About fifteen years ago, when I was a vicar in Salem, Oregon, I watched as one of the buildings in our apartment complex burned down. First we saw the smoke drifting past our window. Then we heard the sirens. When we went outside there was already a small crowd gathered on the lawn. I remember the firefighters working to put out the flames. I remember how the siding on the building immediately next to that one melted from the heat. I remember the residents, one young lady in particular, in tears as she watched her home destroyed. Thankfully no one was hurt, but I’m sure all those people from that apartment building had to wrestle with the question, “Now what? Where do we go from here?”
In the year 587 or 586 BC, Jerusalem was destroyed. It wasn’t a house fire that took it out. It was an enemy army. Many people were hurt. Many were killed. Nebuchadnezzar and the army of Babylon took the city apart brick by brick. Anything that was valuable they hauled off as loot. Everything else was smashed and burned. The houses. The city walls. The temple of God, which king Solomon had built 400 years earlier. All of it was gone. And the people? Some of them fled, going all the way to places like Egypt. Some of them remained to eke out a living in the ruins of the city, and really, the whole country. But most of them were taken away, into captivity. The Babylonian Captivity, this is called, and for seventy years they’d be living in exile.
Seventy years can be counted in a couple of different ways. The captivity happened in stages, with different battles and people deported at different times. But seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar’s rise to power, Babylon had fallen. The Achaemenid, or Medo-Persian empire, had taken over. And their ruler, Cyrus the Great, decreed that they could return to their homeland. What a joyful thing it was for them to go back. What a sorrowful thing to see their ruined homeland. They had returned, but they had a lot of work to do.
It was to these people that God sent the prophet Zechariah. He sent two prophets, actually. Zechariah and Haggai were both going to be working as God’s prophets in Jerusalem at the same time. Their message was the same, but their books are quite different. Both prophets came to shake God’s people out of spiritually apathy. They came to rouse them from spiritual slumber. They came to call them to repentance, to remind them of God’s covenant, and to point them to the Messiah God had promised.
During the season of Lent this year our Wednesday sermons will be based on readings chosen from Zechariah. Just as they did for the people of Israel living all those years ago, they point us to the Messiah. They point us to the work of salvation that Jesus carried out for us. They call us to repent of our sins and look to Jesus’ cross, where he cried out, “It is finished!”
The text for tonight comes from the very beginning of Zechariah’s book. This is a summary of Zechariah’s call from God, and so you could call it a summary of the whole book. It begins with the context:
In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo.
Darius I (which you’ll hear pronounced DARE-ee-yus or dar-EYE-us, either way is fine) was king of Persia. The Jews were allowed to return to their land, but he was still their king. His second year would put this in 520 BC. It was the eighth month, which in the Jewish calendar is חֶשְׁוָן (Cheshvan), and would put this in October or November. That’s very specific for an Old Testament date. We’re coming up on 2545 years since this happened. Zechariah was descended from Iddo, which makes him one of the priests of Israel. Zechariah is mentioned in the book of Ezra, which covers some of the history from this time period. He’s also mentioned by Jesus. In the end of Matthew 23 Jesus says that Zechariah was murdered between the sanctuary and the altar of the temple. This isn’t in Zechariah’s book, which is no surprise, but it must have been well-known history at the time of Jesus, five hundred years later.
Zechariah’s introduction gives the message that God called him with. God said,
2The Lord was very angry with your forefathers. 3Therefore, now you are to tell this people that this is what the Lord of Armies says to them.
Return to me, declares the Lord of Armies, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Armies. 4Do not be like your forefathers, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed, “This is what the Lord of Armies says. Return, return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.”
But our forefathers did not listen, nor did they pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5Your forefathers—where are they now? And those prophets—did they go on living indefinitely? 6But my words and my statutes, which I commanded to my servants the prophets, caught up with our forefathers, didn’t they?
Then they returned and said, “Because of our ways and our deeds, the Lord of Armies has done to us just as he planned to do to us.”
“Return to me.” That’s the message that God sent Zechariah to proclaim. “Return to me!” And you might imagine the people saying, “Haven’t we done that? We were in exile, far away. But now we have returned. We’ve come back to Jerusalem, to the mountain of God. We’ve come back to our burned-out husk of a country and we’re rebuilding. Why would God send a prophet to us to call us to return to him?”
But the answer is really a pretty simple one. Yes, they had returned from exile. But spiritually, they were just as far away as ever. The kind of return God was calling for was not a change in location. It was a change of heart. “Return, return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.”
Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance.
That’s from the Augsburg Confession, Article XII. And this is exactly what God’s word through his prophet Zechariah is describing. Here they were, back in Jerusalem after all the war and bloodshed and destruction and death, after years and years had gone by in exile. And you would think that they would have learned their lesson. Look at what happened to their fathers! Look at how they had turned away from God’s Word. Look at how they had ignored and abused and murdered God’s prophets! But now, having returned to Jerusalem, they were back to their old ways. They still hadn’t returned to God. They needed to see their sin. They needed to know the full weight of their guilt and the terror of God’s judgment.
And they needed to return in faith to the God who welcomes sinners. “Return to me, and I will return to you,” he says.
When we consider our sins before God, our natural reflex is to run away. It’s to hide, like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. God is perfect and holy. God demands perfection and holiness. But I’m a sinner, so I can’t stand before God. I need to run. I might run physically, like Jonah, sailing to the opposite end of the world from where God told him to go, but of course that won’t work. “Am I a God who is only nearby, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?,” God says in Jeremiah 23. So how else can I run away? I can flee in my mind and in my heart. I can plunge myself into more sin and guilt. I can put every thought of God’s Word out of my mind. I can beat myself up, in a mental version of those monks who would whip their own backs, cursing myself to the hell I deserve.
But that hell was already suffered for me by Jesus. When God says, “Return to me,” he is not saying it because he doesn’t know how sinful I have been. I might shock myself by the evil thoughts of my heart and the wicked deeds of my hands. But Jesus knows those sins. They’re the reason he went to the cross. He wasn’t pierced for people who are pretty good. He suffered and died for sinners, even those who have tried to run away from him as far as they possibly can. When he calls you and says, “Return to me,” he’s calling you to the only real answer for your sin, his forgiveness.
In this world you are going to face temptation from the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh. Sometimes they might catch you unprepared, not watching and praying as Jesus tells us to. Sometimes you might think you can stand just fine on your own, and that’s when you’ll fall. Sometimes you will not understand yourself, why it is that the evil you do not want to do, that you keep on doing.
When you have sinned, when your heart is in ruins, a burned-out husk and you’re wondering, “Now what? Where do I go from here?,” return to the Lord. Confess your guilt. Receive his forgiveness. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. You don’t need to spend a night in the doghouse first. Run to your Savior. His arms are open wide. “Return to me!” he says. Amen.