Proper 28

[Ryan Scott]

I'm preaching this week from Zephaniah 1:7-18.

The RCL website lists this as the alternate OT reading. It is the OT reading highlighted in the "Feasting on the Word" commentary series.

In anticipation of Christ the King Sunday the following week, this is a passage of utter judgment. The world will be destroyed because of its sinfulness.

I'm hoping to help our people focus on the things in life that need to change to be closer to God and more like Christ. This will be an introduction to a week of self-reflection.

Obviously the danger here is just depressing the heck out of people. I'm hoping to frame it as our hunger for faithfulness, not our fear of hell.

I'd appreciate any thoughts that come along.

As for homiletics, I think I'm going to use an old twilight zone episode as the bookend. In the episode "to serve man" an alien race comes to "help solve Earth's problems" and they leave a book. The humans translate the title - to serve man - but get too excited to translate the actual book.

When it's already too late, someone does and finds out that "to serve man" is a cookbook.

To me this image dovetails well with verse 7 - in which God's banquet guests also double as the sacrifice. In the end, I'm hoping to reverse the image - that we expect God to have a book "how to serve man" when really we should be searching for the ways we can better serve God. The condemnations in Zephaniah are about selfishness and misunderstanding of God's intentions for us; our attitudes need to change if we hope to survive the Day of the Lord.

[Doug Kitchen]

If I were speaking and if I were as daring as you to speak from Zephaniah, here are some of my thoughts about the passage:

As I was reading through the text, I was reminded of occupy wall street and in general the "love of money" (rich and poor alike). It is not hard to find advertisements about selling your gold or investing in gold as a way out of our economic problems. "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil". The "foreign clothes" statement reminds me of Peter's admonition to clothe ourselves in humility.

The connection with Matt 25 might work with "to serve man". (excellent example to use) Also, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" comes to mind. One thing that confuses me about the passage is whether v.7 means that God consecrates by destroying (?). I think most christians would read v. 7 in isolation and assume it is prophetic about Christ as the sacrifice. Within the context, I think it means that God will execute judgment.

The jealous God verse at the end is also an interesting and common quality assigned to God. I don't hear that term much in church anymore. Single-minded devotion to anything is pretty rare these days - we try to hedge our bets but God demands absolute allegiance.

My mind went to the "Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck. When I mentioned this to Lori, her first thought was the Grapes of Wrath by VeggieTails. If you want to lighten the mood a bit, I would go with Lori's suggestion. We are honoring veterans some on Sunday and will be singing "mine eyes have seen the glory" as one of the hymns. I don't know if Lori will choose the Zephaniah passage or not.

Doug

[Ryan Scott]

All of the commentaries I read talked about v 7 meaning that Israel is the sacrifice. They showed up to Thanksgiving dinner and found themselves to be the turkey. It recalls, a bit, the sacrifice of Isaac.

[Doug Kitchen]

All of the commentaries I read talked about v 7 meaning that Israel is the sacrifice. They showed up to Thanksgiving dinner and found themselves to be the turkey. It recalls, a bit, the sacrifice of Isaac.

Another timely metaphor!

I think that your "to serve man" story is a good example of the way we tend to read scripture (or at least the way I was taught). It is very tempting to read "Jesus" into every text and if one just read v.7 and stopped, the sacrifice might be Jesus. hmmm. but in context, I would have a hard time seeing the sacrifice as anything but man. So I would agree with you and the commentaries.

So if there is a relationship to the sacrifice of Isaac, is there a ram in the thicket somewhere in Zephaniah?

Doug

[Ryan Scott]

So if there is a relationship to the sacrifice of Isaac, is there a ram in the thicket somewhere in Zephaniah?

The very end of chapter three has some redemption.

[Doug Kitchen]

The very end of chapter three has some redemption.

Maybe you saw this from Brueggemann but I liked it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walter...l?ref=religion

[Ryan Scott]

Here's the sermon. Sorry it won't be a permanent link, we don't have a ton of room to keep sermons loaded on the website.

http://www.pennsvillenazarene.org/in...mid=18&g=11323