A sermon based on Malachi 3: 1-4; Isaiah 9:2-8
By Charles J. Tomlin, DMin;
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
The Second Sunday of Advent, Year C.
December 5th, 2021
Malachi 3:1–5 (NRSV): See, I am
sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek
will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you
delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
2 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;
3 he
will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the
descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present
offerings to the Lord in righteousness.
4 Then
the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days
of old and as in former years.
5 Then
I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against
the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against
those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan,
against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of
hosts.
The
Faith and Spirituality film, I still Believe, tells the true story of
Christian musician and singer Jeremy Camp and the loss of his first wife to
cancer. They were newly married and at
the time. She was only 21 years old.
Throughout
the ordeal, as you might imagine, Jeremy struggles to keep his faith. The question that came to him, and to so
many more, is how can a loving,
all-powerful, almighty God allow such suffering to fall upon those he loves? But as Jeremy deals with his grief and doubts,
one day he finds a note left in his guitar.
It was put there by his wife, Melissa, reminding him of her love for him
and encouraging him to keep his trust in God because God is their only sure
hope.
This moving story of unexpected grief and
resilient faith, reminds us of what we are all up against. Our continued human struggle with sickness,
suffering, evil and death, either moves us toward faith in God, or it pushes us
away. What it does not allow us to do is
to remain neutral. Either God is the God who loves us, or what
good is God, anyway?
This question of God, God’s love and power gains
attention in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
We either see the power of God at work through in Jesus, or we
don’t. We shouldn’t remain neutral. We must come to some kind of answer to Jesus’
own question: ‘Who do you say that I, the Son of Man, am?’
Especially during this season of Advent,
either we are waiting in hope, trusting in God, or this celebration is just another
human tradition, pointing to memories of the past or parties in the present, which are just about pausing
for fun. In the midst of fun or frustration, the question arises for us too: Is
Jesus Our Emmanuel, God with us?
Today, we consider Isaiah’s second royal title of hope as
it specifically relates to Jesus. Isaiah
names this son who will be given as, first as Wonderful Counselor, and
then next, as Mighty God! That’s
certainly the most powerful name that could be ever be given a King. Most Kings and rulers were considered to have
divine rights, but to be named God, or Son of God, was the highest title of
all. Isaiah says it is this child who will grow up
to establish justice and uphold righteousness in the nation. What does this kind of hope mean, especially
in light of a world that can still be unjust and seem far from righteousness?
THE LORD…WILL COME!
Centuries
later, another prophet picks up on Isaiah’s prophetic hope. Isaiah’s prophecy was spoken in the 8th
century BC, but this hope was renewed again, 300 years later. As the Old Testament comes to a close, the
final prophecy of Malachi almost shouts, ‘Prepare...’! ‘The Lord you seek is coming into his
temple! He is coming, says the
Lord of hosts! (3:1).
The
New Testament then opens, with John the Baptizer preaching from the standpoint
of Israel’s religious and political wilderness, saying ‘Make way!’ (My
translation) Prepare! One who is more powerful than I is coming!
(Mark 1: 7). Then John adds: I baptize you with water, but he will baptize
you with the Holy Spirit (Mk. 1:8). Later, in the gospel of John, Jesus’
disciple, when John the Baptizer
recognizes Jesus as the hoped for Messiah as he comes to be baptized by John ,
John then says, Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the world’s sin’
(John 1:29).
What all four gospels have in
common is the recognition, along with John, that in Jesus of Nazareth the Lord God
appears to his people and comes into his temple as Mighty God. The long awaited fulfillment of the Hebrew
prophets has finally been realized. As
the great Christmas Carol resounds,
Joy to the World, the Lord
has come! Let Earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare
him room. Let Heaven and mature sing!
This
is indeed, what we sing, but what does it mean, for us, this world where there
is still sin, still evil, still suffering and still death? What does it mean to trust and to believe
that Jesus is the answer to Isaiah’s hope that this child, given also to us, is
Mighty God, with full authority and power?
