A Not So Clear, Yet Present Danger to our Faith

Second Sunday in Advent

Micah 2:17 – 3:7

This week I got an earlier start on the sermon than I have been getting lately – walked over to the south office (Starbucks) on Tuesday morning, with just the text and a couple of commentaries, ordered up a cup of the dark roast, and sat down to read for about an hour. It was wonderful – the setting, I mean. Once I delved into the text, I began to immediately feel the polarities of this passage and of the point of the second week into Advent. Let me explain.

Every since I started following the lectionary as a guide to sermon preparation, I have been puzzled and somewhat troubled by this second week, and next week’s subject matter. Here we are in Advent, making preparation for the Christ to come into our world, and we are confronted by His cousin, John the Baptizer. To say that John is rough around the edges is an understatement. Go back and look up his attire and his diet. Let’s just say he wouldn’t be invited to any of the Christmas parties you and I might be attending this year. On thi second Sunday in Advent, the theme we have been considering all morning is “peace” – and we have as our poster child – the wild-haired prophet, John???? Talking about repentance and justice????? That’s how we’re going to get to “peace?”

And if that’s not enough, the Old Testament comes from Malachi. I had been listening to this passage without knowing it each week when I attended “Messiah” rehearsal this past month. One of the choruses we sang was “And He Shall Purify.” Sort of a catchy, toe-tapping kind of tune, with lots of Baroque style vocal arpeggios and minor cadences. The main text of the passage says what is quoted from Malachi, chapter 3, verse 3 – “and he shall purify the sons of Levi . . . so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.” All the time we were singing that great masterpiece during November and last weekend, I didn’t get it. But Tuesday morning, sitting next door, sipping my cup of coffee, I read the explanation – the sons of Levi were the priests, and this problem that Israel had – God was going to deal with it, but first He was going to purify the sons of Levi – the priests. I started getting kind of an uncomfortable feeling in my gut.

I’m not going to deal so much with that part of the passage this morning, so you can relax just a bit. But I tell you all of that to say to you that as uncomfortable as this passage makes us feel, not to mention having to deal with John the Baptizer in order to find this peace that we are searching for – frankly, I’ve been through a lot worse this week, dealing with the reality that God always intends to purify the priests in order to work toward reclamation of God’s people. At least, that’s the way I’m reading Malachi.

Israel was living the good life by the time we first hear from Malachi. The setting of this book comes years after Israel has returned from Babylonian captivity and exile, and even some time after the rebuilding of the Temple. They are a people who can worship and live in relative ease and freedom – as much as any people of that day. Jerusalem, rather than retaining its beauty, was beginning to look disheveled and unkempt. The people of God were lapsing into apathy and indifference regarding the worship of God. I suspect that if you’ve ever heard a sermon from Malachi, it was probably a tithing sermon. And for good reason – the sense of the book deals with the piddling, second rate offerings that the people would give as sacrifices to God.

In his commentary on this passage, Thomas Dozeman says, “The danger to faith that is being explored in this book is indifference and cynicism to the presence of God in the daily routines of the people of God.”[1] But the problem was that the people couldn’t see it – they didn’t see that they were non-challantly distancing themselves from the God of their salvation. With every passing day, and with every mediocre offering of life or sacrifice, they were slipping deeper and deeper into this chasm of indifference.

Whether Christian people feel a heaviness on the tops of their toes when they hear this particular teaching may very well be a factor of their own personal level of dedication to God. It is never okay for the people of God to take the blessings of God for granted. Bu the way, the statement on the north side of the marquee came from this past Tuesday as well. When I made my way back from the south office, a gentleman was making his way into my cubbyhole to request some benevolence assistance. When he and I concluded our business, he stated that he needed to continue to trust God for his care and sustenance in this life, and then he offered this mantra with which he reminds himself daily – “I’m too blessed to be stressed, and I’m too anointed to be disappointed.” I immediately went out and put the first part of that on the marquee. We are all too blessed to be stressed. It’s something we need to remember during the holidays.

Which are, by the way, holy days. During holy days, we offer an additional offering of praise and thanksgiving to God – in all sorts of ways. We give additional tithes, and we offer our worship at an increased clip. It’s what Christian people do in response to the loving care our God has given to us.

