What Are You Waiting For? To Make a Difference
Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6 - 2nd Sunday of Advent, December 5, 2021
Pastor Ritva H Williams
We begin our reflections this morning by listening to Georg Friedrich Handel’s chorus “And He Shall Purify the Sons of Levi” from the Messiah.
Every time I read this scripture passage from Malachi, Handel’s chorus sounds in my mind in all its rich glory and power. I wonder, what did you hear? Law or gospel? A fearsome promise of judgment? A liberating promise of grace? What did you feel? Did you feel convicted of your sin and brokenness? Or released from shame and guilt? Did you feel fear or joy?
The prophet Malachi speaks to God’s people in a time of great hardship and disillusionment. The people have returned home from exile but nothing has turned out as they hoped. There is no king, the harvests have failed, everyone is blaming each other for the mess they are in, some are even convinced that God has abandoned them. In these circumstances, God speaks through the prophet:
“Look! I’m sending my messenger on ahead to clear the way for me. Suddenly, out of the blue, the [Messiah] you’ve been looking for will enter his temple … He’s on his way … but who will be able to stand up to that coming? Who can survive his appearing? He will be like white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace. He’ll be like the strongest lye soap at the laundry … He’ll scrub the Levite priests clean, refine them like gold and silver, until they’re fit for God … (Eugene Petersen, The Message).
The beauty and power of the biblical prophets is in their dramatically uplifting and fearsome imagery. They promise both deliverance and judgment. They bring both comfort and warning. All at the same time. God’s judges God’s people not to punish, but to restore and renew through testing and cleansing. Just as refining fire brings precious metal to light, washing with strong detergent reveals and restores the original beauty of objects dragged through the mud. In the same way, God in Christ yearns to transform our pain and brokenness, to reveal and restore our true-image-of-God-selves, and to reform and refine us to become more Christ-like. (1)
We find the a similar message in John the Baptist’s quote from Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Isaiah evokes word-pictures of road construction: bulldozers filling in valleys, leveling hills, smoothing out bumpy sections, realigning twists and turns. But Isaiah is talking about something much deeper. As Professor Judith Jones writes, “Preparing for God’s arrival means rethinking systems and structures that we see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked. It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us, and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down … John [the Baptist] calls us to let God’s bulldozers reshape the world’s social systems and the landscape of our own minds and hearts.” (2)
As Pastor John van de Laar writes, “We long for a world of peace. We long to feel secure in our homes with enough resources to live comfortably. We long to know that our children will never have to question whether they are safe and loved. We long to live in a world where everyone can live and love freely and securely with enough food and water, a place of shelter, access to education, and meaningful work. And we all long to play some part in building that world. But most of us don’t have any clue where to begin. The obstacles to realizing this world seem to be too many and too big for our small effort to matter.”
The good news is that ordinary people like you and me can and do make a positive difference. Listen again to the opening verses of our gospel lesson:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas …
These are the rulers of the known world, regional lands, and the Judean Temple state. Collectively they hold all the authority and power that wealth, military might, and ancestry can command. God’s message is not given to these VIPs, but to a nobody living in the wilderness. As the son of the priest Zechariah, John could have claimed a place in the Temple establishment but did not.
As Pastor van de Laar points out, we live in a world saturated with social media messages telling us that only the prominent and powerful matter — only they can make a difference. The Gospel gives us a completely different perspective: it is not the VIP’s who matter the most. Mighty armies, Presidents or Prime Ministers, political parties, billionaires or celebrities will not change the world. The world we long for will emerge when ordinary people hear God’s message and begin to opt out of the competitiveness, greed, power-games, and polarization of our world. Margaret Wheatley was absolutely right when she said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
The good news is that we don’t have to be rich or famous to make a difference in our small patch of the Earth. Ordinary people make the most meaningful changes in our lives through small acts of courage, kindness, and justice. We cannot underestimate the power of a parent’s love, the mutual care and support of siblings and friends, the mentoring of elders in shaping our lives. We cannot underestimate the power of compassion, kindness, and generosity to shift the temperature in our homes, neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. We cannot underestimate the power of just being there in another person’s time of need. Every one of us matters to someone. Every one of us has the capacity to make a positive difference for someone, somewhere.
God dreams of a world purified and cleansed, refined, reformed and rebuilt. Today, God invites us to help make it happen. As this poem by Jan Richardson reminds us, each of us in our own way is called and blessed to be a messenger preparing the way for Christ.
With every step you take, this blessing rises up to meet you.
It has been waiting long ages for you.
Look close and you can see the layers of it,
how it has been fashioned by those who walked this road before you,
how it has been created of nothing but their determination and their dreaming,
how it has taken its form from an ancient hope that drew them forward
and made a way for them when no way could be seen.
Look closer and you will see this blessing is not finished,
that you are are part of the path it is preparing,
that you are how this blessing means to be a voice in the wilderness
and a welcome on the way. (3)
Amen.
Adapted from Anne Stewart, “Commentary on Malachi 3:1-4,” December 6, 2015 at workingpreacher.org.
Judith Jones, “Commentary on Luke 3:1-6,” December 6, 2015 at workingpreacher.org
Jan Richardson, “Blessing for the Way,” Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons, 2015.