The best way to understand how the prophets hope of God’s
power was realized in Jesus, came from those who witnessed it, as recorded in
the gospels themselves. The gospel of
Mark, probably the first of the gospels, in the opening chapter wants us to see
God’s mighty authority on display in Jesus from the vantage point of unclean,
evil, demonic spirits.
These
spirits, revealing themselves in this man as an uncleanness (probably a mental
illness), immediate recognized Jesus as the ‘holy one of God’ (1: 24).
Jesus then tells them to be silent, and to come out! (1:25). Then the text says, the man convulsed a bit,
and the spirits came out of him.
Now,
before you write this all off as creepy movie fiction, like in the Exorcist, you
need to read on to see how the people respond, observing: They were all amazed, and they kept on
asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He
commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout
the surrounding region of Galilee.
(Mark 1:27–28 (NRSV).
The same kind of observation is repeated, but this time
it is more intimate, coming from the disciples themselves. After a storm comes upon in their boat out on
the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus awakes to calm the storm by speaking a word, they
ask themselves: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” The question that keeps surfacing over
and over, especially among the people and religious leaders is ‘by what
authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?”
(Mark 11:28).
‘Authority‘ is another word for the mighty
power of God to heal and to save. This
is what Isaiah means, where he says, ‘his
authority will grow continually and there will be endless peace’ (v.
7). It is the ultimate healing of
Israel from the burden and Rod of her oppressors that Isaiah hopes for. In the life of Jesus, this healing begins,
not among the established government, but among the heartbreaks and burdens of
the poorest of the poor. God’s mighty
power and rule appears in the lowest places; in single human lives and hurts,
bringing hope and healing in both body and soul. As the prophecy of Malachi opens, God says to his people, ‘I have loved you’. In Jesus God comes to make this message clear
and plain.
However we may struggle in this life and
in this world, the gospel of Jesus
points to this God who is, as the song says, ‘Mighty to Save!’ Jesus comes as the Son given to reveal God
himself. This coming of the Lord into his temple, as Malachi puts it, isn’t about
a building, but is a God coming into life as a human person, a ‘son of man’, or
human one, as one translation puts it.
Understanding
how the invisible, mighty God becomes human flesh that not only heals and
saves, but who also bleeds and dies, requires a whole new way of thinking, both
about who God is and what ‘might’ means.
Might isn’t always what ‘makes right’, but might begins, as it does in
Jesus, by being right and by doing what’s right. This is the source of true human power. True power taps into the coming of God’s as just
and righteous, which is how God is also able to come our lives and into this
broken world.
WHO CAN STAND?
I
don’t want to get too deep. What’s most
important is that we first understand what God’s mighty power does in us, for
us, and through us before we can even begin to understand how it all
works. Of course, we will never fully
understand that. We will get to what we
can understand in just a moment, but first notice from the prophet Malachi what
God’s mighty power in Jesus intends to do in us.
After Malachi prophesies that the Lord is coming, he asks
a question few ever dare to ask. Who can
endure this? Who can survive it? For, he is like a refiner’s fire; like
fuller’s soap (3:2-3). These images
point to the transforming, purifying power of God to change us, from who we are
into who we can and should be.
The
point for us here is that we don’t always want what God can and will do in us,
but God is coming to do this anyway. This
God is mighty in that he is not starting out to change the world or our
situation, but God is mighty in that he comes first to change us and purify us in our situation, no matter
what that situation my be.
One
of the powerful and inspiring films I’ve seen lately is the Italian film, The
War is Over. It’s a film based on the
book, The War Is Over: Story of the
Selvino Children written by an award winning Jewish writer. It tells the true story of a group of Jewish
adults who came together after WWII, to collect, shelter and rehabilitate
Jewish children who had been left orphaned by the Holocaust.
As
the story unfolds, it’s not only the children who are being saved and healed
out of the horrors of that terrible time, but the adults are too. While there was nothing good about that war,
something wonderful, healing, and amazing was taking place among those children
and those who cared for them.
The
emotion of the entire series can be summed up in the one Jewish orphaned who
looks up into the face of an female adult and innocently asked, ‘Are you my
Mommy?’ Your heart breaks, but you also
see how all those who care for these children, having their own lives touched
and transformed by the whole ordeal. How could your own life not be purified and
refined by the heartbreak and the needs of these children.
While
we can never know ‘why’ things happen to us as they often do in life, what we
can do is decide how we will respond. This
is what Malachi means when he asks, ‘Who
can stand! This mighty God who comes,
is coming for you, not to destroy sinners, but to refine, purify and save us
from our sin. This is what a truly
powerful and mighty God does. God isn’t
threatened by our sins, but we are.
However, in the greatest darkness, and in the most horrendous moment,
God is at work to challenge, change and to transform us.
Isn’t
this something current to us? During
the difficult and challenging times of this Pandemic, the refiners fire and
fullers soap has come to us. In all the
fear and frustration of these days, the Lord has entered his temple, so to
speak. Did we survive? Did we grow?
Did God bring newness of life and purpose to us?
When
God works in this way, in our weakness and struggle, we should learn again how
mighty God is, and how much our hope truly depends on him. And this hope in God, isn’t mainly what God
will do for us, but it’s about what God wants to do in us and through us, in
this world.
OFFERINGS IN RIGHTEOUSNESS
This healing authority and transforming power of
God, which Isaiah could hardly
understand himself, and which Malachi became clearer about, through the
struggle that he experience, is a power that comes to transform us, not from
the outside in, but from the inside out.
That’s what Malachi reveals. For
God to reveal his power, we must allow God to use us. We must prepare the way. We must endure the challenge and delight in
his coming to change us.
How does this transformation come to us, both in our
world and in our lives? Malachi says everything
we need to hear in one single line at the end of verse 3: ...Until they present offerings to
the Lord in righteousness.
For
Jesus to come to us as Mighty God, we must be determine to present our
offerings, or as Paul later writes, to present our own bodies as living
sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God’ (Rom. 12:1). Yes, God comes. Yes, God is.
Yes, God works in our world, but you will not know it, see it or show
it, until you present your own life as an offering
of righteousness to the Lord.
We
all know that old question whether or not a tree that falls in the woods
actually makes a sound, if no one hears it.
Well, that same kind of question can be put to God, as to whether or not
it is God does good in our world or it’s just us.
The
answer to this question, like the answer about the sound of a falling tree, is
arguable both ways, just like the truth about God’s mighty power. When we do good, when we participate in helping,
healing, caring or loving, it is us and it is God too. God has come to put righteousness into us,
and it is this offering, this resonating sound of righteousness that both pleases
the Lord and proves to us that the Lord is near. But of course, you still have to want to see,
hear it, and know it. God can be God
all by himself. The purpose of coming
to us, and displaying his power, is that while God can be God without us, we
can’t be ourselves, that is our—be our best selves, without the righteousness
and healing power of God that is revealed Jesus Christ.
Most
of you have heard of Saint Augustine. Since
the 5th century, his personal spiritual prayer book, Confessions,
has been one the most important writings outside of the Bible.
What makes this writing so important, even for modern people, is that
this the very first book to describe a human self as we still do. No one ever really wrote about who they are
so personally, so intimately, and so intentionally before. It is clear that Augustine follows directly in
the footsteps of the apostle Paul, but it’s also It clear that Augustine only learns how to
talk about himself—-his true, growing, and best sense of self, in his own
personal, relational, spiritual life in God.
In Augustines’s prayers and thoughts,
you only hear him learning to say ‘I’, ‘my’ or ‘me’ as he prays you,
thee and thou, O Lord.
This
is how life still is, and it’s God still works, mightily. God proves who God is, as he does his mighty
work in and through us. Through Jesus,
God chose, not only to become one of us, but to live God’s life through us, as
we live, and move, and have our being, in God.
In the human spirit God puts God’s spirit and make available to us, the
greatest powers of all; faith, hope and love, and with God in you, and you in
God, you know which power is the greatest.
Amen
No comments :
Post a Comment