25th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

The great day of the Lord is near…That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish… because they have sinned against the Lord (Zephaniah 1:14-17).

You know, there’s a reason people stay away from church. Well, there are a lot of reasons. But one of them is certainly because of Bible passages like this and the assumption that that’s what they’ll hear in church. And as much as I’d love to rail against such sermons on hell and doom and “God is angry and wants to damn you,” I can’t totally dismiss them because the base material they’re using is in the Bible. I might disagree with those preachers’ conclusions, but the source of their ire is all there. And it’s certainly prominent in our readings today: this depiction of an angry God who is fed up with our sinfulness.

In particular is this language we hear of the “Day of the Lord.” The phrase appears throughout scriptures in various ways. Here in Zephaniah, the Day of the Lord depicts the failure of God’s people to uphold their end of the covenant. You’ll remember that when Moses gave them God’s law they made an agreement that (1) they would worship God only and (2) they would live in harmony within their community. They agreed that if they didn’t uphold their end of the covenant, they would be punished. So the Day of the Lord is described as the just consequence for the covenant people of God whose sins have accumulated to such a degree that a reckoning is required to stop it in its tracks.

So the Babylonian exile in 597 bc and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ad can both be understood as manifestations of the “Day of the Lord.”

But I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a broader, more universal way to understand it as well. And that is simply to recognize that, wherever sin exists – wherever ungodliness exists – there is a cost. When we choose to live and behave in a way that is contrary to God and contrary, therefore, to what is truly human, then we will suffer. In this regard, I think it’s less “an angry God punishing you” and more, “the natural consequences of living badly.” Living badly will create its own bad life.

And I would say the supreme example of this is war itself. Warfare is the antithesis of what is truly human. Quite simply, we are made to love each other, not to kill each other. The end.

In all other situations, if you kill someone, you are punished and sent to jail. But during a war, the basic tenants of humanity are shoved aside and now it’s become virtuous to kill because it needs to be done.

And I’m not saying there aren’t occasions when warfare isn’t the last option, when invading tyrants like Hitler must be stopped. But nor am I saying it’s good. War is the ultimate result of human behavior gone wrong. War is the exact opposite of our basic mandate for life: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”

What if, in the years following 9-11, we’d spent $2 trillion loving Iraq and Afghanistan rather than that same amount on war? “That’s ridiculous,” you’d say. “It’s not America’s responsibility to take care of those countries.” No, of course it’s not. And I’m not proposing such a policy for international relations. I’m simply making a stark point: When it comes to war, there’s no limit to what we’re willing to spend. Love, on the other hand, is of very little worth to us. And that’s a sorry thing.

We are living in the Day of the Lord, you might say, simply because we have chosen it. We’re the ones (and I’m speaking of all humanity) who have decided that killing is of more value and urgency than loving. And those we ask to do the killing on our behalf are left to pay the deeper cost.

Last week was Veterans Day, the day we set aside to remember and honor those men and women who have served in the military and fought our wars. And it is appropriate to honor them because we have asked them to do the unthinkable. We’ve asked them to have their limbs blown off. We’ve asked them to be shot at. We’ve asked them to witness atrocities beyond description… and we’ve asked them to inflict the same on others.

And then they come home, weighted with an invisible moral injury they carry. But we don’t want to see this. “Come to us in your dress uniforms, spotless and handsome.” We speak of honor and we thank them for their duty – which is fitting – but we don’t want to hear what that duty entailed.

We’ve asked them to behave inhumanly on our behalf, and then – miraculously – to return and resume a normal civilian life. But how can you participate in the antithesis of human behavior without a toll being reckoned? I’ve always remembered the haunting words of Mike Mitchell, a Vietnam vet here in Gig Harbor, who said of the terror of war, “It tattooed my soul forever.”

So many soldiers come home traumatized. There’s no shame in that. Post-traumatic stress is a condition in which the mind continues to recall a traumatic event so you can avoid repeating it again. The constant reminder makes you vigilant against the threat. But it becomes unbearable. Even after the threat is long past, you keep reliving it as if it were present – just around the corner – ready to destroy you.

I highlight the soldiers because Veterans Day was so recent, and they need to be recognized. So many of them sacrificed their peace of body and mind for this war-hungry world of our creating. They, and other victims of war and extreme trauma, are on the far end of the continuum of human pain. But everywhere you turn are victims of one form of trauma or another. All of us are reliving the pain in our lives that we have absorbed into our souls.

It can be any trauma. I was hit driving home on a blind curve several years ago. And to this day, whenever I enter that curve, I tense up. If I see headlights of a concealed car approaching, my pulse starts racing. You might say Post Traumatic Stress is a spectrum disorder and we’re all on it since we’ve all experienced trauma in varying degrees. Shoot – sometimes I think life is a spectrum disorder.

We stumble about under the consequence of being sinned against and having sinned, especially in stressful circumstances, when – in a panic – we perpetrate sin, or fail to prevent sin, or witness sinful events (with a sense of powerlessness) that contradict our deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.[1] We are all complicit in the brokenness of this world. It’s unavoidable.

Recently, a homeless woman asked me for money. I didn’t have any money on me. I said I was sorry and I kept going. But the truth is, I wasn’t sorry. I just wanted to carry on with whatever I was doing as if she weren’t there. What would Jesus have done? I don’t know. But not that. I was face to face with a child of God in distress and I did nothing to alleviate it or to show her dignity. I don’t know how to alleviate homelessness or all the various mental disorders and addictions that are so often associated with it. But my point is this: It is fair to say we are living in the Day of the Lord inasmuch as the consequences for our universal sinfulness are exacting their toll on us all.

But I do believe this: The Day of the Lord is not the end. It is the symptom of our brokenness, but not the concluding word.

The end of our story is redemption. “For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5: 9).

What God intends for us, is god-likeness. It was so in the beginning and it shall be in the end. And for those of us who know ourselves to have already been drawn into God and the Kingdom of God through our baptisms and our faith, that god-likeness is available now. We don’t have to remain in fear; we can choose the path that Jesus has opened for us.

We don’t need warfare. Jesus has shown us the one power that can overcome all sin and fear. And that is forgiveness. For where forgiveness occurs, we now can surge across those borders that divided us, now bearing bandages or casseroles (instead of guns) or whatever is needed to heal those we once called “enemy.”’

That is the point in Jesus’ parable of the talents. Three servants were each entrusted with the master’s money. Two were shrewd with his money and, when the master came back, they could show a hundredfold return. The third was afraid. He hid the money, lest he lose it. But when the master returned, that servant was condemned for his timidity (Matthew 25:14-30).

Let us not be the third servant: afraid of God and afraid of risk. God has given us love and mercy. So we are now free to multiply that love and mercy in our care of the people around us. God has given us forgiveness. So we are now free to forgive with abandon and to halt the violence of our age. God has given us every good thing in our lives. Whatever that may be – wealth, leisure, wisdom, passion, a gentle spirit or a soft heart – let us use it liberally. Our gifts are different, but we share the same responsibility to take what we have been given and to use it well. We in the church are called to be a people of healing and redemption and peace – that deep shalom which shall be the final word on all wars and all enmity and all division.

Let us discover the Kingdom of God within us, then live boldly within it. For we are freed.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins (Isaiah 40: 1-2).

And so it is. We have been called into the Kingdom of God and now may live as the people of God: with mercy and healing and hope. God is in us and we are in God. Our warfare is over.

[1] This is a brief summary of “Moral Injury,” a growing field of study that helps us to understand the complications of PTSD