READINGS/ Malachi - all the way through...
SERMON/ ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.
A good few years ago now, a minister pal of mine
gave me a wee birthday minding –
a very silly key ring.
On it were the words:
‘Jesus is coming: quick, look busy!’
Our friend, Malachi, is very concerned that God’s people don’t get caught
out by the coming of the Lord. In effect, his message is all about getting ready:
be like the Boy Scouts, and be prepared.
So, the setting for Malachi:
We find that the Persians are still the big boys on the block –
remember them from last week?
They’re the ones who allowed the captive Israelites to go home,
after having been exiled by the previous power players, the Babylonians.
The exiles – well, really, mostly their descendants –
go home and start to restore their broken city
and rebuild their broken lives.
After a couple of years, with the encouragement of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah,
work begins on rebuilding the great temple in Jerusalem.
Years pass.
About 45 years.
And it’s at this point where we meet Malachi.
There’s been a good lot of work done in those years and the temple has been rebuilt.
Although it might not be quite as grand as it was when finished by Solomon,
the priests have returned to their rituals,
the people are back,
worship is happening.
All is good in the ‘hood...
or, maybe not quite.
You see, there’s some muttering from the people,
which is picked up by Malachi.
What’s the buzz?
It’s that God’s people are getting a little bit ‘antsy’ –
a wee bit impatient for God to crack on and do something.
They remember – or have heard the stories of Haggai and Zechariah:
how they encouraged the people to get on with building the temple;
and how that encouragement was in the form of promises about what God would do –
so many blessings would come their way.
Well, time’s marched on a-pace, and they’re not exactly seeing the return
on the dividend of all the hard work that they’d put in.
God had promised that they’d be famous – exalted among the nations.
And here they were, hardly that,
just a tiny backwater living under the rule of the mighty Persians –
hardly seen,
hardly relevant...
they’d hardly make the grade to be ‘D’ list celebrities
let alone be exalted by other nations.
They challenge God,
they ask questions:
‘You don’t love us any more, do you God?’
‘Have you given up on us, God?’
‘If you love us, show us!’
Perhaps they were getting a little bit ‘pouty’
‘It’s soooo unfair!’
And maybe, just maybe, they were getting a little bit rebellious:
‘Bother this for a game of soldiers, I’m off to find another god!’...
I think we can throw in a little bit of a dramatic flounce
as they walk off in a huff with God.
Malachi is listening this – to all the chat around the city:
in the bazaars,
by the watering places,
around the temple...
all of the whispers,
the mutters,
the voices of those feeling a little less than ‘gruntled’...
Perhaps too, underneath the snatches of conversation and complaint,
Malachi – whose name means ‘messenger’ –
is picking up what seems to be a loss of confidence:
‘Maybe we’re not so special to God, after all?’
‘Maybe God’s not listening?’
‘Maybe God’s got more important things to do?’
‘Maybe... God’s not interested in us anymore?’
All of this impacts upon their lives, and their relationships –
the relationship with God,
the relationship with neighbour.
Perhaps as they begin to feel dispirited they shrug their shoulders and think
‘Pfft, why bother?’
And so, when they do gather together as the people of God,
they don’t take as much care –
they get sloppy in the way they approach and worship God;
the sacrifices they offer are sloppy,
their worship practices are sloppy.
They turn up, they go through the motions...
occasionally wonder if they’ve chopped enough wood to cook
the Saturday roast when they get home,
or think about the in-laws coming over for a get-together
over wine and olives in the evening
and wonder if there’s enough olives to go around.
They’re not fully present in worship.
Or, they’ll get a wee bit annoyed about something in worship
and focus on it so much that they forget about the rest of the temple service:
they’re cross at having to learn a new psalm,
or put out that they have to thole the same old ones;
they perhaps wonder why things have to change
or why they seem to always stay the same.
So they sit there, in the temple, thinking about all sorts of things, mumbling that
‘they’re not really getting much out of this’
and somewhere, waaaay in the background, is God,
the One they’ve come to worship,
but have been a little too preoccupied with other things to properly stop and engage with.
They’re sloppy elsewhere in their relationships:
there’s God,
and then there’s their neighbour.
