Malachi 3:1 - 4
A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham
University Presbyterian Church
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Second Sunday of Advent December 11, 2011
Malachi surfaces only rarely in the scripture readings of the church. As a not-so-surprising consequence, we may find his words a bit odd. John the Baptist we know, because we return to him every year in Advent. And we may detect a certain kinship between Malachi and John, given their similar calls to repentance. But Malachi is a relative stranger to most of us. So let me set his words in their context.
Malachi appears in the life of Israel about one hundred years after the people's return from exile in Babylon. Near the end of the exile and in the early days after the return prophets like Isaiah and Haggai and Zechariah had laid out visions of the restoration of Zion and its Temple. The people had envisioned a return to the glory days before the exile, but it had not come to pass.[1] Instead life had been hard, and the old order had disintegrated. Years of waiting had taken their toll, and so the days of Malachi were days of cynicism mostly. Many had begun to doubt whether God still cared for the people at all; indeed, some had already decided that God was out of the picture and thus that the demands of the Torah no longer held. Religious duties were taken lightly; ethical standards were loosely observed at best. Abuse of the poor had become standard practice; personal immorality was rampant. Not even the temple was immune to such cynical behavior; instead of instructing the people in reverence and awe and maintaining worship life, priests were but perfunctory in their offices. Disregarding priestly laws, they carelessly reckoned all offerings to be good enough for God. All in all, a pretty dismal scene.[2]
Into this morass Malachi comes with an admonition from the Lord. He tells the people that they have wearied God with their cynical words, with their notion that disobedience didn't matter to God and their suggestion that God had abandoned them to injustice. The God of justice has not abandoned them, he says, and indeed is returning to His Temple. A messenger, a forerunner, will come to prepare the way. But the One who is coming is not to be considered lightly or casually. If they truly long for the day of the Lord, then "they must be prepared for God's shattering holiness," for God will come not to bless the status quo, but to purge and to purify like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. Do not take lightly His coming, says the prophet. Reorder your worship, he says, and then the people and the nation shall be restored. God's judgment is not harshness, but rather is an act of grace, aimed at the recovery of God's beloved people. God is not setting impossible standards, but rather "drawing a map, showing a path by which they may return."[3]
On this third Sunday of Advent, Malachi's message is not an especially cheerful word, full of sweetness and light and mangers where the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. Yet, the nature of Advent is to prepare us... to remind us not only of the One who is coming, but of the preparations we need to make for that day. That is the role of Malachi. As was true with the people of Israel to whom he spoke, our hope, too, may have grown a bit brown around the edges, and we may well be wearying God with our own weariness and cynicism.
Christine Chakoian says that if Malachi does nothing else in this season, he reminds us of the centrality and significance of our worship.
Perhaps it is the intimacy of the Incarnation that leads us toward our cozy and often sentimental preparations for Christmas. Malachi is a timely reminder of the transcendent holiness of God, and [of] how ... consequential are our feeble acts of worship. We would do well to shudder at what blind and maim sacrifices we slap on the altar.
[The truth is, many] of us worry more about what worship does for [us] than... about what it offers God. But worship matters so much because it is not about us.... Worship matters precisely because it is about God. Worship dares, with fear and trembling, to approach the mysterium tremendum....
More importantly, worship is the beginning of our righteousness, and, if it has any integrity at all, leads us to [faithfulness] in every arena of life. It is to this intersection of our awe before God and our treatment of God's children that Malachi takes us.... [O]ur reverent and humble approach to the powerful throne of God leads us to a reverent and humble approach to [God's] vulnerable and fragile [children] in the world.[4]
In a few moments the choir will sing the wonderful first chorus of Handel's Messiah. Remarkably, our text from Malachi appears in that wonderful choral work immediately following the chorus with a recitative - "The Lord, whom ye seek shall suddenly come" - followed by an air for bass - "But who may abide the day of his coming?" - and a second chorus - "And He shall purify the sons of Levi," all from Malachi. The chorus the choir will sing for us today is more uplifting, but Handel did not omit the harder parts. He was one who understood the instructive and evocative role that music could play in worship, indeed in all of life. After the first presentation of Messiah in Dublin in 1742 at a foundling hospital , he wrote to a friend: "I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better."
He took that wish to heart, too. Though he would soon be blind, until his death Handel conducted Messiah as an annual benefit for the Foundling Hospital in London, which served mostly widows and orphans, and he gave the proceeds of all its performances to charity. His intent was not just to entertain; he hoped also to stir people to be more just and more gracious in their dealings with the poor. Though he could no longer see, Handel's ears were wide open to Malachi's word: "Present [your] offerings to the Lord in righteousness."[5]
Worship matters, says Malachi, our offerings matter, and not just because they are the source of our righteousness in the world, but also because they deliver us into the presence of the One who is the source of our hope. And I would argue today that we are increasingly in need of such hope in our own time.
To be sure, compared to the people of Malachi's time we have it pretty good. The circumstances in Israel in those days were harsh and forbidding. They were still suffering under foreign domination; economic deprivation and lawlessness ruled the land. And what hope there had been to hold them through the long years of exile now was all but depleted in their great disappointment. And so they were withdrawing from the God they believed was withdrawing from them. Malachi's words were a strong reminder that God was still God. We, on the other hand, live lives of relative comfort and plenty. Despite the political and market chaos of our day, we still enjoy much stability and order. Most of us are comfortable and graced with plenty of food to eat and a warm place to live. If we are withdrawn from God, it is not because we are in despair, but because for the most part we cannot envision things a whole lot better than we know them now.
