I will confess that house cleaning doesn’t sit at the top of my favorite things to do in life. While I clean my bathroom, vacuum the family room rug, and sweep and mop the kitchen floor each week, I much prefer working in the yard. Nevertheless, housework has to be done, and done regularly. That’s especially true if you’re going to invite people over for the holidays. So, we dust, vacuum, mop, polish, and wash the things that need to be washed. We do this because it’s important to put our best foot forward when company comes to the house.
The season of Advent has similarities to housecleaning. The readings from Scripture call to mind the need to get ready for the coming of God’s anointed. The challenge facing us during this Advent season is that too often it gets swept aside by all the commotion attached to the holiday season. Since the Christmas shopping season now begins sometime around Halloween if not before, Advent can get lost in the shuffle. Nevertheless, Advent plays an important role in the Christian story. After all, it marks the beginning of a new year for Christians. So, even as brief as the season is, like the season of Lent, it calls on us to look inward to see if there is anything that hinders our relationship with God and our neighbors.
The problem with Advent is that it seems out of place. The Scripture readings can seem cranky and judgmental, which leads to cranky and judgmental sermons that speak of repentance and penitence, along with calls to wait and prepare for the coming of the Lord. While there are quite a few Advent hymns, we don’t know too many of them besides “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” After we sing that one on the First Sunday of Advent, we’re ready to sing the carols. We encounter these readings and hymns while we hear the call to join in the Christmas merriment. Yet, Advent reminds us that like a house, we need to experience regular spiritual housecleaning.
The two Scripture readings we’ve heard this morning come from the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Malachi. Luke speaks of a prophet, a messenger of God, who is coming to prepare the way for the arrival of the Lord. That prophet is named John who offers the people a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Lk 3:1-6). The other reading comes from the Book of Malachi, which is the last book of the Old Testament. We don’t know much about this prophet except that he probably lived and ministered sometime after the Second Temple was built in the late 6th century BCE. This is a period of history when the people of Israel are living under Persian rule.
While the Persians allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple that the Babylonians destroyed several decades earlier, apparently it didn’t match the grandeur of the earlier Temple. While we often think of Malachi as a person’s name, it simply means “My Messenger.” This messenger from God speaks to people who have lost their way. The prophet tells the people they have “wearied” God with their words (Mal. 2:17). Therefore, God is sending a messenger their way who will help them get back on track. God is going to do this by sending a messenger who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord who will appear suddenly in the Temple.
This messenger from God is tasked with getting the people ready for the Lord’s arrival in the Temple. While Malachi tells the people that the might delight in the covenant God made with them, they may not like everything that comes with the Lord’s arrival. The prophet declares: “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal. 3:2).
I strongly believe that God is, by nature, love. The question is, how should we understand this love that defines God’s nature? Is it possible that it includes judgment? This reading from Malachi suggests that God does act as a judge. That announcement should make us shiver, for who can endure the day of his coming.
The scripture readings for Advent, including this reading from Malachi 3, ask us to consider whether we have a tendency to domesticate or tame God so that God doesn’t seem as threatening. I’m not suggesting that we envision God being some kind of distant, angry, king, who feels the need to punish us. However, is it possible that we desire a God who is safe? If you know C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you may remember a conversation that takes place between the Beavers and the children about Aslan. In that conversation, Mrs. Beaver tells the children:
'If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly.'
'Then he isn't safe?' asked Lucy.
'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver. 'Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
I think that’s what Malachi wants to communicate to us. The God the people seek, the God we seek this Advent season, is good, but not necessarily safe. So, if God is coming, like Aslan, then perhaps we should prepare ourselves by allowing the Spirit to do a bit of spiritual housecleaning so we’ll be ready to welcome God into our midst.
As for what we should expect to happen when God arrives in our midst, according to Malachi, the one who is coming “is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; 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.” (Mal. 3:2b-3).
Although Luke doesn’t quote from Malachi, there are similarities between the two messages. In Luke 3 we hear a word about John’s ministry of baptism of repentance that leads to the forgiveness of sins. Baptism reminds us that God uses water to wash away our sins so that we can live more fully into God’s realm. Malachi also speaks of God washing us spiritually, but then adds in a word about the refiner’s fire, which removes the impurities from gold and silver.
Malachi makes special mention of the Levites, whom God will purify so they can present offerings to God in righteousness. While this suggests Malachi is especially concerned about the behavior of the Temple priests, which might mean that this passage has a special meaning for clergy, the New Testament regularly reminds us that we’re all priests. Therefore, we are all in need of purification before we can stand in the presence of God.
The purpose of purification, if we take Malachi and Luke 3 together is the forgiveness of sins. Advent invites us to put our lives into the hands of the one who not only forgives but purifies us with refiner’s fire. That sounds ominous, but consider that the refiner’s fire doesn’t destroy, it simply removes the impurities from gold and silver ore. When it comes to God’s refining fire, the message is one of transformation by removing the impurities that attach themselves to our lives. That is good news.
In his Philippian letter, Paul writes about how he prayed for the Philippian church. What he writes sounds a lot like what Malachi spoke of.
And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. (Phil. 1:9-11).
According to Paul, what really matters to him, is that on the day of judgment, the Philippian believers would be pure and blameless so they can produce a harvest of righteousness for the glory and praise of God. That is also the message that John proclaimed in his baptismal ministry. Following the lead of Isaiah, he had been called by God to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord so that the people might see God’s salvation. Seeing God’s salvation or God’s glory involves an encounter with God that transforms our lives. Our encounters with God may involve experiencing God’s refining fire so that the impediments that get in the way of our experiences of God’s love are removed. Then we can experience God’s righteousness, which will allow us to in turn love God and our neighbors.
While messages that involve judgment, purification, and righteousness, seem rather ominous, let us remember that these encounters are accompanied by God’s grace. That grace is rooted in God’s steadfast love that heals our brokenness and empowers us through the presence of the Holy Spirit so we can embrace God’s future with open hearts. As the reading from Luke reminds us, this journey begins in baptism, where God begins to wash as clean, so that as we leave the waters of baptism, we can start our journey with God which is sustained by our gatherings at the Lord’s Table.
Having heard Malachi’s call to clean our spiritual houses in preparation for the coming of the Lord, let’s get ready to meet the one who revealed God’s realm while lying in Bethlehem’s manger.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
December 8, 2024
Advent 2C
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