A voice crying in the wilderness
Commentary
Object:
We begin Advent at a time in our own history in which we are living in fear. Sudden violence has come in Paris, France, where hundreds were wounded and nearly 150 people were killed in four different locations at the same time. This was accomplished by heavily armed, avowed terrorists, with the promise of more to come. In fact, those responsible have boasted that they are in a position to bring similar acts of terror to major metropolitan areas here in the U.S., though our own authorities assure us that this is not a credible threat at this time. However, many have decided that our government is often dishonest, so there is little comfort to be had from such assurances for millions of people.
The scriptures for today are not comforting in this setting, but they are hopeful. Malachi tells the Israelites that there is a time of suffering coming -- but this suffering, once endured, will prove to have refined God’s people: to have brought out the beauty in their souls, and to have purified their intentions so that their offerings will once again bring them closer to God.
The gospel story is about John the Baptist beginning his ministry in the wilderness, declaring himself to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s poetic prophecy that before the Day of the Lord there will be “a voice, crying out in the wilderness.” God always wants us to have the time to leave our sinful ways, make reparation, and live in peace. Thus the forerunner, with his warning, comes first, and then the judgment Malachi proclaims.
How shall we respond? Advent is about preparing the Way of the Lord in our own lives. We are called to some time apart from the demands a secular world puts on us -- to buy, buy, buy; to party, eating as much as we want and drinking until we are too tipsy to drive; to push ourselves to be happy, happy, happy. And yet, if we have no family, no fireplace, no one to buy gifts for, no one to kiss and cuddle, that vision of an idyllic Christmas is depressingly unattainable. In fact, the more we press ourselves to have fun and be happy, the harder it is to be at all content.
And then there is that fear that so many feel in the face of terrorists who have so little to live for that they will strap bombs to their bodies in order to kill as many Westerners as they can manage. After the Paris attacks, comedian Bill Maher asked on his show “Why do they hate us?” and none of his guests put forward an answer. Maher asked again, “What do they want?” And one of his guests said, “Well, that part is easy. ISIS wants to bring about the end of the world. They hope that by striking out at us that we will respond in kind, and that that will bring about Armageddon” (the final battle between the forces of good and evil referred to in both the Bible and the Q’ran). Many in the audience cheered as Bill Maher said, “Well, we could accommodate them on that.”
But for too many, this is no laughing matter. The single-minded zeal of people willing to blow themselves up in order to create chaos is not really stoppable by what we consider to be conventional warfare. And this is frightening. The fighters aren’t called terrorists for nothing.
But Advent isn’t just about repentance. It is a time for us to prepare ourselves for the Christmas story, which is about God coming to us -- after we turned away from God in anger and fear -- as vulnerable as a newborn.
I remember many years ago leading an Advent Bible study, and making the statement that God came to us in carne -- wrapped in flesh -- as a newborn baby. One of the women in that group was very taken aback: “Why would God make himself so vulnerable? That was a very dangerous thing to do, if you’re right!” Yet this has been the message of the Church from the very beginning. How is it that she had never considered the meaning of Christmas before that day?
We need to be putting the message of the Gospel out there as often and as creatively as we can. People need this message, especially in a time when Pope Francis was quoted as saying, “This is how World War Three begins.”
Malachi 3:1-4
When we preach the Old Testament readings, we need to remember that they have a very different idea about the relationship between God’s people and God. The prophets did not believe that living by the grace of God could supplant the duties of temple worship and the constant sacrifices made there for the well-being of the nation. They saw the corruption of the priests, their greed and laxity. They watched the people come to make sacrifice without truly being sorry for their sins, and so repeating this ritual again and again to no avail, since what God wants is reformation, not repetition of our sins. If we read the entire book of Malachi, we will see his whole argument in just a few minutes of reading: the priests have been lazy, the people are indifferent, and God will not put up with this. Thus, the purification has been made necessary.
In that period of history, refineries were a common sight to the people. The nation was not so big that the refineries could be tucked away in some remote place. In this way, Judea was much like my hometown when I was a child. Our city was famous for our refineries. They had very high chimneys which belched sulfurous smoke day and night, allayed somewhat by the installation of afterburners which flamed against the backdrop of yellowish smoke. This could easily be considered as a vision of hell, complete with the smell of brimstone!
