The Promise of Restoration

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Day of wrath and doom impending,
David's word with Sybil's, blending
heaven and earth in ashes ending. 

Do you recognize these lyrics? If you've ever attended a Requiem mass, you may recognize these as the English translation of the Latin Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath. 

A few years ago I heard the Verdi Requiem, probably the most famous rendition of the Requiem Mass. And in the conductor's notes of that concert, I noticed this very strange detail about the Deus that has stuck with me ever since. The note said that in the fifteenth century, the popularity of hell and damnation among the masses led the church to add the Dies Irae to the requiem mass that was set at funerals. 

I thought that was odd. The church added the day of wrath to the funeral mass due to popular demand. I still don't know why these lyrics of wrath were so desirable to the masses or why hell and damnation were popular theological notions among laypeople. 

The fifteenth century was a tumultuous period, ending what had been a relatively stable period in Europe for the few centuries prior. The Black Death had taken place in the fourteenth century, cutting the European population about in half. The Catholic Church fractured in schism when two popes were elected simultaneously, and a third quickly after, just prior to the turn of the century. The Holy Roman Empire was in decline. Popular uprisings of the poor were taking place across Europe. The Hundred Years' War between England and France, and Civil War within France, raged from thirteen thirty-seven all the way to fourteen fifty-three. So I guess the type of upheaval like that in the church and in the government and in society and in public health produces a desire to sing words like these [plays a clip of the Requiem]

Anyone changing their funeral plans anytime soon? After hearing this clip of the beginning of the Dies Irae, you pretty much get the first two and a half chapters of the Old Testament book of Zephaniah. If you haven't read Zephaniah yet or weren't sure before tonight, Zephaniah was in the Bible. It's only this long, and one of these halves of these pages isn't part of the book. That's all of Zephaniah, a tiny book in the Hebrew Bible. And the Day of Wrath in the Requiem, that phrase comes right from the book of Zephaniah, where our scripture text comes from this evening. 

The book opens with the most dramatic portrayal of that day of wrath. "I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth," says the Lord. "The day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of dark and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. A day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements." 

It is intended to be a shock to the reader. Those steeped in the mythopoetic stories of Judaism would recognize this portrayal as the undoing of creation. The creation that was so meticulously and lovingly brought about in Genesis 1-2. Zephaniah's prophecy says, "I will sweep away humans and animals. I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth," says the Lord. It is the rhetoric of horror: "Day of wrath and doom impending." 

Zephaniah is only three brief chapters, one of the shortest books in the Hebrew Bible. And from verse one, one to verse three thirteen, it is all wrath and judgment and destruction and retribution for the wickedness of the people and the oppression of the poor and the profaning of what is sacred by officials and judges and priests and prophets. Everyone is brought under judgment in Zephaniah's Day of Wrath. And then comes the end of the book, today's scripture text beginning at verse 3:14-20, the end of the book. The entire book ends in poetic verse with a surprising reversal. After two and a half chapters of wrath and judgment, we get this: 

"Sing aloud. Oh, daughter Zion, shout O Israel, rejoice and exalt with all your heart. O daughter Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. God has turned away your enemies, the king of Israel. The Lord is in your midst. You shall fear disaster no more. On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem, 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, God will rejoice over you with gladness, God will renew you in God's love. God will exalt over you with loud singing. As on a day of festival, I will remove disaster from you so that you will not bear reproach for it. 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 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.”

And churches that follow the schedule of the lectionary—that’s three years of scheduled readings throughout the church’s liturgical year. This text from the end of Zephaniah, only the good part, appears on the third Sunday of Advent in year C, which happens to be this year today. 

And Advent, as a season, began in about the fourth or fifth century as a season for the church to prepare for Christmas. And it was preparation that was about our penance, getting our hearts ready for the coming of Christ through repentance. Advent was in fact a mirror to the season of Lent, which we more closely associate with repentance in our spiritual imaginations. Advent has sort of become blended really closely with Christmas, but originally it is also about repentance, getting our hearts right for the coming of Christ. Both seasons, Lent and Advent, are seasons of darkness when the mood is one of longing and waiting and preparing and searching our hearts.

But the third Sunday of Advent today was a break in the penitential season of Advent when the mood shifted from longing for Christ’s coming into the brokenness of the world to the anticipation of Christ’s nearness, almost here. In very high church liturgical traditions, the third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday from the Latin word, meaning rejoice. And suddenly, for just one Sunday in the entire liturgical year, the vestments that clergy wear in those churches, the paraments that cover the altar and the lectern and the pulpit turn very briefly only for one Sunday to a celebratory pink rather than a dark penitential blue or purple. It’s much like the shift from "I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth" says the Lord. That day will be a day of wrath in the first two and a half chapters of Zephaniah to "rejoice and exalt with all your heart O Jerusalem." The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. You shall fear disaster no more. The Lord your God is in your midst. At the book’s end, from Day of Wrath to day of its restoration, gaudete rejoice.

I still don’t really know the impulse behind the fifteenth century desire of the masses to have the Day of Wrath added to the funeral mass. But it’s an impulse that many of us can likely understand intuitively on a gut level. There was some sense among many that it might be better if God just started over again with creation. Just strip it back down to the studs and build it all over again. God’s death is struck in nature. Quaking, says the Dies, all creation is awakening to its judge. An answer making lo the book exactly worded wherein all have been recorded, then shall judgment be awarded. Or, in the words of Zephaniah, "in the fire of God’s passion, the whole earth shall be consumed for a full, a terrible end God will make of all the inhabitants of the earth."

