December 8, 2024 – Second Sunday of Advent
Malachi 3.1-4
Luke 1.67-80
Next To Godliness
(Getting a Handel on Advent – II)
Second Sunday of Advent
A few summers ago I was biking down Main Street in Essex when I saw something that nearly knocked me off my bike. The park across the street from the Episcopal Church, and the homes to either side of it, were covered with snow. The trees were covered with snow. The ground was white everywhere. Friends, the temperature that afternoon was in the 80s. Later that same week a similar freak snow event struck Old Lyme, as a home on Ferry Lane was not only snowed in, but the entire yard was covered in white and the trees and hedgerows and lampposts were garnished with garlands and wreaths and shiny silver bells wherever you looked. I’m sure you can guess what I stumbled into – yet another Hallmark Christmas movie produced in Connecticut. I was reminded of this last week when I read about a new interactive map where you can find what Hallmark holiday movies have been filmed in your own little part of Connecticut. The movie being filmed that week was Christmas at Pemberly Manor, filmed in Essex, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook and Mystic. A year or two later our own Chester was featured in a Hallmark holiday film, Next Stop, Christmas, and you might have seen a similar Christmas-in-July look along North Main Street. Now I confess, I have never actually watched a Hallmark Holiday film, al though my mother loved them, but apparently the plot is as predictable as it is bankable: plans for a festive holiday are interrupted by one or more unfortunate occurrences, something goes awry that needs to be remedied, or fixed or cleaned up, and after some minor discomfort all ends well and a Merry Christmas is had by all.
It all sounds so wonderful doesn’t it? Who would not want to find a way to smooth out all our wrinkles, holiday and otherwise, to level up our rougher roads, to flatten some of the emotional hills and raise up the sensitive valleys we encounter, to clean and polish up the dusty and the rusty bits of human experience, and to deliver us refined and restored and ready for Christmas?
Funny you should ask. The same questions comprise the ongoing give-and-take between God and the Hebrew people in the book of the prophet Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament. Israel was feeling out of sorts with the Almighty, and quite honestly, the feeling was mutual. God was disappointed with their lack of piety, and the people didn’t think God was being fair with them. It turns out that the root of the problem, I am more than a little reluctant to say, lay mostly with their clergy: the priests and the Levites, the temple leaders and officials who were the conduit between God and the congregation. The priestly class was more interested in their own office, in the preservation of the institution, than they were with such minor concerns as compassion and justice and righteousness. The solution was to bypass the priests and Levites – to do an end around their religious leaders – and send a messenger to speak directly to the people. “Look: I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me,” Claudia read for us this morning, and it is worth noting the Hebrew word for “My messenger” is mala-chi – or Malachi. But – and this is an important “but” – it will not be easy, because the messenger’s message will be like a refiner’s fire or a fuller’s soap. And as Malachi asked, and as Karli’s prelude did as well, “Who can abide, the day of his coming?” Because how does a refiner refine – how does a fuller cleanse? A refiner refines with fire; and not just any fire, but the hottest possible fire, capable of melting gold and silver to rid them of any impurity or imperfection. Likewise a fuller cleanses not with Noxzema or Ivory soap, but with a harsh, lye-based cleanser that not only removes dirt and grime, but a bit or your epidermis as well. As you might imagine, such a refinement, such cleansing, is not exactly pleasant, it can be downright uncomfortable – but necessary nonetheless, and the end result will be like finest gold and silver, and the cleanest clean the world can ever know. The end result will be compassion and justice and righteousness.
These are among the verses that George Frederick Handel employed for the first part of his oratorio Messiah, his musical method of building to the birth of Jesus. Did those first words of our lesson from Malachi sound familiar in your hearing? “Look: I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me.” To prepare the way before me… Where have we heard these words before? “Look, I am sending my messenger before you… Prepare the way of the Lord.” These very words are used in the gospel to introduce the ministry of John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the life and ministry of Jesus. There is a reason that Malachi, my messenger, was placed at the end of the Old Testament – turn the page and we are in Matthew, where we meet both the messenger and the messiah.