Well, enough preaching for a minute. Back to the text. Reread verse 17 of the 2nd chapter with me again. “You have wearied the Lord with your words. You say, ‘How have we wearied Him?’ In that you say, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them,’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’”

Here’s the scenario – the people of God had become so comfortable with their lives – relaxed in their living – that they had become lax in their worship. In an effort to mentally accommodate this laxity, they conceived in their minds two arguments – in essence two excuses for why it was okay to give God less than their best. First excuse – and you and I have heard many a person offer this same excuse – heavens, we offer it ourselves from time to time – “Since God loves the sinner, we shouldn’t worry about God’s reaction to increased levels of sin in our lives.” Or something like that. That kind of argument puts me in mind of what Paul was dealing with in Romans 6 when he vocalizes the two faux arguments in that chapter – verse 1 of chapter 6 – “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?” and in verse 15 – “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” He had an answer to both questions – “May it never be.” That’s the English translation. In the Greek, it was a stronger negative, sounding more like this – “no, not a chance, uh huh, no way, never.” Years later, Dietrich Bonhoeffer dealt with the same kind of thinking in his book entitled “The Cost of Discipleship” in which he spoke of Christianity’s tendency toward “cheap grace.” Even the best of Christian people have a tendency to cheapen the trace of Christ – to take for granted the gifts of God – especially our salvation – saying to themselves, “well since God loves me anyway, what does the way I go about living my life matter.” He called it “cheap grace.” What do you call it?

Their second argument in Malachi was more straight-forward. I rather started to ask it last week in the sermon, and you and I feel this so much of the time. Frankly, I won’t let God off the hook completely for His part of it – the question was, “Where is the God of justice?” You pick up on it with me, don’t you? Where is our God? He’s promised – when will He deliver? When will the Lord send His anointed messenger? When will the Lord send the Savior? In our case, “when will the Lord return in glory?” Those are the questions that waiting believers ask – we wait, in relative patience, but occasionally, our patience wears thin, and we wonder about our God. “Just where is He? Why hasn’t He come? How much longer, O Lord?” In fact, Christian people have adopted the Greek word “Maranatha” as their eschatological mantra, which is most accurately translated, “Come quickly!!”

I wish I had better news about how we, as Christian people, are to move past this last argument. I do wish I had better news. The solution to the problem of waiting – is to wait. We’re not very good at waiting. I don’t know anyone who’s good at waiting. Some are better than others, but I don’t know anyone for whom it is easy.

Well, there you have it. Listen to me carefully, friends. I understand apathy and cynicism in our faith walks. Frankly, I’m ashamed for anything that I’ve done to create an environment which makes any level of apathy and cynicism possible in your lifes. I am quite sure that over these last eight and a half years that in my efforts to be your friend, and preach the love of Christ, that I have both inadvertently and sometimes purposefully communicated to you that something less than full-blown offerings of righteousness were acceptable in the sight of God. I am humbled by my own personal callousness. But I am starting to see the hand of God working in my life to purify – to clean out the dross in my life – and I don’t find any aspect of that process comfortable.

Lest you think that this sermon is a judgment of you as a congregation, let me put you at ease. It is not. This is a message of Hope and Peace. God has already passed judgment on the callousness and apathy and laxity of His people. God has moved on to something far beyond judgment. God has moved on, and always continues to move on toward reclamation. God intends to reclaim God’s people. That will never change. God loves you. I want you to hear that, Cornerstone. God loves you. God claimed you as His own, and God stated God’s own position on your value when God sent Jesus, and the sacrificed Jesus, and then raised Him from the dead. He did every bit of that because He thought you were valuable. Don’t you forget that bit of gospel news. And so, God is always about the business of reclaiming God’s people, and He wants to do that in your lives and in this congregation. It is His intent. It is what He desires to do.

And so, you and I should have no doubt, my dear children, that God will do exactly that – that God will reclaim us in His righteousness – that we might experience eternally the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension.

Richard W. Dunn, Ph.D.

[1] Marion Soards, Thomas Dozeman and Kendall McCabe, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1994, p.32.