They can’t seem see the point of loving God and it has a knock on effect:
they can’t seem to see the point of loving their neighbour.
Maybe their reasoning goes along these lines:
If you do all of this stuff for God
and if you feel that God has let you down,
well, heck, why bother with your neighbour?
God is at least supposed to perfect,
but humans aren’t –
you’re always guaranteed to be let down by people.
And so neighbourly relationships get sloppy:
all those wee things they do everyday to keep the wheels of community
running smoothly begin to get dropped –
the motto quietly being adopted by God’s people is:
‘just look after yourself.’
So, in response to the muttering,
to their challenges about God perhaps not loving them,
of God perhaps not listening to them,
God, through his prophet Malachi, throws the question back at them –
after first saying – in chapter 1 verse 2:
‘I have loved you...’
and to their challenge of ‘how’,
God responds again:
showing them by a reference to Jacob and Esau,
that God has indeed chosen them –
that they are special.
God’s saying to them:
‘I think you’re special, I’m just not so sure you think I am,’
and uses their less than focused approach to worship,
and to their relationships with their neighbours as an example.
God uses Malachi to challenge the people back.
In the face of their questions they are asked:
‘Just how serious are you about God,’
and
‘are you really ready for the coming of the Lord?’
Malachi tells them to prepare –
to do an inventory, take stock of their lives.
For while the coming of the Lord will mean great and wonderful things,
it also means that, to get there involves a process – a refining process.
Just like a fire burns off all the dross,
or a clears away all the undergrowth in a forest,
so God’s people need to prepare,
and undergo the equivalent of a spiritual MOT –
to peel away all the layers,
to get rid of the ‘this for that’ transactional view of God they’ve had,
and rather, to think of God as the One who wants them
to be their truest, most authentic selves,
the One who wants them to be the best that they can possibly be...
and as they do this,
it has a knock on effect:
a better focus upon relationships once more with God and with neighbour.
By undergoing the process of preparing,
getting rid of all the obstacles that get in the way of their relationship with God,
so the world will become a better place where blessings abound –
preparing brings with it focus upon what really matters.
That’s the message of Malachi:
prepare, do some spiritual spring cleaning,
lose the ‘what can I get out of worship’
and instead ask
‘what can I put into worship?’
Lose the ‘what can I get out of my neighbour?’
and instead ask
‘How is my neighbour doing?’
Having proclaimed that part of God’s message,
Malachi finishes with God’s promise once more:
restoration, new life.
For those who revere God’s name:
‘the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.
And you will go out and leap like calves released from a stall.’
But there’s more:
just before the kingdom comes, there will be another messenger,
one who will cry out, like Elijah, proclaiming a message of repentance.
After Malachi, there is a 400 year silence.
And then, a voice, crying out in the desert:
it belongs to John the Baptist,
who Jesus calls the last and greatest of the prophets.
John echoes Malachi’s message, and proclaims:
‘prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him’
It’s a message we hear in the season of the church we call ‘Advent’ –
the time of preparation as we make ready to welcome in the Christ-child
into our hearts and our homes once again.
The other point in the church year when we deliberately spend time
preparing, and clearing the path in our lives that lead us to God,
is the season of Lent:
a time when we go out into the wilderness,
a time where we remember and walk alongside Jesus
as he makes his way to Jerusalem...
entering its gates humbly upon a donkey to shouts of acclimation and waving of palms.
There he will weep over it,
there he will proclaim God’s message,
there he will share a final meal with his friends
and be betrayed,
and arrested
and killed.
But there, after 3 days,
he will rise again in a garden early in the morning,
for even death can not contain him.
Through his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection,
God’s kingdom breaks into our world, just as the prophets proclaimed.
What’s holding us back from truly following God?
What are the obstacles in our lives that clutter and block the way?
What do we need to do – to change –
so that we not only hear God’s call to follow,
but are better able to do so?
Jesus is the sign God gives to us all –
a sign to show that:
God is still interested,
God is still listening,
that God still thinks we’re important,
important enough that he sent his Son
to show us, through his life
how all of us might set about the business of preparing the way –
of making our paths straight...
of being in a better relationship with God, and our neighbour.
The message on the key ring my friend gave me might better say:
‘Jesus is coming: prepare the way.’ ...
Amen
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