Smelters operate in much the same way. Rocks containing silver and gold and copper are fed into a huge cauldron, which is super-heated. The heavy elements sink to the bottom, and the lighter to the top. The cauldron is tipped, pouring off the slag (as the leftover rock is called) into waiting carts or trenches. What is left behind is the copper, silver, and gold. The sulfur residue fills the air. Without the kind of protective gear we have today, the sulfur gets into the refiners’ eyes and lungs, where it mixes with their bodily fluids and turns into sulfur dioxide. This chemical eats away at tissues, resulting in pitting of the corneas and destruction of the lining of the lungs. The prophet has chosen powerful images to talk about our need to have our sins done away with.
The first half of today’s passage is not so clear. The prophet says, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me... the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.” But it is not Jesus who claims this passage, but John the Baptist. This is the main connection between Luke 3 and Malachi 3, John claiming that he is “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord....’ ” It sounds to the people of his day that John was claiming to be the messiah. But when they question him, he says (not in today’s passage, however) that he is not the messiah, but the messenger sent out before messiah. It seems John was relying on Isaiah, not Malachi, but these two prophets make the same promise: that God knows what is going on with his people, and will come and save them.
Luke 3:1-6
Luke is the historian of the gospel message. He wants to set the story of Jesus in its time period, the order of events as they occurred, and therefore we have the usual dating system of his time and place. We sometimes do the same thing: “It was the same year that JFK was killed in Dallas.” He sets the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the secular calendar (in the 15th year that Tiberius was emperor, Pontius Pilate, Herod and his brother Philip and Lysanias and the titles they had, so that one can pinpoint the year according to the Romans) and the religious calendar (Annas and Caiaphas were both members of the “high priesthood”). In this way, he has pinpointed the coming of John as best he can.
He has also tried to pinpoint John’s understanding of his own ministry. So here is the problem: the priests of the temple saw the passage from Isaiah as being about the messiah -- the Anointed One of God. If that is so, John bar Zechariah must be the messiah. But John denies this. He knows that his cousin Jesus (see chapter 1 of Luke) is greater than he is (v. 15). Apparently, John is saying that Jesus is God. And we know, from a close study of Luke, that he does in fact say that, both metaphorically and literally, throughout his gospel. What this amounts to is the idea that John is that voice announcing God’s approach as the Heavenly King of Israel. We can see this in the passage from Isaiah that Luke includes: “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” And it is for precisely this reason that Jesus came, that communication might be restored between us and God, and that we might be made whole (the meaning of the word “salvation”).
Malachi’s prediction is that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Jesus does in fact do this, and the result during Holy Week is that all the wrath Malachi predicts is in fact unleashed as Jesus drives out all of those making money from the religion they profess. Malachi foresaw this clearly: “Who can endure the day of his [the Lord of hosts] coming?”
Luke has set the tone for his entire gospel in these paragraphs. Throughout the first part of the gospel, everyone who sees what Jesus is doing asks “Who is this who (feeds 5,000 or calms the storm or heals the way he does)?” with one exception -- the demons whom he orders out of the sick. We need to take this reference to demons seriously. Luke is saying that the powers of evil recognize Jesus for who he is -- the Holy One of God. This remains the way things are up to the Transfiguration. When the three disciples who went everywhere with Jesus see that vision, they realize that Jesus really is the Lord -- God incarnate (from the Latin carne, meaning flesh).
Philippians 1:3-11
It is obvious that Paul has a deep love for the followers of Christ in Philippa. It was there that he met Lydia, a woman who had been a Gentile dealer in purple cloth (hard to make, hard to maintain the color, and expensive) who had begun worshiping with the followers of Christ. It was here, also, that he and Silas had been beaten and imprisoned for casting out a demon from a girl slave who had been making money for her owner because she could see the future. Today she would be a fortune teller or palm reader, something of the sort. It was while they were in that prison that an earthquake shook open the door to their cell. By staying in the prison rather than running away, they converted their Roman jailer as well.
It would appear, also, that the Christians there had taken care of him while he was imprisoned. Without someone on the outside, prisoners could literally starve or succumb to hypothermia; apparently the Philippians had taken on the tasks of a family for Paul. So Paul has reason to remember the Philippians with compassion (literally, to feel with another).
But even more, he is grateful for the way they live out their faith. They not only support one another, they are also going out and witnessing to the power of Jesus Christ to transform people and situations. They have taken to heart the idea that we see in Malachi and Luke, that Jesus is the representative of God’s grace and love.
The scriptures for today are not comforting in this setting, but they are hopeful. Malachi tells the Israelites that there is a time of suffering coming -- but this suffering, once endured, will prove to have refined God’s people: to have brought out the beauty in their souls, and to have purified their intentions so that their offerings will once again bring them closer to God.
The gospel story is about John the Baptist beginning his ministry in the wilderness, declaring himself to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s poetic prophecy that before the Day of the Lord there will be “a voice, crying out in the wilderness.” God always wants us to have the time to leave our sinful ways, make reparation, and live in peace. Thus the forerunner, with his warning, comes first, and then the judgment Malachi proclaims.
How shall we respond? Advent is about preparing the Way of the Lord in our own lives. We are called to some time apart from the demands a secular world puts on us -- to buy, buy, buy; to party, eating as much as we want and drinking until we are too tipsy to drive; to push ourselves to be happy, happy, happy. And yet, if we have no family, no fireplace, no one to buy gifts for, no one to kiss and cuddle, that vision of an idyllic Christmas is depressingly unattainable. In fact, the more we press ourselves to have fun and be happy, the harder it is to be at all content.
And then there is that fear that so many feel in the face of terrorists who have so little to live for that they will strap bombs to their bodies in order to kill as many Westerners as they can manage. After the Paris attacks, comedian Bill Maher asked on his show “Why do they hate us?” and none of his guests put forward an answer. Maher asked again, “What do they want?” And one of his guests said, “Well, that part is easy. ISIS wants to bring about the end of the world. They hope that by striking out at us that we will respond in kind, and that that will bring about Armageddon” (the final battle between the forces of good and evil referred to in both the Bible and the Q’ran). Many in the audience cheered as Bill Maher said, “Well, we could accommodate them on that.”
But for too many, this is no laughing matter. The single-minded zeal of people willing to blow themselves up in order to create chaos is not really stoppable by what we consider to be conventional warfare. And this is frightening. The fighters aren’t called terrorists for nothing.
But Advent isn’t just about repentance. It is a time for us to prepare ourselves for the Christmas story, which is about God coming to us -- after we turned away from God in anger and fear -- as vulnerable as a newborn.
I remember many years ago leading an Advent Bible study, and making the statement that God came to us in carne -- wrapped in flesh -- as a newborn baby. One of the women in that group was very taken aback: “Why would God make himself so vulnerable? That was a very dangerous thing to do, if you’re right!” Yet this has been the message of the Church from the very beginning. How is it that she had never considered the meaning of Christmas before that day?
We need to be putting the message of the Gospel out there as often and as creatively as we can. People need this message, especially in a time when Pope Francis was quoted as saying, “This is how World War Three begins.”
Malachi 3:1-4
When we preach the Old Testament readings, we need to remember that they have a very different idea about the relationship between God’s people and God. The prophets did not believe that living by the grace of God could supplant the duties of temple worship and the constant sacrifices made there for the well-being of the nation. They saw the corruption of the priests, their greed and laxity. They watched the people come to make sacrifice without truly being sorry for their sins, and so repeating this ritual again and again to no avail, since what God wants is reformation, not repetition of our sins. If we read the entire book of Malachi, we will see his whole argument in just a few minutes of reading: the priests have been lazy, the people are indifferent, and God will not put up with this. Thus, the purification has been made necessary.
In that period of history, refineries were a common sight to the people. The nation was not so big that the refineries could be tucked away in some remote place. In this way, Judea was much like my hometown when I was a child. Our city was famous for our refineries. They had very high chimneys which belched sulfurous smoke day and night, allayed somewhat by the installation of afterburners which flamed against the backdrop of yellowish smoke. This could easily be considered as a vision of hell, complete with the smell of brimstone!
