There's Gotta Be a Day
Sermon
SEEK GOOD, NOT EVIL
that you may live
We've heard that song before, haven't we? We've heard it with some variations, but the theme is the same. Perhaps the same problems create the same theme - with some variations. Even the variations do not nuance the repetitions enough to make us pay attention, finally.
If it were not for two things, Malachi's oracle of God could be passed by as "just the same old thing." The oracle is from God. Secondly, it comes because God insists on keeping his covenant. He simply cares. There it is. Do we wish to consider the alternative - a God who does not care?
After reading one prophet after the other, one begins to wonder why the oracle can be so vivid and the response so indifferent. There was little learning, little change.
Perhaps a word would be helpful to respond to that question. The people had returned from exile. Exile was not just "being out of the country." It was a matter of being driven out. Exiles were deprived of their possessions and their sense of place on the land. The response to this loss of a sense of place was lamentations. Exile meant no guarantee of return, ever.
In this instance they had returned with rejoicing. But that had been some years before. They had also begun the rebuilding of the temple, one of their passionate desires. But that had begun years before. Two great moments, they seemed great moments no more.
If the two community preoccupations are no longer preoccupations, what's left? Not surprisingly, the focus now turns to the self. The long-range view isn't paying off, so the short-range view takes over. "What's the use?" takes over. Israelis like the person in quest of some spiritual high which must always be higher than the last. Craving one more mountaintop experience, and finding none to match the last, the seeker begins to lose interest and often sinks below the starting level. So it is with Malachi's people.
There are not many like the former slaves in our country, those who hoped and worked for freedom, decade after decade, even when it became apparent that freedom for this or that one was impossible. There are few like the five atomic scientists who developed, then detonated the first atomic device in Los Alamos, New Mexico. They have been working for forty years since Hiroshima to tell anyone who would listen that it is an illusion that atomic destruction will secure any political or military ends. It is an illusion that the population can be protected against atomic destruction. For them that message has been a forty-year vigil.
Not many of us are like the renowned orchestra conductor, Arturo Toscannini, who rehearsed and performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for a lifetime, but would only permit himself to record it when he was eighty. When he was listening to the playback, one person sitting close to him heard him remark, "I think I'm beginning to understand the second movement." In contrast to that, our zeal soon flags. It's hard to be faithful for a few years, much less faithful unto death.
We could conclude from our biblical and personal experience that neither a spiral of goodness nor a spiral of terror changes hearts. One man had a sudden heart attack. He called a pastor, who worked hard to calm him. The young man, in his early thirties, underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery. When the pastor called on him again, he said, "You have much to be thankful for." To that the man - who had been in terror before surgery and was now recuperating well after surgery - said, "I have a strong constitution."
A friend of mine escaped the Communist forces at the end of World War II. She had told herself that she would never complain again if she would only make it to freedom. Then she added, "And here I am, complaining again." The arms race continues over the centuries fed by the belief that the invention of each new weapon will make war so terrible that no one will want to go to war again. The result has been ever more terrible wars, rather than their cessation. Now our weapons are so terrible that to unleash an atomic bomb on the enemy is to unleash that same bomb on ourselves. The very scientists who developed that terror have been unsuccessful in forty years of pleading to get our government to pursue courses other than the multiplication of atomic and hydrogen weapons.
The unrelieved goodness of goods in our nation - and it can be called that when compared to that of other nations - has not really had a better effect on us than that of unrelieved terror. An overall response has been that of the rich man in Christ's story. Confronted by untold wealth and the crisis of storing it all, he said, "I am resolved what to do. I will tear down my barns and build greater." Our largesse has not developed in us a national determination to share that which has been given to us.
I cite these examples - there are more - to help us understand the malaise of response. There needs to be an understanding. But when Malachi has understood it all, when we have understood it all, there is more needed. At its base, the ordinary priests had not done their ordinary jobs, to insure that worship was done properly in the temple. They had grown lax. As a result the people had grown lax. The same was true of people in government. They had grown lax. Corruption had set in. Again, the people, seeing this, had grown lax.
Hence the oracle: All of this will be brought to an end on the day of the Lord. Malachi calls for nothing unusual. He calls for people to be responsive to their responsibilities.