It’s helpful to remember that Zephaniah, as well as most of the books of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, were written in a period of catastrophe and oppression and social disintegration and religious upheaval. Most likely, the book was written during the Babylonian exile, when Jerusalem had been literally and completely destroyed, the temple in ruins, the elite of Jerusalem taken into exile in Babylon, or possibly it was written just after the return of the people to the land. Seventy years later, a land still in utter ruin and destruction. Words written in the palpable tension between the day of Wrath's utter destruction and the longing for tender words of restoration spoken over daughter Zion. Do not fear, O Zion, do not let your hands grow weak. 

There's something important in the juxtaposition of the day of wrath and Gaudete Sunday for us. I think in the coming days that we're moving into and through, in a season of potential catastrophe and certain oppression of the already marginalized and social disintegration through extreme polarization, exacerbated by algorithmically enhanced propaganda and religious upheaval in the form of white Christian nationalism becoming the dominant expression of public Christianity. There may be days in the coming months when you wonder whether it might not be better if God just started over again with creation. Just strip it back down to the studs and build it all over again, God. 

And I think that impulse is important to pay attention to. It helps us not to normalize the perpetration of the evils of violence and oppression that we know are coming and will consume many in our communities because I already see it happening. People trying to look on the bright side, people trying to explain how the most evil plans of the coming administration aren't economically feasible, so we shouldn't worry too much about them. People looking the other way because we have already grown fatigued by the inundation of bad news and we haven't even gotten started yet. 

Back in 2019, the church I served in Cambridge placed on our front lawn some signs for a period of seven months. And these signs were the photos of seven children who died in U.S. immigration custody that year when they were detained by Border Patrol. Their names and ages were written underneath their photographs. Marie Juarez, one year old; Carlos Giorgio Hernandez Vasquez, sixteen years old; Felipe Gomez Alonzo, eight years old; Jalyn Cal McQuin, seven years old; Juan Gutierrez, sixteen years old; Wilmer Jose Ramirez Vasquez, two years old; and Darling Cristobal Cordova Val, ten years old. 

And we placed other signs beside them, in between the pictures, that said things like, these children died in immigration custody this year after ten years of no reported deaths in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody. And there was a sign with the testimony of Dr. Julie Linton, co-chair of the Immigration Health Special Interest Group in the American Academy of Pediatrics who had seen the facilities that the children had been taken to. And her words of testimony were on a sign that says that facilities were basically concrete floors with mats and barbed wire fencing and bright lights 24/7.

And a sign with the words of Jesus, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, and I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, and I was a stranger and you welcomed me, and I was sick and you took care of me. And I was in prison, and you visited me.” 

And one final sign that asked passersby, “What will you do?” And because this wasn't just a question to our surrounding community, we also had smaller photos of these seven children that frequently appeared on our communion table in worship, including on Christmas Eve that year. They were reminders to us that the ministries of justice that continued to beckon us were ministries that mattered to real people. That Jesus' words weren't about a spiritual ideal sometime in a distant future, but about flesh and blood lives of people with their backs against the wall in situations of genuine oppression and radical cruelty right now.

When we move deeper into catastrophe and the oppression of the vulnerable and social disintegration and religious upheaval, the temptation for most of us will not be supporting it. Our temptation will come in the form of normalizing it through our compliance, through our complacency, through our comfortable unwillingness to really see it anymore through giving into our fatigue so that we become immobilized by it. So I guess I get a little more why the folks living through the turmoil and cataclysm of the fifteenth century might have been drawn to words like, “When the Judge his seat attaineth, And each hidden deed arraigneth, Nothing unavenged remaineth.”

It's important when moving through the book of Zephaniah, especially when we get to these most often read verses in the final seven passages of the text, the verses of comfort and consolation, to recognize that nothing has changed about the people's situation or God's judgment of it between verse 13-14, "Woe to the defiled, oppressing city. It has listened to no voice. It has accepted no correction. It has not trusted the Lord. It has not drawn near to its God. Officials, judges, prophets, priests, all of them guilty." Still, my decision says, "My decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all the heat of my anger. For in the fires of my passion, all the earth shall be consumed." But then comes Zephaniah's song of joy, right on the heels of the undoing of creation in God's day of wrath upon the oppressing city. Come the words, "Sing aloud, daughter Zion. Shout, O Israel, rejoice and exalt with all your heart." God's fiery passion burning against the oppressed, singing city and its officials runs right up against God's restoration and care for the people who hear God's words sung over them. "Do not fear. I will bring you home at the time when I gather you." 

And what about you? What words do you need to hear this evening? Maybe you too have a home to which you long to return, a home fractured by political division with loved ones ensconced in conspiracy theory and hateful politics, a spiritual home that once nurtured you and cared for you, but then turned against you when you asked too many questions or you came out or you transitioned, or any number of other lines that you crossed that you didn't know you were crossing until the door closed in your face. 

Or perhaps for you, the consolation you need right now on the brink of everything is to know you have a home. And the people like this one at The Table who are committed to not looking away from the cruelty that is coming, that will stoke the passion of God against oppression and injustice and violence. A people who are committed to participating wholeheartedly in God's work of restoration and compassion and justice. 

Gaudete Sunday in the season of Advent is the day when the season begins to turn from longing in shadows for something that we can't see coming to excited expectation for a light that we can only just begin to see on the horizon. When you suddenly feel the shock of the present unexpectedly give way to the consolation of words like, "Do not fear, do not let your hands grow weak. I will remove disaster from you. I will deal with all your oppressors and I will gather the outcasts.” From the day of wrath, Dies irae to Dies Gaudete, Day of Restoration. Rejoice.