.  Emmanuel.  In the midst of our fear, in the midst of our grief, in the midst of our anger and questioning, we hear the promise spoken again by an angel to shepherds on a hill,  “Fear not, for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.”  Amen.