Have you ever realized that there would be no need for heroes if all of us did our common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill duties? The need for giants such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a response to the failure of the run-of-the-mill priest to do his run-of-the-mill duties.
So Malachi says in effect, "If you would do what you are called to do, there would be no need for an oracle of God. There would be no need for me to deliver it. There would be no need for the day of the Lord which will bring justice to the oppressed, and which will enable the righteous to rejoice like calves running in the spring after being confined all winter.
"The fact is, you have broken your covenant with God. He is your God. You are his people. You have forgotten that, but God has not forgotten. He will not give up on you. You may abandon him, he will not abandon you."
"He calls you to be faithful to the covenant as he is. Why? In times of broken covenant the ones who suffer most are those who can afford to suffer least. That's correci: the widow, the orphan,
the alien. And God will not cease caring until these people are given their due because he is the God of all."
Things come apart because we lose a sense of interconnectedness. We are all one family. We are all related. "Hath not one God created us?" asks Malachi. If that is the case, then all of his people are to get what God would like them to have, namely, justice.
You will notice that our Lord talked much the same language as Malachi because the conditions were much the same. He came in the tradition of the prophets. As God had once spoken through the prophets, in these last days He has spoken through His Son. The response to His coming was much the same as the response to the prophets, "If he were killed, no more oracles, no more prophets, no more nuisance." But this last of prophets could not even be silenced by the ridicule of the crucifixion. To a bored, willful people, bored by success, bored by the long haul, bored by the unusual, bored by boredom, the covenant-keeping Son of a covenant-keeping Father said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing," thereby breaking all the old cycles, whatever they are, and giving us a new day.
And with that he not only points the way, as had many of the prophets, but became the way, enabling others to walk that way in the ordinary day, our everyday.
All the tribes of Israel then came to David at Hebron. "Look," they said, "we are your own flesh and blood. In days past when Saul was our king, it was you who led Israel in all their exploits; and Yahweh said to you, 'You are the man who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you shall be the leader of Israel.' " So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a pact with them at Hebron in the presence of Yahweh, and they anointed David king of Israel. David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned for forty years. He reigned in Hebron over Judah for seven years and six months; then he reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel and Judah for thirty-three years.
(2 Samuel 5:1-5)
If it were not for two things, Malachi's oracle of God could be passed by as "just the same old thing." The oracle is from God. Secondly, it comes because God insists on keeping his covenant. He simply cares. There it is. Do we wish to consider the alternative - a God who does not care?
After reading one prophet after the other, one begins to wonder why the oracle can be so vivid and the response so indifferent. There was little learning, little change.
Perhaps a word would be helpful to respond to that question. The people had returned from exile. Exile was not just "being out of the country." It was a matter of being driven out. Exiles were deprived of their possessions and their sense of place on the land. The response to this loss of a sense of place was lamentations. Exile meant no guarantee of return, ever.
In this instance they had returned with rejoicing. But that had been some years before. They had also begun the rebuilding of the temple, one of their passionate desires. But that had begun years before. Two great moments, they seemed great moments no more.
If the two community preoccupations are no longer preoccupations, what's left? Not surprisingly, the focus now turns to the self. The long-range view isn't paying off, so the short-range view takes over. "What's the use?" takes over. Israelis like the person in quest of some spiritual high which must always be higher than the last. Craving one more mountaintop experience, and finding none to match the last, the seeker begins to lose interest and often sinks below the starting level. So it is with Malachi's people.
There are not many like the former slaves in our country, those who hoped and worked for freedom, decade after decade, even when it became apparent that freedom for this or that one was impossible. There are few like the five atomic scientists who developed, then detonated the first atomic device in Los Alamos, New Mexico. They have been working for forty years since Hiroshima to tell anyone who would listen that it is an illusion that atomic destruction will secure any political or military ends. It is an illusion that the population can be protected against atomic destruction. For them that message has been a forty-year vigil.
Not many of us are like the renowned orchestra conductor, Arturo Toscannini, who rehearsed and performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for a lifetime, but would only permit himself to record it when he was eighty. When he was listening to the playback, one person sitting close to him heard him remark, "I think I'm beginning to understand the second movement." In contrast to that, our zeal soon flags. It's hard to be faithful for a few years, much less faithful unto death.