Smelters operate in much the same way. Rocks containing silver and gold and copper are fed into a huge cauldron, which is super-heated. The heavy elements sink to the bottom, and the lighter to the top. The cauldron is tipped, pouring off the slag (as the leftover rock is called) into waiting carts or trenches. What is left behind is the copper, silver, and gold. The sulfur residue fills the air. Without the kind of protective gear we have today, the sulfur gets into the refiners’ eyes and lungs, where it mixes with their bodily fluids and turns into sulfur dioxide. This chemical eats away at tissues, resulting in pitting of the corneas and destruction of the lining of the lungs. The prophet has chosen powerful images to talk about our need to have our sins done away with.
The first half of today’s passage is not so clear. The prophet says, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me... the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.” But it is not Jesus who claims this passage, but John the Baptist. This is the main connection between Luke 3 and Malachi 3, John claiming that he is “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord....’ ” It sounds to the people of his day that John was claiming to be the messiah. But when they question him, he says (not in today’s passage, however) that he is not the messiah, but the messenger sent out before messiah. It seems John was relying on Isaiah, not Malachi, but these two prophets make the same promise: that God knows what is going on with his people, and will come and save them.
Luke 3:1-6
Luke is the historian of the gospel message. He wants to set the story of Jesus in its time period, the order of events as they occurred, and therefore we have the usual dating system of his time and place. We sometimes do the same thing: “It was the same year that JFK was killed in Dallas.” He sets the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the secular calendar (in the 15th year that Tiberius was emperor, Pontius Pilate, Herod and his brother Philip and Lysanias and the titles they had, so that one can pinpoint the year according to the Romans) and the religious calendar (Annas and Caiaphas were both members of the “high priesthood”). In this way, he has pinpointed the coming of John as best he can.
He has also tried to pinpoint John’s understanding of his own ministry. So here is the problem: the priests of the temple saw the passage from Isaiah as being about the messiah -- the Anointed One of God. If that is so, John bar Zechariah must be the messiah. But John denies this. He knows that his cousin Jesus (see chapter 1 of Luke) is greater than he is (v. 15). Apparently, John is saying that Jesus is God. And we know, from a close study of Luke, that he does in fact say that, both metaphorically and literally, throughout his gospel. What this amounts to is the idea that John is that voice announcing God’s approach as the Heavenly King of Israel. We can see this in the passage from Isaiah that Luke includes: “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” And it is for precisely this reason that Jesus came, that communication might be restored between us and God, and that we might be made whole (the meaning of the word “salvation”).
Malachi’s prediction is that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Jesus does in fact do this, and the result during Holy Week is that all the wrath Malachi predicts is in fact unleashed as Jesus drives out all of those making money from the religion they profess. Malachi foresaw this clearly: “Who can endure the day of his [the Lord of hosts] coming?”
Luke has set the tone for his entire gospel in these paragraphs. Throughout the first part of the gospel, everyone who sees what Jesus is doing asks “Who is this who (feeds 5,000 or calms the storm or heals the way he does)?” with one exception -- the demons whom he orders out of the sick. We need to take this reference to demons seriously. Luke is saying that the powers of evil recognize Jesus for who he is -- the Holy One of God. This remains the way things are up to the Transfiguration. When the three disciples who went everywhere with Jesus see that vision, they realize that Jesus really is the Lord -- God incarnate (from the Latin carne, meaning flesh).
Philippians 1:3-11
It is obvious that Paul has a deep love for the followers of Christ in Philippa. It was there that he met Lydia, a woman who had been a Gentile dealer in purple cloth (hard to make, hard to maintain the color, and expensive) who had begun worshiping with the followers of Christ. It was here, also, that he and Silas had been beaten and imprisoned for casting out a demon from a girl slave who had been making money for her owner because she could see the future. Today she would be a fortune teller or palm reader, something of the sort. It was while they were in that prison that an earthquake shook open the door to their cell. By staying in the prison rather than running away, they converted their Roman jailer as well.
It would appear, also, that the Christians there had taken care of him while he was imprisoned. Without someone on the outside, prisoners could literally starve or succumb to hypothermia; apparently the Philippians had taken on the tasks of a family for Paul. So Paul has reason to remember the Philippians with compassion (literally, to feel with another).
But even more, he is grateful for the way they live out their faith. They not only support one another, they are also going out and witnessing to the power of Jesus Christ to transform people and situations. They have taken to heart the idea that we see in Malachi and Luke, that Jesus is the representative of God’s grace and love.
