The Last Piece Of The Puzzle
Sermon
In our house, things change at Christmas. On Christmas Day we eat at totally different times, we snap open crackers and wear silly hats, we roar with laughter at the awful jokes inside the crackers, all members of the family meet together for one of the few times each year, and we play with puzzles.
This playing with puzzles is an activity which none of us indulge in at other times of the year. But at Christmas all the old puzzles emerge plus some new ones which keep us going for hours because nobody can fathom them out. Then once the first person has succeeded, we all want to learn how to do that puzzle in the hope that we'll remember the solution for next Christmas.
We have jigsaw puzzles, giant crosswords, metal puzzles, wooden puzzles, foam rubber puzzles and in years past, the famous Rubik's Cube. Some of us give up sooner than others. In fact some of us give up quite quickly and fall asleep in front of the Queen's speech on television. But for all of us, it is immensely satisfying when the last piece of a puzzle finally clicks into place, whoever manages to solve it.
Perhaps human beings like things to slot neatly into their allotted positions. Maybe on the whole, many of us feel more comfortable when everything is as it should be and rather uncomfortable when things are awry or going wrong. When friends talk about their problems, one of the most immediate human instincts is to offer advice. "Why don't you..." or "If I was you..." We want to solve problems. We particularly want to solve problems which hurt other people. And we tend to be uncomfortable with those people who raise new problems.
The prophet Malachi was an uncomfortable person. Aware that he was likely to upset people, the author chose a pseudonym - Malachi - meaning "My Messenger". Writing soon after the cream of the Jewish intelligentsia and artisans had returned from fifty years and over two generations in exile, Malachi was openly critical of the priests and the rulers with their religious abuses and their indifference to God. In their time away from the Holy Land, the priests and rulers had allowed their religious identity as God's people to disintegrate. They had permitted Jews to marry foreign wives and to fall into foreign customs and worst of all, they had worshipped foreign gods, deserting the true God who had brought their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt all those years previously.
During the exile and in these years just after the exile, the people had suffered a radical change in their concept of God and their relationship to God. Before the exile, God had been God of the nation. The tribes had worshipped God, but there was no real idea of a personal God, such as we experience today. This was why, if one member of a tribe sinned seriously, the whole tribe was punished. But conversely, if one member of a tribe shone, the whole tribe shone, thus the special prominence given to "the house of David".
And God lived in the Holy Land. First in the Ark of the Covenant, when the people were nomadic desert tribes wandering in the wilderness, then in the temple that they built for God to dwell in at Jerusalem. But during the exile the temple, God's home, was destroyed and the people dragged off to foreign lands, far away from God. The idea that God might go with them had never really been considered. God was presumed to remain in his home. In the earlier story of Naaman the commander of the army of the king of Aram, who comes to Elisha for healing of his leprosy, Naaman takes two muleloads of Israelite soil back with him, so that he might have some chance of worshipping God in his home land (2 Kings 5:17).
So during the exile and immediately after was something of a rationalist time, when the people began to ask questions like, "Where is the God of justice?" And it's this question which Malachi is answering in today's reading. Malachi tells the people that the day of the Lord is coming. But first someone must come to prepare the people for repentance and true worship, someone who became known as "the forerunner". In the next chapter of Malachi, this forerunner is identified as Elijah (4:1), and it became widely believed that Elijah would return to usher in a new golden age, the age of the Messiah who would put everything right with a sweep of his hand.
The Israelites in Malachi's day perhaps died disappointed, for no Messiah appeared during their lifetime. The puzzle was not completed. But the idea of "the Day of the Lord" which would be ushered in by a forerunner became firmly fixed in the Israelite psyche, and Jesus himself quoted Malachi's words when referring to John the Baptist (Matthew 11:10).
The book of Malachi is read in Advent because it points so clearly to the coming of a Messiah. The final piece of the puzzle is supplied by the New Testament Gospel writers, who identify John the Baptist as the forerunner ushering in the messianic age, the true day of the Lord. When the ground is prepared, Malachi says, God will appear, measuring out rewards and punishments and purifying the nation in the furnace of judgment. He will create a new order in which the ultimate triumph of good is inevitable.
But the final twist in the story is that although the last piece of the puzzled fitted perfectly, it wasn't the shape everyone was expecting and it wasn't the shape predicted by Malachi. God sent a surprise present that first Christmas. He didn't send the expected warrior king who would defeat all the nations, reward good behaviour and punish sin. Instead, God sent a baby who grew up to be the Prince of Peace and who allowed himself to be beaten and tortured and killed.
Malachi could never have predicted the shape of the final piece of the puzzle, for it was a unique God-shape and it completed the puzzle more perfectly than anyone could have foreseen. Malachi was one of those who began the preparation, who began to assemble the puzzle. John the Baptist completed most of the puzzle. But the final incredible, astonishing and exciting piece was a human baby full of God himself.
