Don?t Worry - Be Hopeful! Dec. 6, 2009
The reading is from Malachi as found in The Message:
Look! I'm sending my messenger on ahead to clear the way for me. Suddenly, out of the blue, the Leader you've been looking for will enter God’s temple - yes, the Messenger of the Covenant, the one you've been waiting for. Look! The Lord is on the way!"
A Message from the mouth of God-of-the-Angel-Armies. But who will be able to stand up to that coming? Who can survive this appearance? It'll be like white-hot fire from the smelter's furnace. It'll be like the strongest lye soap at the laundry. God will take a place as a refiner of silver, as a cleanser of dirty clothes. God will scrub the Levite priests clean, refine them like gold and silver, until they're fit . . . fit to present offerings of righteousness.
Then, and only then, will Judah and Jerusalem be fit and pleasing to God, as they used to be in the years long ago.
Why in heaven’s name do we have a text like this as we continue our journey through the wonderful season of Advent? Why words comparing God’s coming to ‘the strongest lye soap at the laundry?’ Why words like the ‘white-hot fire from the smelter’? Advent is indeed when we anticipate the coming of the Lord - but it is a ‘coming’ that happens quietly on a star lit night to a young girl and her young husband - at least that’s how we imagine it. So what is with this ‘refining-gold-and-silver’ talk - and how does it relate to us as we anticipate the birth of the Christ child?
In Christian Bibles, the short book of the prophet Malachi is the very last book of the Old Testament. It is often seen as a kind of bridge between the Old and New Testaments because it anticipates the ‘coming of the Lord’ which is, of course, what the New Testament - for Christians - is all about. Malachi was written at the very end of the 6th and beginning of the 5th century BCE. The Jews were back in Jerusalem after their time of exile and the return was not an easy one as they attempted to re-establish their temple and be faithful to the law. (They weren’t!) Malachi addressed his words primarily to the clergy, challenging them to ‘get with the program,’ and ‘shape up’ because they were falling short of doing what God expected of them. The very name "Malachi" means "messenger" and the message Malachi delivered was urgent. God is coming and you’re not ready. (That was not good news!) Malachi’s message did not end there, however. He also says . . . but, don’t worry! Be hopeful! With a bit of work and God’s help, you’ll be as fit and pleasing to God as you once were - in the olden days!
That, of course, is my paraphrase - but, in shorthand, it makes the connection we need between Malachi and us and Advent itself. Advent is always a time of preparation. The theme for our preparation this Advent is that we resist worry and replace it with gladness (that was last week), and hope (today). Thanksgiving, joy and wonder are still to come. The one common word through it all is worry because, the fact is - we tend to be a fairly worried people. And this, in particular, is a season fraught with worry. Su mentioned it in her sermon last week - there are cards to get out and gifts to consider and parties to attend and concerts to practice for, sing in, and/or, attend. There are children’s programs and travel plans and church services and events like the Festival of Trees and Christ Child’s birthday party. There is decorating to do and there are trees to buy and lights to string and stars to hang and wreaths to make. There is snow to blow or shovel and ice to contend with. There is baking to do and self control to harness as we look at all the baking that’s been done and try not to eat it all! And there is the need to at least try to be pleasant through all these things. Those, of course, are just the seasonable ‘worriables.’ They are simply added to the usual things that cause us worry - the economy, health care and health care reform, the war, escalating violence. Reasons to worry abound and just seem to escalate during this season - but it doesn’t have to be that way. Worry is not a necessary ingredient in our lives - but it will have its way with us unless and until we make different choices. That is my challenge to us this Advent. That we make different choices and this week, my challenge is that we choose hope over worry.
So, what is hope? Depends on who you ask . . .
Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent. (Jean Kerr)
Hope is the dream of a soul awake. (French proverb)
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. (Vaclav Havel)
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all. (Emily Dickenson)
Hope arouses, as nothing else can, a passion for the possible. (William Sloane Coffin)
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up. (Anne Lamott)
Hope is all of that and more. As worry threatens our sanity these days, Advent suggests that we have a choice of another way of being in the world. It is to live with hope. That’s what Malachi gave the bumbling returning exiles - hope. God is with you. God is for you. So, take heart. Choose hope in the face of disaster. Give God a place in your life and you will be fit once again. It may not be an easy journey . . . thus, the talk of God as a ‘refiner of silver’ and a strong laundry detergent. Still, nothing and no one is hopeless.
