Malachi 3: 1-4
Luke 3: 1-6
2nd Week of Advent
Like last week, neither one of today’s
scripture readings will make the top ten devotional classic’s for your tender
Christmas reflection for they are neither warm or fuzzy. So it’s not my job today to make you
feel good but it’s my job today, as a preacher, to make you uncomfortable. No apologies. No warnings.
It’s just that time of year when the tides of the world are going one
way and Christians are going another.
But then again, that’s what we are all about and these Christian holy
days which have mutated into secular holidays are, for us, refining moments in
our lives of faith if we take them to heart.
We heard from Malachi. Malachi was temple prophet during the
Second Temple period, around 515 BCE, who became very disgruntled with the
priesthood who just happened to be the sons of Levi. Levi, of course, was one of the 12 tribes who were singled
out as the temple priests. So Malachi writes this critique of 5th
century priesthood. Now herding
clergy is never easy, I’ll admit that.
And in Malachi’s time the Levitical priesthood had spiraled totally out
of control. Malachi says, “Get
your act together!” “The messenger
of the Covenant is coming, you’ve been waiting…but what have you done with your
time, what have you done to prepare yourself? And what in the world have you done to this temple while you
were waiting?”
He asks, “How are you going to make it
because that messenger is going to be like ‘white-hot fire from the smelters
furnace and like the strongest lye soap at the laundry?’” as Eugene Peterson
says in The Message. “You’ll be
cleansed alright; you’ll be scrubbed clean and refined like gold and silver
until you are fit for God; until you are purified for God’s presence”. Even though that was long ago and the
temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, the questions remain. They are the ones that we need to be
asking ourselves today.
The questions of Advent are not, have
you started your Christmas shopping yet?
Does your company have a Christmas party? Are you cooking or do you go somewhere for Christmas dinner? Would you like to come to my Christmas
cookie swap? These are holiday
questions.
Holy Day questions, the questions of
Advent are more profound and are meant to shake you up a bit and get you
thinking. Malachi asks, “Who can
endure the day of his coming?” (Mal 3:2)
German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his Advent sermon of 1928
while he was in Barcelona, Spain, “The coming of God is truly not only glad
tidings but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a
conscience.” Bonhoeffer, an active
resister against Hitler, wrote this just before the beginning of the Holocaust. He saw what was beginning to happen and
the decay in the moral fabric of Germany in the 1930’s. Later Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and
executed only days before the end of the war.
Most people have a conscience. So, indeed, the coming of God in our
midst is frightening news because all we have to do is to look around and see
the decline and suffering in our human condition, that’s easy enough. God wouldn’t be too happy.
Or, more intimately you can look inside
your own heart and soul and see pain, stubbornness, or maybe even unhealthy
living. You and only you can
answer the Holy Day questions of Advent.
Is your heart prepared to be God’s dwelling place and to receive the
miraculous gift of the Christ within you?
For this is a refining moment in your life, these Advent days.
What needs refining in your life? What can the coals of the hot-white
fire sear away in your pattern of living?
What needs to be scrubbed with lye in your relationships with others? You
see preparing for Christmas is not about putting up decorations but it
is a taking down of all that impedes your connection with God. Advent is a stripping away of the
façade that we hide behind so that God doesn’t see us for who we really
are. This is a laugh!! Advent is all about preparation of the
Holy Day kind.
Five hundred and nineteen years later
another prophet comes along who walked the same byways as Malachi, who gazed at
the same temple and who dispatched a similar message to the people because the
world was still in disarray. Hear
now the Proclamation of John the Baptist from the Gospel of Luke, the Third
Chapter…..
In the fifteenth year of
the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of
Judea,
and Herod was ruler
of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias
ruler
of Abilene, during
the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of
Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the
book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’
Proclaiming repentance, that’s John the
Baptist cry, repent so that you can prepare the way for the Lord. Make his path straight; raise up the
valley and flatten the mountain so that the avenue into your heart is a clear
route, an even, smooth byway for Jesus.
Examine and de-clutter.
Scrutinize and expunge.
Study and edit out your nemesis.
Advent questions our worthiness, our
readiness, and our willingness for Jesus to come.
When all this work is done then you
will be able to see the salvation of God, so clearly and so brightly, it will
be like thousands of sparkling diamonds shining in the night. Then you will see the Christ, and be
able to receive him in your heart ever more so profoundly.
The refining moment has come. Truly the
news of Christ’s birth is glad and happy tidings when we have undergone the
heat of the fire and the sting of the lye. Go ahead, begin the process. There are only a few weeks left.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment