Father we have all come to church today, and so often we come to hear how great we are, that we neglect to realize that we are not God – we are a bunch of bumbling fools who just don’t get it. We don’t get Jesus, we don’t get the Trinity, we don’t even get what it means to be the Church. We just think we’re wonderful and that you should spend your time rewarding us for just being US. But we are spending our time in preparation for the summer months with the Minor Prophets who will re-orient our imaginations and re-shape for us what it means to be Christian. These prophets will remind us that the world where Christians live isn’t so easy – isn’t just magic dust, and lovey-dovey gobblygook – it is serious living for a God who seeks to end a long, and troubling nightmare. And so, in this time, Father, create in us clean hearts, sweep us off our feet with your Gospel, and deliver us from the hand of the Devil. Amen.
Folks, just to be on the safe side, I didn’t want to have to preach this message to you today. So if you find yourself uneasy, or feeling condemned by Malachi’s message you can blame Diane and George. That’s my parental advisory for you today. Beware, because Malachi has a message for you, from none other than our God – whose name is YHWH.
Today is Mother’s Day, and today we celebrate this day through the eyes of a great prophet – Malachi. This prophet delivered an oracle unto the people of Israel as they began rebuilding their nation upon return from their exile in Babylon. The people of Judah – where the term Jew comes from – were allowed to return to their homeland after the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by Cyrus the Great, ruler of the Persian Empire.
Now, with their permission to leave Babylon, many Jews were smothered in enthusiasm – they believed that their nation was about to recover the vanished glory of the days when the sheep-herder and musician David ruled, in what Jeremiah calls “righteousness and power” (Jer. 23:5-6). These people believed that the economic recession that they had been through was about to end and that overnight their nation would create thousands of new jobs, particularly in the agricultural industry. They had visions of rainstorms kicking up whenever the need arose and the population burgeoning until the land could hold no more people. They saw an Israel in such prosperity that in their dreams all of the nations would, as Isaiah says, “come and serve them” (Isaiah 49:22-23).
But recovering from an fiscal catastrophe isn’t such an easy task. The Jews found that out the hard way. Their restored nation hardly amounted to anything more than the City of Jerusalem itself, and so their agricultural industries – their farms, their meat processing plants, their combine assembly plants – weren’t finding the ability for increased profit margins, because the foundation of the farming industry, the farmland, was so rocky that it was very difficult to produce crops and find fertile pastures for their sheep to graze. The historical backdrop for the restoration and recovery of Israel from their economic disaster reveals that even the city walls weren’t rebuilt until around 90 years after the government bailout programs had been initiated.
It is in this situation that we come to meet Malachi – whose name means “my messenger”. After years of unpredictable productivity – you know, years of good rains followed by famine and drought, and then another good year of rain – this cloud of gloom began to hover over the spirit of the Jews. Their $787 billion bailout package wasn’t working – they couldn’t control when the rains came and went.
Finally, people began to ask questions. Even people who had remained loyal to the religion of their forefathers began to become suspect of their God. It is here we come to understand the point of Malachi’s message. Malachi had a message to a people who had lost all their hope and all of their imagination – so they began to ignore God and accuse those who continued to trust in the Lord of not being modern enough – of engaging in primitive superstition.
Now, I want you people to realise that when we get to preaching the Gospel that I don’t have time, and nor do you, to just spend our days hailing how great you and I are. If we humbly seek out God we might have ears to listen to his message; because today, God has a message for you, in the same way that God had a message for the Judeans rebuilding their nation.
As the spirit of depression covered that nation so many years ago and the accusations came from the citizenry, finally God decided to have a little talk with Israel. God was, it seems, fed up with all of those fingers pointing at him; so it was time to have a little chat – perhaps a State of the Union address – with his people.
We spend much of our time in the society in which we live listening to people mock us for following the God of Jesus Christ – a God who gives us a different narrative to live by; a God who gives us a different account of history than the world does. And God knows the arguments against his existence that we are going to offer up already. He has heard the complaints against him. But he has a few complaints against us.
The three key complaints God has against us are as follows:
1. devious clergy,
2. robbery, and
3. speaking ill of God
The first issue that YHWH, the Lord of Hosts, has is that clergy bring offerings before him that pervert and pollute his sanctuary and his table. In ancient Israel people would offer animals as sacrifices – in Leviticus we know that the central offering to YHWH is the burnt offering – an offering of perhaps a bull or sheep or goats – and the offering is to be made by a male animal without blemish. YHWH’s problem, according to Malachi, is that clergymen were offering up to him blind, lame, and sick animals rather than those without blemish. They weren’t offering the best of their herds or flocks to YHWH. So, in response, YHWH says,
“Clergy, if you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, then I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings; indeed I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and I will put you out of my presence.”
Whoa! Those are harsh words. And you people thought that being part of the laity was bad enough. Be thankful you’re not clergy, because, if nothing else, when you annoy our God, at least you won’t have him rubbing poop all over your face in anger. But, according to Malachi, this is part of the reason why the stimulus package isn’t working – the nation is ignoring God – or, perhaps in another way, the country’s leaders are defiling their relationship with YHWH.
Second, YHWH feels robbed by his people and they ask,
“How are we robbing you?”
To which he replies,
“In your tithes and offerings!”
People had ignored the tithe of giving 10% of their harvest and their animals to YHWH and so our God was unpleased. YHWH’s blunt point here is that, “You want the stimulus package to work, you gotta pay into it yourself. When you offer your living unto me, your nation will stand out to other nations as one of joy and abundance!”
Finally, YHWH was upset that people were speaking ill of him. The people respond saying, “How have we spoken against you?” and YHWH’s response is,
“You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What do we profit by keeping his command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of hosts? Now we count the arrogant happy; evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test they escape.’”
So in response to YHWH’s accusation a small group of people gathered together and came up with a list of people who had remained loyal, despite the fact that the social welfare system was a disaster, the government funds to jumpstart the economy weren’t having any effect whatsoever, and, in general, people had begun a mass exodus from the pursuit of the God of their ancestors. It is this that pleases YHWH. This is where YHWH’s promise is offered. He says,
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up...so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act.”
And furthermore, YHWH offers this sign,
“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of YHWH comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”
OK folks, so you now should have some sort of grip on the reality that these Judeans were immersed in. The nation was in dire straits, personal bankruptcies were rising from one month to the next, and people had lost their courage – so God responds with what John McCain calls straight talk. He ignores the frivolities of flowery language and gets to the point,
“Don’t think you’ll be better off without me! In fact, believe that it will only get worse if you cast me aside.”
Now, this week as I began preparing for the message I posted a question I found to be relevant to Malachi’s choice of conversation on my Facebook page:
“What do you think God is fed up with today?”
So I’ll share with you some of the responses I got.
A high school student said that God is fed up with “algebra,” another said that God is fed up with my favourite hockey team, “the Pittsburgh Penguins,” and another said, “definitely the Habs” and an atheist wrote that God is fed up with “the fact that so many people believe in false gods!” That guy defines his religious views as aligned with the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!”
Some of the more serious responses I received were:
· Intolerance and segregation
· War and greed
· Self-righteousness
· Hate
· Long-winded, short-sighted, untrustworthy politicians
· Self-serving relationships
· Arrogance, self-importance – and perhaps more jokingly “the Republican Party”
· The Judas’s in our society
· And our tendency to forget our creaturehood – that we are a vital part of creation, not its exclusive focal point
Now, I offer up these responses because just as Malachi’s audience had become depressed by the conditions of their society, and their inability to rebuild the homeland of their ancestors, we too become disenfranchised by adversities we are faced with in the world that have us wondering, “Where is our good God?”
Today, as I preach the Gospel to you, you don’t realize it, but there is an advertising blitz going on around the world where buses have been plastered with this message:
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
It’s the same question that YHWH was annoyed by in Malachi’s oracle. These people had a tradition of worshipping YHWH and now, because things weren’t looking as chipper as they ought to have been, the question being asked was:
“What do we profit by keeping YHWH’s command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of Hosts?”
Can you answer that question satisfactorily? What have you gained by becoming a Christian? I don’t know what your answer has been, but I want to say that when I look at the list of those things that people say God is fed up with I know I have had many moments of sheer atheism when I just get fed up with the Church, fed up with the entire idea of religion and just offer divisive profanities to the Lord for what he has not done.
I mean, look at Darfur. How can we claim allegiance to the Lord of Hosts when he doesn’t do a damned thing about the hundreds of thousands of little girls being sexually assaulted there every day and the 8 year-old boys being taught to wield machine guns?
One of my sisters wrote the thing about self-righteousness, and I can’t help but say that she’s right. We live in a world where admitting you’re wrong can destroy livelihoods. In the Church we’re continually invited to admit our wrongs, but in the world if you admit your wrongs say goodbye to your job, to your ability to pay your mortgage, for your ability to even make amends with friends you have wronged. Self-righteousness is a problem for the Church because we seemingly play more and more by the world’s rules, rather than the rules of our political leader –namely our King – YHWH. In YHWH’s politics naming your wrongs is part of the journey toward mutual healing.
I recall that when they finally let Nelson Mandela out of prison after 30 or so years and he became President of South Africa he was personally overwhelmed by a call in his heart for healing of the nation, and so he began offering these truth and reconciliation processes whereby the folks who had suppressed the black majority population for a century might be able to name their sins without being subject to jail. For Mandela, these processes were about mutual healing – that in order for things to be put right both oppressor and oppressed needed to have direct conversation with each other, even if that conversation was uncomfortable – these events were probably the most important events in the early 1990s in South Africa.
Or consider national self-righteousness in America. In a radio interview, a Native American activist was asked, “What would you like this country to do for you and your people?”
His answer, I think, was definitely challenging. He said,
“Well, one small thing the government could do for us is to return Mount Rushmore to the state in which they found it.”
“What?” decried that patriotic American broadcaster.
“It would be a start, a small thing, but a start. You can imagine how humiliating it is for us to have had one of our sacred mountains defaced with the images of some of the bloodiest leaders in history – Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, and a man like Lincoln. It’s bad for our children to look up and see those images carved into stone. Some of them might take them as examples they ought to follow. What if some of our children grew up to be like Jefferson?” (From Where Resident Aliens Live, by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, pg. 5o)
As Christians we hear the words of Jesus who says to us anytime he’s about to preach:
“Let anyone with ears listen!”
The piece of Malachi’s oracle that leaves me the most devastated today is the dung in the face for clergy who mislead their flock. But I do recall a pastor who gave a sermon based on one of Jesus’ attacks on the lawyers of Israel. At the end of the service as the pastor was shaking hands with folks somebody comes up to him – the man himself was a lawyer.
He says, “Look here, preacher. Jesus may have had some unhappy things to say to us lawyers, but you do realize that he spent far more time dealing with you corrupt clergy, right?”
OK folks, we’re just finally getting to the point where this commentary on Malachi becomes the preaching of the Gospel. So hold on to your seats. You might want to buckle up. Things are gonna get crazy here!!!
Now, in terms of the broad understanding of prophetic discourse we take a look at the way in which the ancient Hebrews saw the world and saw time. The people of Israel saw time as linear – you know, moving in a line – from a beginning to an end, and, further, the prophets saw time not only as linear, but in terms of segments – generally in ages, epochs, or eras. The prophet who preaches the Word of God in the present era looks upon the evils of the day, or the infidelities of the day and condemns them, but offers a glimmer of hope about the coming of the next era which begins when God finally decides to intervene here on earth. This is the most important thing about understanding the prophets. This is where we meet the Scripture that was read today.
Just before I get into that I recall a couple of years ago when I was in Nashville at a preaching conference called The Festival of Homiletics we had a day on prophetic preaching. It was the third week of May in 2007 – the same week that Jim Balsillie the co-CEO of RIM – makers of the Blackberry – was attempting to buy the Nashville Predators NHL hockey team so that he could relocate them to Hamilton. I saw plenty of news cameras at the downtown arena, which also had a police precinct operating out of it. I guess those southern arenas need to find ways to make money in their buildings beyond just rental fees from NHL teams that don’t really sell many tickets for games down there. Anyway, on the Thursday of that week was a day on prophetic preaching and we had a number of well-known preachers offer insights on what it means to preach prophetically – the first person was the Disciple of Christ preacher, the Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock. He was introduced by a black preacher named Frank Thomas who had said that when he was looking to start a revival meeting for his black youth at his church he thought of nobody else but Dr. Craddock to preach revival to the souls of these starving teenagers. Well, I had no idea who Fred Craddock was at that time, but as he strolled out onto the stage before an audience of over 2000 preachers I was shocked that he was a short, old, and soft-spoken white man in his mid-80s who was supposed to be this great black revival preacher. If you ever get an opportunity to hear Dr. Craddock preach you might find out what I found out that day – that when he preaches, your heart will burn for Jesus.
Another preacher I came across that day was none other than the Rev. Dr. James Forbes – at that time he was the Senior Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York – which has a tennis court on the roof of the building. Anyway, Dr. Forbes was recalling that when he was in high school during the Civil Rights Movement he began to follow Dr. King and the various people who enlisted in the struggle for rights for black folks. Dr. Forbes found out that the meaning of prophetic preaching in the white, liberal, mainline churches for him ended up startling him with this truth:
"When I walk my black ass into a room I am making a prophetic statement!”
You see, even today, to be a black person in a liberal, mainline church in North America like the United Church of Canada, or the Anglican Church, or the American Baptist Church is to be very lonely – you don’t find many people who look like you in the Church. And further, I must add, that Nibs Stroube in his criticism of Dr. Stanley Hauerwas’ and Dr. Will Willimon’s book Resident Aliens reminds us that “we are lucky if 5% of our churches reflect any kind of diversity...” (Where Resident Aliens Live, pg. 19) which is quite unlike the diversity of the 1st and 2nd century churches that Paul wrote all his letters to.
So you see that prophetic discourse is about identifying where evil is in this present age, and that the mandate of the prophet is to re-orient people back to the God with whom we originally covenanted.
In terms of Malachi, we find ourselves hearing YHWH himself preach to us. The bestselling Gospel music artist of the Soundscan era, Kirk Franklin, puts it this way:
“To all my people in the struggle, you think that God has forgotten about you. Here’s some pain medicine.” (From "Looking for You" by Kirk Franklin, from the album Hero)
Malachi, the prophet, gives us the same hope that Franklin gives us – but words it differently.
“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”
In other words, to all of you people out there who have seen the trouble in our country, and have also lost hope in our God, but somehow have a faith, a loyalty to YHWH that hangs by a string - if you can hold on just a little while longer “I promise,” says YHWH, “things are gonna get better.”
Things ended up getting better in South Africa, things got better in the United States, and the media over the last week have mentioned that job creation, for the first time in months, is outpacing job loss in Canada. Things are looking better – at least statistically speaking.
The end of the book of Malachi leads us into the Gospels, and in the Gospels we see John the Baptizer prepare the way for Jesus the Christ. John is the new Elijah that is a sign of the coming of God’s new age. In the Gospels we hear of Jesus who is called in the first chapter of Luke “the rising sun” or “the dawn” (Luke 1:78) and that’s about as close as we can get to understanding the role that Jesus plays in history. Matthew puts it another way – he recalls the Book of Isaiah when he says this:
The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Matt. 4:16)
In essence, the coming of the ministry of Jesus Christ represents the beginning of the new age when God begins to intervene in history, in the linear time that has a beginning and moves toward apocalypse – when God reveals his renewing of the heavens and the earth for the prosperity of God’s created world.
So I say to you, God’s people living in the struggle. Do whatever it takes to hold onto your faith in God. For God has promised he will act. The Gospels remind us that God is acting, and I think that the evidence has shown us here at Pelham Community Church that as wonderful as we are at strategic planning and budgeting, the only reason we have been growing numerically as a Church is because at some point in the history of this congregation, God showed up, breathed life into a bunch of dead bodies and asked us, regardless of our strategic planning, to offer larger space to this hurting community that Jesus is looking to meet up with.
As our time together finds its ending, I would like to offer a prayer to our God – the Trinity – on your behalf. Let’s pray together:
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