"Prophets of Promise: Malachi"

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Old Testament Reading: Malachi 3:1-7, 10-12

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. ²But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; ³he 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. ⁴Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

6 For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. ⁷Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ ¹⁰Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. ¹¹I will rebuke the locust for you, so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil; and your vine in the field shall not be barren, says the Lord of hosts. ¹²Then all nations will count you happy, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

Sermon: “Prophets of Promise: Malachi”

I know a prophet.  His name is David.  I met David a few years back, in the middle of a cold, rainy night on the streets of Belfast.  The church I was serving had an outreach effort each Thursday, giving out tea, coffee, soup and sandwiches to students and others coming home from pubs in the early hours of the morning as they passed by our church. 

One night, David came up to the table.  He was around his mid-forties, with a slight drawl to his speech from an illness, and a complicated story in his eyes.  He looked like he might need a few good meals.  I got to talking to David and discovered that he was an artist (a phenomenal one at that) and when I asked where he lived, he vaguely gestured and said, “Nearby.”

Week after week, the prophet David returned to the table.  We always gave him the leftover soup and bread, worried that “nearby” might just mean he lived on the street.  After weeks, he finally told me that he lived in a hostel; one I knew to be designated for folks with addiction issues and previous prison time.

After a couple of months, David took ownership of that table.  Without words or agreement, one night he just stood on the other side of the table and served, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world to do.  He served intoxicated, heartbroken teenagers and Roma gypsy flower sellers.  He served wandering college students and his fellow hostel-dwellers.  And he served us.

David was passionate about the simple act of sharing food, insistent that everyone passing by knew we were there.  (He made this known by shouting sometimes a bit too forcibly at passer-bys: “Bacon butties! Soup!  Coffee!  Biscuits!”)  Even on the most bitterly cold night, when the rain soaked into your shoes and your toes went numb within five minutes, the prophet David was there.  Because a prophet always shows up.

He began showing up at church on Sundays, too.  He would sit in the back pew in his leather jacket and jeans and bring me Old Crow Medicine Show cd’s to borrow and beautiful artwork to peruse.  Somehow, though he had suffered through a divorce, lost most that he owned, had a complicated relationship with his daughter and a faith abandoned for agnosticism long ago, he returned to himself, and to God, at that table.

The courage of that move from one side of the table to the other, from observer to participant, from agnostic to believer, spoke hope to us all.  That is why I call him a prophet.  He showed us that change is possible.  That warmth can be found on even the darkest, coldest night.  That God is able to return us to ourselves, no matter how many years it has been since we’ve remembered who we really are.  No matter how many false prophets we’ve allowed to define us.

Malachi was a prophet like David.  He spoke about 150 years after the time of Jeremiah, when the people of Israel were putting their lives back together, but restless with how long it was taking.  They had a king again, a Temple again, and the priest Ezra returned, along with thousands of their own.  They were comfortable enough to be complacent, but not as settled as they’d hoped to be, and so they were also bitter.  They sinned against God, forsaking God’s decrees to care for the orphan, widow, sojourner and laborer. 

The entire nation fell prey to amnesia.  They forgot who they were.  That they were a chosen people, meant to be different from the status quo.  Malachi shouted with the boldness of David on the streets: “Return to God, and God will return to you!”  But the people said, “How shall we return?”

What a question.   How do you know the way back to a meaningful relationship with God when you don’t know how you’ve drifted so far away?  How do you return when there is no GPS to guide you, no guarantee of happiness on the journey or certainty that you won’t get lost on that road?

How do we return to ourselves when we’ve allowed anger, habitual criticism of others and indifference shape our identity?  How do we return to God when we can’t even form words to pray in face of the unjust suffering we see and relentless guilt we feel?

Both of our prophets, David and Malachi, provide us with the same answer.  Just as our drifting away from God, ourselves and our neighbor, did not happen overnight, so our returning is also a process.  We return by bringing a tithe of generosity wherever it is most needed:

The generosity to speak with grace of those we are so used to criticizing, the generosity to show kindness to a stranger because in God’s kingdom there are no strangers, the generosity to forgive others, including ourselves, for mistakes that God has long since forgotten. 

Like David deciding it was time to quietly, humbly serve rather than be served, we will then see blessings pouring from the windows of heaven like a Belfast rain on desperate souls, drenching us all with grace.

It is time to step-by-step, choice by choice, kindness-by-kindness, come to this Table to be fed, and then move to the other side, until all are fed, valued and served.  God will then return to us that which we have failed to notice we have lost: delight, meaning, faith in ourselves and in our Savior, compassion, even hope. It is time to return.  Come.  Amen.