Be Prepared

 
Advent 2

December 5, 2021

Malachi & Luke 3

 

Malachi, the first reading we heard this morning,

is the last book of the Hebrew scriptures.

The book that comes right before the gospels.

Malachi means “messenger”.

We don’t know if that’s the writer’s name

or if that’s  their title, kind of like John is “messenger” too.

 

Malachi warns the people about many of the same things that

the other prophets did: straying from God, corruption, greed,

political leaders who don’t care about the people,

and religious leaders selling out to political leaders.

 

Malachi says that God is coming into the world

and God will send another messenger first,

who will get things straightened out.

This messenger, Malachi says, will not be sweet and mild,

their message will be painful and uncomfortable.

It will be like a refiners fire or a fuller’s soap.

I had to look those two things up.

 

When you get silver it’s combined with lead and other metals.

The refiner will heat it to a very high temperature, making it liquid.

And then the bad metal rises to the top, and then

the refiner would scrape the impurities, or the dross, off

and discard it. Ouch.

 

And the fuller was the one who would clean the wool

after it was sheared from the sheep to prepare it for dying different colors.

Sheep aren’t clean animals, and they aren’t completely white,

so the soap was caustic. It was so caustic

that they made the fullers do their washing

outside of the city limits because of the smell. Ouch.

 

Refiner’s fire, fuller’s soap.

Not comfortable images, especially since

we’re the silver and the wool. Ouch.

 

The messenger says, The Lord is coming.

God is coming into the world and Malachi

asks of us: “can you stand it?”

Will you be able to take it when it happens?

 

Again, not exactly images of presents and gifts and sugar plumb fairies

from these Advent readings here.

But this jarring imagery is there to get our attention.

It’s not there to tell us we’re dispensable and will be thrown away,

although many people interpret it that way.

But it’s there to tell us that we must change our ways.

 

God has a vision for God’s people. For all of humanity.

For the whole of God’s creation.

That vision is all the things we know about and hear about

justice, peace, forgiveness, abundance, life-giving.

But our ways are not like that.

 

We tend to like privilege, fighting, holding grudges, keeping things for

ourselves. We are attracted to the ways of death like moths to a light bulb.

God is always forgiving, God is good at improvising, and God is patient.

But God will not budge on those things until God’s vision is reality.

So the messenger says we better get used to changing our ways.

When God comes, can we stand it?

 

That’s what John the Baptist was there to do.

He was there to tell people to repent and prepare the way.

Change our ways to get ready for God’s arrival.

He was Jesus’s messenger before him.

 

John’s message was to repent and change

That means changing the way we live, the way we spend money,

the way we interact with those we love,

the way we interact with those we hate,

the way we treat others with less power and privilege,

the way we conduct our business . . .

John wanted us to change our ways to be different.

To align ourselves with God’s vision now,

so that when God does come, so that we have

more silver in our lives than dross

before that refiner’s fire comes.

Who can stand it?

 

Preparing the path towards God’s way means transforming the

Mt. Seolak
Kim Yungzai

world as we know it: valleys filled, mountains laid low,

crooked things made straight.

That all sounds terrific in theory.

Until we remember that we enjoy those valleys,

we live on those mountains,

we are part of what’s making the roads crooked.

 

Sin isn’t just a few isolated choices we make in our lives,

our lives are embroiled in sin,

we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

We work in it, we watch it happen, we turn the other way,

we are consumers of it, we benefit from it, we enjoy it regularly,

it’s part of our wants and even our needs.

All the things wrong with the world today are not outside of us,

they are a part of us, a part of the world that we like and love.

Who can stand it?

 

And those messengers are not just talking about regular people like you and me.

The introduction of the gospel today lists leaders:

Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, and Herod, Philip Lysanias

All corrupt leaders who tried to stop Jesus,

and who tried to stand in the way of God’s vision in a variety of other ways.

None of them stood. They’re only remembered for

how they tried to stand in God’s way and failed.

How they were washed out of the wool by the fullers soap.

 

When John says prepare the way of the Lord,

he really means prepare. Mountains, valleys, major projects.

Make a mess and bring it back into God’s vision.

It means letting go of many things that we have liked

and become accustomed to and even loved.

It means changing who and what we are.

Who can stand it?

  

Now this might all sound like some bad news.

But maybe it’s not all bad.

God vision of peace and justice will be a reality.

God COULD do it all by God’s self. We know that.

But for some reason God doesn’t want to do it alone.

The calls for repentance and change from the messengers

aren’t just there to tell us how bad we are.

They tell us that God wants us to be involved.

As a great theologian John Dominic Crossan said:

"We're waiting for an intervention

 and God is waiting for collaboration."

 

You see, even when we have doubt in ourselves,

God still has hope in us.

God chooses us: flawed normal sinners

God chooses the wild man in the wilderness,

the unwed young girl in Galilee, and all of us sinners as we are,

and has great expectations for us.

 

God doesn’t have another back up plan,

God’s plan is us -- humanity,

the people and things of this earth.

God wants to use us, our skills, and gifts

ingenuity to make that road

to move the mountains and raise the valleys.

 

God knows that we won’t change all of it

right now, but God needs us to be open to change.

To be ready for change, to have our hearts

and minds softened and not so stubborn,

God wants our help to fill those valleys

and lay those mountains low

Make the crooked straight and the rough ways smooth.

 

Christ is coming.

God wants our help.

Can we stand it?