When the Lord comes?

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-end 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Today is the second Sunday before Advent but as last week was Remembrance Sunday this is the first look we take at the Advent theme. The question is “What do we think happens or will happen when the LORD comes?” 

Zephaniah as befits an Old Testament prophet is unambiguous :

“That will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom a day of clouds and thick darkness. “

Now, right now mid lockdown this may be the last thing we want to hear; it contrasts greatly with our usual more excited approach to this time of year. Zephaniah was writing between 609 and 604 BC, he was a contemporary of Jeremiah so writing only a little  before the fall of Jerusalem and the exile. He foresees the coming of the Babylonians who will drag people from houses, streets, sewers and tombs where they have been hiding or as he puts it “at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps.” Why though does Zephaniah write like this? He is it seems to me the sixth century BC equivalent of the graphic images which for a while at least appeared on cigarette packets, some of you may remember them the horrible pictures of diseased lungs :” REFORM,” says Zephaniah “or these bad things will happen to you.” 

Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians has five chapters and the final verse of each and every chapter ends with a reference to the second coming of Christ. For example, chapter one ends describing “Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath.” and at the end of this chapter five which we have heard some of this morning it says” May God himself, the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” 

And so here is the difference, there is still the unmistakable imagery of impending tribulations “When they say there is peace and security then sudden destruction will come upon them as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman and there will be no escape” and again just as in the Old Testament there is a warning of darkness to come. But this time the cigarette packet has two pictures, the inescapable diseased ling of sin, the warning is still there, but also a brighter clear picture of healed tissues brought about by Jesus Christ, who died for us that we might be clean. 

When Advent really comes we will give more emphasis to our waiting and this is what we are waiting for, not the day of darkness  but the day of light and so we wait not with the foreboding of the old prophets but with the anticipation of the new.

Amen.