This morning’s reading from the New Testament describes the reaction of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah when he learns his wife Elizabeth is expecting a son. And listen to some of the language that calls to mind the language of refinement and purification we heard in Malachi, though in considerably gentler terms: “He will redeem his people… he has shown mercy and remembered his promises… he will bring salvation to his people…by the tender mercy of God the dawn from on high will break upon us… to guide our feet into the way of peace.” And Zechariah’s son grew into the prophet his father predicted. When John began his own prophetic career, it was his task to make way for the messiah. And when asked by his listening crowds, “What shall we do?” His reply was as plain as it was practical: “Whoever has two coats should share with whoever has none; whoever has food should do likewise.” In other words, practice compassion and justice and righteousness. Andrew Hill, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Wheaton College in Illinois, writes in his commentary on Malachi, “Divine justice is always linked with the outworking of God’s ethical demands within the realm of human justice.” When the vision of the realm of God is embodied in God’s people, whether we call them Israel or the church, then comes the fulfillment of John the Baptist’s prophecy: “Today the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The season of Advent is a season of preparation, a season of purification, a season of refining, so that when the birth of the messiah takes place, we too are ready to receive him. In a way it is like those Hallmark holiday movies: how often our plans for a festive holiday are interrupted by one or more unfortunate occurrences. Call it Covid, call it illness, call it anxiety, call it a snowstorm that keep syou from getting to your family, call it what you will. Or, at another level, as we make our own preparations for Christmas, sometimes its material aspects prove so terribly tempting that sometimes we take our eyes off what is really necessary in our world, namely, our need to be bringers of that compassion and justice and righteousness of which both Malachi and John the Baptist spoke. This is the something that needs to be remedied, or refined, or fixed or cleaned up, and after some degree of discomfort all ends well and a merry Christmas may be had by all, not simply by us. It is the message Handel employs to build both anticipation and preparation for the birth of Jesus, and in this, he has good company in the prophecies of both Malachi and John the Baptist.
If you’ve been reading the UCC’s Advent Devotional, The Mess in the Messiah, some of this sounds familiar. In last Monday’s devotion, Quinn Caldwell also calls on Malachi to prepare us in this season. Quinn pulls from the fourth chapter instead of the third, as we did, but he also calls on some familiar Christmas music, in this case the third verse of Charles Wesley’s Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, which begins, “Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace, Hail the Sun (s-u-n) of Righteousness; Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings,” language borrowed from Malachi 4. Let me read you some of Quinn’s reflection:
“I’d be willing to wager that 1) you haven’t read much of Malachi before, and 2) you’ve sung chunks of it a million times. In Christian Bibles, it’s the last book before the Christian part begins, and that’s no accident. If you were reading straight through from Genesis to Revelation, you’d read about the arrival of the Sun of Righteousness, turn the page, and there would be Matthew saying, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah…” It’s clear who the people that stitched the Bible together think the healing-winged Sun of Righteousness is… There’s a reason to appreciate Malachi besides understanding where some carol got its words though. Pretty much the whole book is an argument between God and the people, in which they accuse one another of all manner of neglect. There’s no fulfillment in the book itself of God’s promise; it would be hundreds of years before Jesus showed up to convince Matthew and others that he has the answer. Which is to say: if you’re currently fighting with God, if you’re still waiting for the dawn, if you’re still wondering where righteousness is, if healing is still in the future for you this Advent, if you’re wobbling instead of leaping, Malachi feels for you. If you’re wondering whether God’s promises are ever really going to come true, then you are in the good company of millions upon millions of God’s followers who have wondered the same thing. Perhaps like Matthew you’re bone-deep-convinced that everything’s taken care of. But if you’re not, you’re not alone.”
So it doesn’t seem to matter whether we’re singing But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming, or And He Shall Purify, or Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! Each of them has its musical way of inviting us to consider what needs to be done in us, and for others, to make us ready – purified, refined, washed and scrubbed clean inside and out (well, mostly inside) in order to be made ready to receive the Messiah who is once more to be born into our wondersome and wondrous world.