We could conclude from our biblical and personal experience that neither a spiral of goodness nor a spiral of terror changes hearts. One man had a sudden heart attack. He called a pastor, who worked hard to calm him. The young man, in his early thirties, underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery. When the pastor called on him again, he said, "You have much to be thankful for." To that the man - who had been in terror before surgery and was now recuperating well after surgery - said, "I have a strong constitution."
A friend of mine escaped the Communist forces at the end of World War II. She had told herself that she would never complain again if she would only make it to freedom. Then she added, "And here I am, complaining again." The arms race continues over the centuries fed by the belief that the invention of each new weapon will make war so terrible that no one will want to go to war again. The result has been ever more terrible wars, rather than their cessation. Now our weapons are so terrible that to unleash an atomic bomb on the enemy is to unleash that same bomb on ourselves. The very scientists who developed that terror have been unsuccessful in forty years of pleading to get our government to pursue courses other than the multiplication of atomic and hydrogen weapons.
The unrelieved goodness of goods in our nation - and it can be called that when compared to that of other nations - has not really had a better effect on us than that of unrelieved terror. An overall response has been that of the rich man in Christ's story. Confronted by untold wealth and the crisis of storing it all, he said, "I am resolved what to do. I will tear down my barns and build greater." Our largesse has not developed in us a national determination to share that which has been given to us.
I cite these examples - there are more - to help us understand the malaise of response. There needs to be an understanding. But when Malachi has understood it all, when we have understood it all, there is more needed. At its base, the ordinary priests had not done their ordinary jobs, to insure that worship was done properly in the temple. They had grown lax. As a result the people had grown lax. The same was true of people in government. They had grown lax. Corruption had set in. Again, the people, seeing this, had grown lax.
Hence the oracle: All of this will be brought to an end on the day of the Lord. Malachi calls for nothing unusual. He calls for people to be responsive to their responsibilities.
Have you ever realized that there would be no need for heroes if all of us did our common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill duties? The need for giants such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a response to the failure of the run-of-the-mill priest to do his run-of-the-mill duties.
So Malachi says in effect, "If you would do what you are called to do, there would be no need for an oracle of God. There would be no need for me to deliver it. There would be no need for the day of the Lord which will bring justice to the oppressed, and which will enable the righteous to rejoice like calves running in the spring after being confined all winter.
"The fact is, you have broken your covenant with God. He is your God. You are his people. You have forgotten that, but God has not forgotten. He will not give up on you. You may abandon him, he will not abandon you."
"He calls you to be faithful to the covenant as he is. Why? In times of broken covenant the ones who suffer most are those who can afford to suffer least. That's correci: the widow, the orphan,
the alien. And God will not cease caring until these people are given their due because he is the God of all."
Things come apart because we lose a sense of interconnectedness. We are all one family. We are all related. "Hath not one God created us?" asks Malachi. If that is the case, then all of his people are to get what God would like them to have, namely, justice.
You will notice that our Lord talked much the same language as Malachi because the conditions were much the same. He came in the tradition of the prophets. As God had once spoken through the prophets, in these last days He has spoken through His Son. The response to His coming was much the same as the response to the prophets, "If he were killed, no more oracles, no more prophets, no more nuisance." But this last of prophets could not even be silenced by the ridicule of the crucifixion. To a bored, willful people, bored by success, bored by the long haul, bored by the unusual, bored by boredom, the covenant-keeping Son of a covenant-keeping Father said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing," thereby breaking all the old cycles, whatever they are, and giving us a new day.
And with that he not only points the way, as had many of the prophets, but became the way, enabling others to walk that way in the ordinary day, our everyday.
All the tribes of Israel then came to David at Hebron. "Look," they said, "we are your own flesh and blood. In days past when Saul was our king, it was you who led Israel in all their exploits; and Yahweh said to you, 'You are the man who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you shall be the leader of Israel.' " So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a pact with them at Hebron in the presence of Yahweh, and they anointed David king of Israel. David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned for forty years. He reigned in Hebron over Judah for seven years and six months; then he reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel and Judah for thirty-three years.
(2 Samuel 5:1-5)
