Malachi 3: 1-4
Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
December 6th, 2009*
As children, one of the first lessons in life is to learn to prepare and get ready.
“Are you ready to go to school?”
“Are you ready for your spelling test?”
“Are you ready to go to church today?”
I can recall how my mother already started getting ready to go to church on Saturday, as she polished shoes or fixed her hair.
“What are you doing, mom?” I asked.
“I’m getting ready to go to church”, she told me.
“But mom, we don’t go to church until tomorrow!”
“Yes, I know, but it takes time to get ready. Have you polished you’re shoes?”
I wish I hadn’t asked.
Sometimes we don’t get ready like we should and other times we get ready and we’re still not ready. I recall another occasion in the first grade when I got ready and went to school. After I arrived and was sitting at my desk, I quickly realized I wasn’t as ready as I thought. It wasn’t because I was home sick or didn’t like school. I suddenly discovered I had put my clothes on without first removing my pajamas. I learned the hard way what it was like to think I was ready, but I wasn’t.
WHAT IF GOD SHOWS UP?
In our text for today, the prophet Malachi speaks for God when he says, “I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me….” The Bible also understands the need of being ready. The prophet believes that people should prepare themselves because “…the Lord will suddenly come into his temple…., he is coming.”
It is one thing when we come to this church on our time, according to our schedule, and on our own terms, but what if God “suddenly” came into his church? What if, instead of coming to meet with God, God came to meet with us? When, as the text says, “the messenger of the covenant in which we delight” suddenly comes into the temple, the prophet suggests it could be challenging for us to deal with. We can get very use to calling on God, even talking to God in prayer, and we can even get comfortable, sometimes too comfortable in expressing our own viewpoints. We might even begin to think we have “God” under our belt and know what God is up too, but what if God suddenly shows up in a very dramatic and surprising way?
Naturally, people have all kinds of views about what it might mean if God would show up. When I “googled” the phrase “when God shows up” on the Internet I got a video of people dancing around in a worship service. The caption said, “When God shows up people dance!” Perhaps! But I’m a Baptist and that doesn’t work for me.
As a Baptist I’m more prone to turn to the Bible, like Luke chapter 4, where you get a very interesting picture of God showing up. Do you remember? Jesus was in his hometown (which should have been a safe place) at the local synagogue, where during the time for the reading of Scripture, he read from Isaiah a passage which speaks of “the Spirit of the Lord” coming suddenly upon God’s messenger. Jesus went on to read how the “Spirit” came to help the messenger preach good news, to announce the release of prisoners, to open the eyes of the blind and to let the oppressed go free” (Quoting Isaiah 61). After the reading, Jesus sat down and told everyone, “Today this Scripture comes true!” (Luke 4:21). He wasn’t just reading about God, but suddenly God comes alive out of the Bible and they were disturbed and unprepared. They liked reading the Bible, waiting on the Messiah, but they weren’t quite ready for him to actually show up. And do you know the rest of the story, don’t you? After hearing Jesus say God had suddenly showed up, they wanted to take Jesus out and throw him off a cliff (4:29). Not a very nice reception, was it?
Would it be any different for us? When God “suddenly comes into his temple” it won’t be a “bed of roses”! Even though “the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight” shows up, this doesn’t mean it will be easy to understand or take. The text also wonders “who will endure” and “who will be able to stand when he appears”? In one sense we are told to “prepare the way”, but no one is adequately able prepare. Who can get ready for a God who’s “ways are not our ways”?
THE PROCESS LIKE A REFINER’S FIRE
The image Malachi gives of God showing up in his temple is unmistakable, and even a bit threatening. The prophet says: “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like a fuller’s soap!” (2b). A refiner’s fire is the “fire: which purifies, but this purification process melts everything, even the stuff you want to keep. The fire burns so hot that it not only melts away impurities and imperfections, it also melts and remakes the precious metal itself. Nothing goes untouched. Nothing is overlooked. Everything has to go through the fire. We get to keep nothing for ourselves until it is tested by the refiner’s fire.
The other day news reports spoke about the over-extended loans giving to the flashy, flamboyant, and extravagant city of Dubai and that the builders need at least a 60 day extension on the 60 Billion Dollar mortgage because they are unable to make their payments. When reality and truth meets ambition and fantasy, people can be suddenly caught in a fire---even a kind of refiner’s fire. And Dubai is not the only place where the fire is burning.
