Great!!

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18 (NRSV)

Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand; the Lordhas prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests. At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.” Their wealth shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them.

The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there. That day 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, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements. I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind; because they have sinned against the Lord, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath; in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed; for a full, a terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.

Did you catch that line in the middle of this text? "The great day of the Lord is near."

Does this reading sound like it's about a great day to you?

(insert crickets chirping...)

Of course, "great" has many meanings: substantial, significant, large, imposing, absolute, impressive, awe-inspiring, magnificent, total, utter, dominant, peerless, formidable...

That's just the beginning of the list when you google synonyms for "great!"

So, perhaps in that context, there is something "great" about what the prophet is talking about here: something absolutely imposing, formidable, significant, awe-inspiring...

You get the idea.

What perhaps makes this text so "great" and significant is that all of this wrath and destruction God says is going to come is coming as a result of something seemingly insignificant.

Complacency.  Ambivalence. Self-satisfaction. Apathy

God reveals the "fire of God's passion" as an answer to a people who seem to be displaying no passion at all.

Now, there are certainly lots of ways to read this, and many of them might sounds an awful lot like: "you'd better start caring about God more, or the wrath of God is coming to come down on you."

That might have been what Zephaniah meant for his hearers, but I'm not sure its as helpful for us.

Instead I think maybe another way to see it is that God has pretty strong feelings about God's people.  About us.  About our neighbors.  About creation. 

God in fact is passionate about these things.

What would it be like if we were all just as passionate about them?

Pretty great, probably...

Great and passionate God, ignite our hearts to love this world and all its creation and creatures just as fervently as you do.  Amen.