And so for different reasons we need Malachi's reminder that God is still God. And whether the world we experience is almost too good to be true or too true to be good, that God has a startling future in store for us.[6] Walter Brueggemann says the world is not closed in either despair or self-sufficiency. There will be an intrusion. There will be an intrusion of a God so powerful that when the time comes there will be turmoil.[7] A turmoil that will lead to a deeper security and a more secure peace than we have ever known before. What Malachi promises is an intrusion by the hoped-for messenger who will prepare the way for the coming of the day of the Lord. And in the meantime, we have some preparation to do, he says.... preparation that will alter the standard operating procedures of our days.
If we believe that Malachi is right, that the kingdom of God will come, then we will pray for others, we will hope in behalf of those who seem to have little hope left. And one more thing, one more tough thing, says Neil Plantinga: we will work in the same direction that we hope
Lewis Smedes says that hoping for others is hard, but not the hardest [thing]. Praying for others is hard, but not the hardest [thing]. The hardest part for people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ is "living the sort of life that makes people say, ‘Ah, so that's how people are going to live when righteousness takes over our world.'"[8]
Many of you have heard me tell Frank Koch's story about being on the bridge of a battleship during some training maneuvers in the old days before GPS navigation systems. For several days the weather had been heavy, with poor visibility and patchy fog. Koch remembers being on watch one might just before dark, when a lookout on the other wing of the bridge spotted something. "Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain inquired. The lookout replied, "Steady, Captain." The meaning was clear; they were on a collision course. So the captain [told his] signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on a collision course; advise you change course twenty degrees." Back came the signal, "Advisable for you to change course twenty degrees." The captain [told] the signalman, "Send, ‘I am a captain; change course twenty degrees.'" "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply. "You had better change course twenty degrees."
[Well you know the rest of the story.] By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, "Send, ‘I'm a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.'" Back came the flashing light, "I'm a lighthouse; advise that you change course." Said Koch, "We changed course."[9]
That's the kind of significant course correction Malachi envisions, the demonstration of how people are going to live when righteousness takes over the world, when the light bearing on our starboard bow is the Light of life itself. Worship done right, especially in Advent, invites us into such course corrections.
I read once of a Yom Kippur sermon preached by a Jewish rabbi in a Midwestern city. The sermon began with a lament for a friend who had died in Israel... a 39-year-old mother of four who had stumbled into the midst of a hijacking that went terribly wrong... and was murdered in a horribly random act of violence (like other such acts we've known in Virginia and Kansas this week). In reflecting on her death and on the meaning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, the rabbi said, "Very simply, our gathering [today]... is a protest against emptiness... and meaninglessness.... Our prayers are a protest against ... randomness."
The title of the rabbi's sermon was a Hebrew phrase, af al pi chen, which means, "In spite of it all." The rabbi said, "For over three thousand years, our people have prayed to God in spite of it all. In spite of the turmoil [and] trouble... of daily life, a life so terrible [at times] that it shouts in your face, ‘There is no God!' our ancestors prayed to God.... In spite of everything, we live, we hope, we dream, we pray."
In spite of it all, we worship God. We come together to worship [the good rabbi said] because, "A community that prays is a community that stands for God." We literally stand to worship God; when we leave worship we continue... to stand for God, to stand up for life and meaning and goodness and truth; to stand up for justice and kindness and humility [and over against] cruelty, randomness and hatred. When we worship we stand again for God's vision of what humanity can be and is supposed to be.[10]
Whether the cynicism of our time comes from despair on the one hand, or smug satisfaction on the other, whether our dismissal of God comes because things are almost too good to be true or simply too true to be good, the reminder of Malachi... indeed, the reminder of Advent... is that God's intrusion will come. It will come. In the meantime, Malachi says in a nutshell, "Advise that you change course."
[1] Christine Chakoian, in a paper presented to the January 2000 meeting of the Moveable Feast in Stony Point, New York. This sermon draws substantially from Chris' excellent paper.
[2] W. Neil, "Malachi," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, V. 3, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1962, 229-230, and Elizabeth Achtemeier, Malachi, Interpretation Commentary, Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1986, 177ff.
[3] I have borrowed liberally from Christine Chakoian's summary of the text.
[4] Chakoian.
[5] I am grateful to Deborah Block for this story; "Pastoral Perspective: Malachi 3:1-4," Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, 30.
[6] The phrase, "too true to be good," is borrowed from songwriter Pierce Pettis and his song, "Just Like Jim Brown (She is History)."
[7] Walter Brueggemann, in remarks to the January 1988 meeting of the Moveable Feast in Atlanta, as recorded by Chakoian.
[8] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., "In the Interim: Between Two Advents," Christian Century, December 6, 2000, 1272.
[9] Stephen Covey, Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, New York, Fireside Books, 1989.
[10] Karen Chakoian's remembrance of a sermon by Rabbi Frank Fink, Temple B'Nai Jeshurun, Des Moines, September 25, 1993, as cited by Christine Chakoian.
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