The current economic crisis has caught many people by surprise, even many “good” people. My brother-in-law, a builder himself, told me he knows many people who were just doing their regular business but are now going Bankrupt or hanging on for dear life. People who were not in the least expecting it are now finding themselves in the process---the trial by fire---and who knows what will meltdown and what or who will be able to come through the process?
This is the process of life isn’t it? When my wife took an Economics class at UNC-
Greensboro only a couple of years ago, the professor told them, the Economy is a living organism and is never stagnant. It is always expanding or contracting; what goes up will come down. This is what has always been known, but it is still amazing how quickly we can all be caught unprepared? The negative behaviors which caused the current economic collapse has gone on before and will happen again. We humans are quick to forget and very often get caught unprepared. In a similar way, the Prophet wants us to know that many people will not be ready or prepared when God comes into his temple. “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (2a).
Greensboro only a couple of years ago, the professor told them, the Economy is a living organism and is never stagnant. It is always expanding or contracting; what goes up will come down. This is what has always been known, but it is still amazing how quickly we can all be caught unprepared? The negative behaviors which caused the current economic collapse has gone on before and will happen again. We humans are quick to forget and very often get caught unprepared. In a similar way, the Prophet wants us to know that many people will not be ready or prepared when God comes into his temple. “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (2a).
We’ve all been caught “unprepared” at times, haven’t we? We’ve all been blindsided by events. And sometimes even the unexpected positive things that come in life can be just as nerve racking and earth-shaking as the negative. Remember that Insurance Commercial about the child who one day gets old enough to drive a car? You thought you were ready to have your child get out of diapers, into school, out on their own, until one day you have to give them the keys to the car. Brace yourself, the prophet warns. To get through our lives we all will have go through times that are like a “refiner’s fire”. Are you as ready as you think you are?
From the gospel story, we learn how people were not ready when God came. Everyone was waiting for the Messiah to come to come into his temple, but when God really did show up no one was as ready as they thought they were. Would we be any different today? We might all think we would be ready for God to do a great work in our own hearts and lives, but unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise. Remember this? “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Luke 13: 34). When Jerusalem, the so called city of peace is still nothing but a continual city of pain and division and still isn’t ready for peace after 3000 years of history, can we dare to expect we will do better?
WHO CAN STAND OR WHO WILL BOW?
“Who can endure the day of his coming?” In other words: Who will make it through the purifying fires that will come in life? This is what the prophet wonders, but the truth we know is that it wasn't not the people who were put through the fire, but the people put the prophets in the fire. It wasn’t John and Jesus who cleaned up the people, but the people decided John and Jesus were “washed-up”. Instead of God judging the world, it is the world that still stands in judgment of God; rejecting his holiness, refusing his purification, neglecting his truth, opposing his rule and ignoring his righteousness.
This actual “coming” of the God into his temple even looks stranger when you take a closer look at John’s own language in Matthew 3.7, as John the Baptist cried out, warning the Pharisees and Sadducees to “flee from the wrath to come”, or when he said that the “axe is at the root of the trees” (3.10) or that “one more powerful than I is coming after me and he will baptize you with fire.” This sounds really earth-shaking and earth-shattering, but the truth in the middle of the gospel is that the when the “baptism” came Jesus told his disciples to get ready to die and “to be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with” (Mark 10: 39). The gospel we know takes everything Malachi says and turns it on its head. Malachi himself would have been surprised by what really happened when God showed up.
If almost no one was ready for God, and few get ready still, what does this unexpected twist in the gospel mean for us? Isn’t this where the truth gets personal? “What might we do when life puts everything we had expected, hoped for, or believed under fire?” How will our faith come through? Will we be ready for the sudden, unexpected way that truth comes?
· Have you ever been surprised by how your life turned out?
· Is the person you are, the person you thought you would be?
· Are your children or your spouse who you thought they’d be?
· Have you ever been shocked by what your friends did?
· Have you been amazed or shocked by what you did?
· And how does it feel to be found at the worst place and then to realize that there is no one to blame put yourself?
This text from Malachi should cause us pause. Since things turned out so differently for the messenger, might we not wonder how things might turn out for us? “He is coming”, the text declares, but at the same time the prophet wonders: “who can endure?” Who can endure when the truth comes and life turns out differently than we planned or expected? Can any of us ever really get ready for this?
