8. Malachi
“You need to look. Don’t get me wrong, I look away, we all look away. But that is the difference between a man and a king”. The Mage, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
Sometimes I open The Book, looking for something for this day, or that time, and as I wander I realise there are parts of the Bible I recoil from. They taste salty like olives to me, and I’ve not yet grown to like olives.
I pondered this for some time, my salty reaction and speedy turn of the pages, and then I was asked to preach on Malachi. I didn’t think I was fond of Malachi, but now I had to read it again, so I opened the book. My first read-through was a skim, and my oldest-child brain felt over and over “you didn’t”, “you haven’t”, “you failed to”. I clearly remembered 1993 and a preacher pacing up and down the isle declaring “‘you have robbed me’ Saith the Lord”
In the remembering I felt the Lord, who often-times saith other than is reported, asking me who was reading Malachi to me? There is no illumination when the Accuser is allowed to read. Look again. When reading the “right way” has left me with a salty taste in my mouth, I’ve found it can be helpful to start the end. So I turned to the last verse of Malachi and read:
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” Malachi 4:5
Before the or-else happens, before the great and dreadful and the total destruction, Elijah will be sent. He will come with a message of reconciliation between the generations, and their turning it seems will impact the curse that would otherwise follow. I remember that some 400 years after these words were written, when “Elijah” does come “a voice of one calling” he announces Jesus with the words:
“Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin (curse/destruction) of the world”
John 1:23-29
Malachi ends with God warning of the total curse that was coming without an intervention, and some 400 years later God becomes the intervention and walks the lands. God comes to take on Himself the curse He pronounces.
Here I see the pattern and the precedent: we can be prone to destruction, and in holding up the mirror to show us how and why, He then leans in close to kiss. Why does God spell out their ugly in such detail through the voice of the prophet? Because His longing is for them not to turn their face away but to look deeply, face His sorrow, turn from ways of sin and pain, and be healed.
Don’t get me wrong, I look away, we all look away.
Those who are forgiven much love much (Luke 7:47). This is His way: my mess hurts me, and so He cleans me, my mess hurts others, and so He cleans me; my mess hurts the creation and so He cleans me. Clean I am to clean up and make beautiful all He has given. Look again. Look deeply. Repent.
That is the difference between a man and a king.
Now my mouth is sweet and my heart is quiet.
I can turn to the beginning of Malachi and remember these words are written after a return, a reboot, yet another try. Ezra and Nehemiah came, gathered and worked, and Ezekiel saw, and God stood with them in a rebuild that was only partial. From the already-mess of that attempt His voice speaks love in the opening chapter of Malachi: you know I love you, He says, and you know what love looks like. So He calls them out: don’t settle for the pseudo-love you are giving that dishonors, defiles and pretends.
I begin to feel the pain behind His rebuke. It’s the pain of a father who is watching His children hurt themselves, hurt each other, destroy the land.
I realised I don’t say sin much anymore because it has often been used to confirm the curse without leading to any liberation from it. But when I see His pain I don’t want to look away and I want to name sin rightly: infidelity to the true love of God.
Through Malachi He spoke to the leaders of that time who had gotten lazy. They’d stopped the graft of calling for repentance, reconciliation and truth in the hearts of men and women and children. He pleads again: Stop playing at love. Shut the temple doors and stop playing at worship. You have my heart. There are people all over the world who worship me but you, you have my heart. He gave them His heart to hold, to communicate with anointed tongues. He asked them to steward for the people a system of offerings so they would have a way of dealing with their sin-guilt and shame. They paid lip service, gave their worst, and lied whilst hugging their sin closer. He gave them an understanding of undivided loyalty, but they didn’t call the people back to be healed from their fragmentation. He gave them ideas and a way to protect those most vulnerable, and they turned a blind eye as the little ones were exploited. He gave them a system of tithes to teach the people that He was provident, and they taught the rich to store what they grew, caring only for themselves and what they could get. How could they forget His heart? Who was reading Torah instructions to them at this point? Had they traded the voice of love for the voice of the accuser?
As I read I understood that He surrounded His children with an unbroken covenant circle, and His heart never changed toward them. They stepped into that circle, and broke it. They didn’t want to tithe because He was never their first thought. They paid lip-service in their worship because He was not their first love, or their only love. They gave nothing to the relationship, and complained that they weren’t getting anything out of it.
I’ve noticed in myself one of two responses to the truth I see in the mirror of His word: leave me alone and clean me. The King who had God’s heart said clean me. (Psalm 51). Malachi 3:16 tells of a few who also gathered to say: clean us, and for them a new book was opened, and their names were recorded.
The last chapter of Malachi prophesies a fire that will always come, because His love is fire. For the ones who look deeply the fire will purify and heal. For the ones that look to their other loves, this fire will destroy those loves and every other distraction in order still to purify and heal. Malachi tells me that God is weary of this pattern then shows me that His weariness provokes a drawing closer, rather than a pulling away. This God is not like me. Whilst weary and wounded He leans in. His way costs more, and heals more.
The new covenant circle begins with God himself, the lamb of God coming, not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it.
The tithe they didn’t pay, he became and paid. The offering they never quite managed to give, He gave. The vulnerable they didn’t care to protect, He lifted and sat in the best seats at the table. He became the everything they couldn’t give.
You and I are invited into that same circle. Even as we spit on His face, spraying each other with our ugliest, He leans in to kiss. He will never let curse or destruction be the last word over us, our streets, our cities. He never holds the mirror up to shame us. On our worst day He uses the warmth of himself to clean us, and our dirt covering him, holds the mirror up to us again to show us how lovely we are.
The God Malachi tells me of is an olive who, when crushed by my infidelity, leaks oil that heals my fragmented soul. He names me as His child: I am royalty. When He holds up the mirror, framed as it is with grace, I need to look deeply. Through the fire of judgement I find bliss as my sin, the curse, is burnt by love and I am healed.
Don’t get me wrong, I look away, we all look away. But we are kings, and kings look again.
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