Are you ready to receive the final God-shaped piece of the puzzle of your life at Christmas?
This playing with puzzles is an activity which none of us indulge in at other times of the year. But at Christmas all the old puzzles emerge plus some new ones which keep us going for hours because nobody can fathom them out. Then once the first person has succeeded, we all want to learn how to do that puzzle in the hope that we'll remember the solution for next Christmas.
We have jigsaw puzzles, giant crosswords, metal puzzles, wooden puzzles, foam rubber puzzles and in years past, the famous Rubik's Cube. Some of us give up sooner than others. In fact some of us give up quite quickly and fall asleep in front of the Queen's speech on television. But for all of us, it is immensely satisfying when the last piece of a puzzle finally clicks into place, whoever manages to solve it.
Perhaps human beings like things to slot neatly into their allotted positions. Maybe on the whole, many of us feel more comfortable when everything is as it should be and rather uncomfortable when things are awry or going wrong. When friends talk about their problems, one of the most immediate human instincts is to offer advice. "Why don't you..." or "If I was you..." We want to solve problems. We particularly want to solve problems which hurt other people. And we tend to be uncomfortable with those people who raise new problems.
The prophet Malachi was an uncomfortable person. Aware that he was likely to upset people, the author chose a pseudonym - Malachi - meaning "My Messenger". Writing soon after the cream of the Jewish intelligentsia and artisans had returned from fifty years and over two generations in exile, Malachi was openly critical of the priests and the rulers with their religious abuses and their indifference to God. In their time away from the Holy Land, the priests and rulers had allowed their religious identity as God's people to disintegrate. They had permitted Jews to marry foreign wives and to fall into foreign customs and worst of all, they had worshipped foreign gods, deserting the true God who had brought their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt all those years previously.
During the exile and in these years just after the exile, the people had suffered a radical change in their concept of God and their relationship to God. Before the exile, God had been God of the nation. The tribes had worshipped God, but there was no real idea of a personal God, such as we experience today. This was why, if one member of a tribe sinned seriously, the whole tribe was punished. But conversely, if one member of a tribe shone, the whole tribe shone, thus the special prominence given to "the house of David".
And God lived in the Holy Land. First in the Ark of the Covenant, when the people were nomadic desert tribes wandering in the wilderness, then in the temple that they built for God to dwell in at Jerusalem. But during the exile the temple, God's home, was destroyed and the people dragged off to foreign lands, far away from God. The idea that God might go with them had never really been considered. God was presumed to remain in his home. In the earlier story of Naaman the commander of the army of the king of Aram, who comes to Elisha for healing of his leprosy, Naaman takes two muleloads of Israelite soil back with him, so that he might have some chance of worshipping God in his home land (2 Kings 5:17).
So during the exile and immediately after was something of a rationalist time, when the people began to ask questions like, "Where is the God of justice?" And it's this question which Malachi is answering in today's reading. Malachi tells the people that the day of the Lord is coming. But first someone must come to prepare the people for repentance and true worship, someone who became known as "the forerunner". In the next chapter of Malachi, this forerunner is identified as Elijah (4:1), and it became widely believed that Elijah would return to usher in a new golden age, the age of the Messiah who would put everything right with a sweep of his hand.
The Israelites in Malachi's day perhaps died disappointed, for no Messiah appeared during their lifetime. The puzzle was not completed. But the idea of "the Day of the Lord" which would be ushered in by a forerunner became firmly fixed in the Israelite psyche, and Jesus himself quoted Malachi's words when referring to John the Baptist (Matthew 11:10).
The book of Malachi is read in Advent because it points so clearly to the coming of a Messiah. The final piece of the puzzle is supplied by the New Testament Gospel writers, who identify John the Baptist as the forerunner ushering in the messianic age, the true day of the Lord. When the ground is prepared, Malachi says, God will appear, measuring out rewards and punishments and purifying the nation in the furnace of judgment. He will create a new order in which the ultimate triumph of good is inevitable.
But the final twist in the story is that although the last piece of the puzzled fitted perfectly, it wasn't the shape everyone was expecting and it wasn't the shape predicted by Malachi. God sent a surprise present that first Christmas. He didn't send the expected warrior king who would defeat all the nations, reward good behaviour and punish sin. Instead, God sent a baby who grew up to be the Prince of Peace and who allowed himself to be beaten and tortured and killed.
Malachi could never have predicted the shape of the final piece of the puzzle, for it was a unique God-shape and it completed the puzzle more perfectly than anyone could have foreseen. Malachi was one of those who began the preparation, who began to assemble the puzzle. John the Baptist completed most of the puzzle. But the final incredible, astonishing and exciting piece was a human baby full of God himself.
Are you ready to receive the final God-shaped piece of the puzzle of your life at Christmas?
