No Mascot for Bullies--December 18, 2024

No Mascot for Bullies--December 18, 2024

"The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
  a warrior who gives victory;
 he will rejoice over you with gladness,
  he will renew you in his love;
 he will exult 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." (Zephaniah 3:17-20)

Just in case it needed to be said, the God of the Scriptures does not take the side of the bullies.

God does not "punch down," as it were, either, to pick on those who are already being harassed. 

And while we are on the subject, the real and living God (as opposed to an inert or imagined idol) has a reputation for lifting up the ones who are beaten down, gathering the ones who have been cast out and left behind, and silencing the bullies to stop them.

Like I say, that much should be obvious--it's sort of Bible 101 stuff, since the Bible shows us God as the One who liberates of the enslaved Hebrews and humbles Pharaoh, who gives children to the childless, and who insists on special protections for vulnerable people like widows, orphans, and foreigners.  When the ancient Israelites thought about who God really was, these were the kinds of answers that came to them, over and over again: God was the One who healed the hurting, rather than inflicting more injuries. God was the One who carried the sick and the weak, rather than leaving them behind to fend for themselves.  And most certainly, God was not endorsing bullies or oppressors to give them permission to intimidate other people.  In other words, if you asked Joe or Joann Israelite on the street to define "God" for you, they would have started with phrases like "the One who gathers outcasts in" or "the One who saves the troubled," before nebulous answers like, "the Big Guy in the Sky" or some ambiguous "higher power." 

We need to start there because our hope as Christians is rooted in who God is--in the sort of character God has and the particular priorities that God has shown.  What makes our hope more than mere wishful thinking is that we count on God to be who God has always been, and we trust that God's character is reliable--that God will always be the One on the side of the bullied, the troubled, and the harassed, rather than the puppet of the power-hungry Pharaohs, Caesars, and Herods.  We are hopeful about the coming of God's Reign and the appearance of God's Messiah because we are convinced that the promised Christ is no mascot for bullies nor an ally of tyrants, but a binder of wounds and a gatherer of outcasts. It is because God is reliable that we can hope, rather than fear, the coming Christ.

These words from Zephaniah, then, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are a reminder of why this season of looking ahead to Christ's coming (both at Bethlehem and in God's promised future) is one of expectation rather than dread.  This season called Advent is a time of hope because of who God is, rather than fear as if we didn't know what sort of deity would show up or which side of the bed God will wake up on each day.

To be honest, a lot of the other things, events, and people we have put our hopes in before have let us down because the folks we counted on didn't prove reliable.  We've all been let down by the broken promises of politicians and demagogues.  We've heard stories of abusers and addicts who all swear, "This time will be different!" only to slide back into the same old patterns.  We've been sold shoddy merchandise and misled by pundits on TV screens.  But the bedrock claim of the Scriptures is that we know ours is the sort of God who sides with the bullied and beaten rather than amplifying the blowhards who do the bullying and the beating. We know who God is, and that gives us reason to hope for the coming of God's Reign and the arrival of God's Chosen One--the Christ.

Don't forget that in these remaining days before the hoopla and hurry of Christmas.  Don't forget the reason why we can be filled with hope rather than dread in all this talk about the coming of the Christ: we know who God is, reliably and faithfully. We trust God to be the One who lifts up the lowly, and who gathers in the ones left on the margins.

Lord God, be your authentic self for this whole hurting world, and we will rejoice to see you at work.