There are three observations I offer to help us ‘take heart’ as we all do the hard work of choosing hope over worry. I hope they help!
1. We can choose hope because . . . God does God’s best work when things look impossible, when we least expect it. That’s the challenge and the truth of Christmas. Jesus was born to an ordinary couple in an occupied territory in an incredibly poor part of the world at a relatively non-remarkable moment of history . Some people followed him - and most people didn’t - yet, he made a difference that we believe holds hope for the world. In other words, God is present when we least expect, in circumstances that don’t necessarily look auspicious for divine intervention.
Years ago, in a small European town, a visitor noticed that on one of the streets when the citizens of the town walked by a certain wall, they would nod and make the sign of the cross. As he stood there and watched, he observed that they all did this. He became curious about the practice and began to ask around. But no one could tell him what it meant. Finally he obtained permission to investigate the wall. He began to chip away layers of paint and dirt. He discovered underneath them a beautiful mural of Mary and her baby. People had always made the sign of the cross as they passed by that painting even after it was covered over. They had passed on a tradition even though the reason had been lost. Sometimes we too forget why we do things or we forget the heart of things or we overlook the obvious. And that is often when things seem overwhelming. But, God doesn’t forget and God can work with us to chip away the paint and remember what is really important. Like a ‘cleanser of dirty clothes,’ God continues to have great ‘scrubbing’ ability!
2. We can choose hope because . . . God includes us in God’s plan. Again, that is the story of Christmas - that God became one of us despite our incredible ability to mess things up. If that doesn’t give us hope, I don’t know what will! Edgar Dewit Jones, a well known preacher some years ago tells the story of a man who approached him one night at the end of a service. The man said "Preacher, you said God could save anybody, no matter who they were or what they had done. I want to believe that. I want God to save me." Then he made a confession of all he had done and, at the end, said "I’m a Swedish blacksmith by trade . . .I don’t know whether God can help me or not." Jones said, "you’re in luck! God is specializing in Swedish blacksmiths tonight!" God specializes in us in a personal way. We can choose to see God as one-step removed or we can believe the Christmas story that proclaims that God is intimately involved - with us and in us and in spite of us. Which brings me to the third point . . .
3. We can choose hope because . . . God works in spite of us. You know the passage of scripture from 1 Corinthians 13 which reads and now faith, hope and love abide - these three - and the greatest of these is love. St. Augustine had a different take - one I heard long ago and have never forgotten. Augustine wrote: And now, faith, hope and love abide - these three - and the greatest of these is hope. For by faith we know that God is, and by love we know that God is good. But by hope we know that God will work God’s will. That means when we don’t make the right choices or have the right words or even know the right questions . . . when we are overwhelmed and underfunded, God is still there - prodding, poking, provoking. Augustine’s observations went even further. He wrote . . . "and hope has two lovely daughters: anger and courage. Anger so that what must not be will not be and courage so that what can be will be." In other words, hope has the power to replace the paralysis of worry with the possibility of action. And it is often when we least expect it that God spurs us with a holy anger and a passionate courage - which is precisely what we heard in the prophet Malachi.
Hope is a choice and it is our choice this season. One time Lucy said to Charlie Brown, "Merry Christmas! Since it is Christmas, I think we ought to bury the hatchet and put our past differences behind us and try to be kind!" Charlie looks at her, thinks it’s a great idea and says, "Why does it have to be limited to Christmas? Why can’t it be all year long?" She looks at him incredulously and shouts "What are you, some kind of fanatic?" Indeed, that’s what hope makes of us - fanatics of graciousness. Fanatics of hope in a world and in a season that tries to make us worry warriors. Dare we turn our backs on worry and choose hope? It is - in the end - up to us.