What if we are there right now, in our own lives and hearts, we are standing on top of our own mountain we have worked so hard to achieve? What if you or I are “the last man or last woman standing” and then we suddenly look around and realize that now, right beside of me and my own world, there He stands in all of his truth right beside me? It’s now just you and God---the true, eternal God who can’t be killed, can’t be controlled, and can’t be manipulated by our own hands. He comes and he keeps on coming, whether we are ready or not leaving the words of the prophet still ringing in your ears: “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap…”
The abiding question from this ancient text is this: When God shows up in our lives and when the day of truth comes, who will take the fall and what or who will endure? Will we make God and his truth take the fall again, or will we finally fall down, humbling ourselves and giving ourselves fully to his eternal truth in our lives? When God shows up, will we try to make a god of our standards or will we let God purify us to his standard of justice, mercy and truth? Will we crucify Christ again (Hebrews 6:6) killing the truth again and again out of our own stubbornness and for our own sakes, or will we invite God to come into our hearts to judge, test, mold and shape us?
During this last week we’ve had a couple of strange stories in the news which graphically illustrate what lengths people will go to avoid the truth that can be so clear to everyone else but so hard to swallow for ourselves. One of course, is the State Dinner Crashers in Washington. It is so obvious to everyone else that the Salahi’s were not invited to the White House Dinner. It is so very obvious to everyone but the Salahi’s and their lawyer. Of course, we know what the Lawyer might get out of it, but what about the Salahi’s? How can the truth be so obvious, but these people be so blind and so ignorant, arrogant and insistent that they are right and everyone else is wrong?
The other story in the news and on a lot of people’s minds is the Tiger Woods incident. It is so obvious that something went on behind closed doors and that Tiger Woods came out making indirect statements attempting to cover up a very bad, embarrassing “situation”. Having problems you don’t want anyone to know is one thing, but then coming out and declaring that your wife, who obviously hit you upside of your head with one of your own golf clubs, was only “courageously” trying to save you, is right up there close to absurdity. It’s not the problems that are the worse human problem, but it’s the continual denial of that there is a problem, that is still the main human problem.
Because “denial” is our main human problem is what makes this next story so amazing. In a San Diego courtroom two men were on trial for robbery recently. The prosecuting attorney was examining a witness to the crime: “Were you at the scene when the robbery took place?”
The witness replied, “Yes.”
“And did you see the two robbers?”
Again, the witness nodded. “Yes.”
The attorney shouted the next question: “Are these two men present in court today?”
There suddenly, no need for the witness to answer, because the two defendants raised their hands.
Can you believe it? Right here, the courtroom became a temple, and it is suddenly here that God “suddenly” comes into his temple and shows up. These guys knew it. Instead of denying it, running from it, they were willing and ready to face the truth and be humbled by it. Somehow, they knew when the truth came out, they had no chance to endure unless they allowed the truth to make them clean like the “fuller’s soap” and the “refiner’s fire.” (From a Sermon entitled “Judgment” by Brent Younger preached at McAfee School of Theology, Atlanta, GA., as printed in Lectionary Homiletics, December 2009-January 2010, Vol. XXI, Number 1, p. 14).
In this world of Dr. Phil, Judge Judy, Montel, Jerry Springer, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah, or maybe not Oprah so much---when so many people spend all their energy and time not being at fault, not humbling themselves and not letting their lives be purified by the soap and through the fire---when so few let the fire of truth fall on them---to judge them, not for their destruction, but for their reconstruction----it’s so good to know that there are a few who get it----who know that when “God comes” and they are can’t “endure” or “stand” before him, that even this can be a good and a holy thing.
Most surprising of all is this truth that our God reveals his saving truth most clearly not in what we have done right. Our God is the very God of grace and truth who reveals himself right in the middle of the pain and purification that comes when we realize what we have done wrong. Our God is so great, so says the gospel that we can even kill him, but it is right there on the cross that we truly see him and his truth as it really is. It is there that we best see the truth about God because we know the truth about ourselves. Now, instead of making God and his truth take the fall, we are ready to take the fall---to fall humbly before the truth, seeing God as he is----in all his fullness and glory, and ready, not only to also see ourselves as we should be, as Malachi hoped---seeing ourselves being remade into God’s faithful servants and priests, presenting “our offerings in righteousness” to Him. His truth keeps marching on, and if you can see it, you will be made ready.
Are you ready?
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
Are you ready?
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