Sermon 20th July 2014

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, concludes our study of the Minor Prophets. 

Wow! How do you sum that lot up?! In the past 3 months we have literally had the A-Z of Minor Prophets: from Amos to Zechariah – via Ezra; Haggai; Hosea; Joel; Jonah; Micah; Nehemiah; and finally, today: Malachi. It’s not been done in alphabetical order, but it has been quite a trip!

As ever, I don’t know how (to sum it up, I mean): but I do have an offering. It’s one that’s in keeping with this series, I’d suggest, in all sorts of ways; including the way in which I’ll do it. You see, I know that it would only be a matter of time before several people here could work them each out. If I gave you pen and paper, and said the letters in these words or phrases could make a rather different sense of them if they were rearranged, somebody would be able to do (and enjoy) it. Of course we don’t have the time, so I’ll do them; and you just need to pay close attention.

So the letters in ASTRONOMER, e.g. if rearranged, could be MOON STARER.

THE MORSE CODE turns into HERE COME DOTS.

Rearrange the letters of SLOT MACHINES and you get CASH LOST IN ME.

On a rather less cheery note, DESPERATION could be made into A ROPE ENDS IT.

A DECIMAL POINT is alternatively expressed as I’M A DOT IN PLACE.

And finally, the letters of ELEVEN PLUS TWO can also be read, believe it or not, as TWELVE PLUS ONE!

No I didn’t make those up; and I partly want to say don’t pay too much attention to the exact words and phrases either. However, it did strike me that each of them might have at least some vague relevance to different parts of this series. You can work out how if you want; what I do need to draw our attention to is the principle of that exercise; specifically in relation to today’s concluding Minor Prophet. In some ways Malachi is ‘only’ a typical example of who we have studied and what we have seen here since May. But just because we’ve seen and heard it all before doesn’t mean that we can ignore it! On the contrary, it means that we need to pay even closer attention, to be sure that we really are hearing what God is saying to us.

The choice to end this series with Malachi was a deliberate one – because this is the last book in the Old Testament. (Well, it is for Christians: the Hebrew Bible has a rather different order). For us, this marks the end of prophecy and the start of the silent waiting. As we heard in today’s reading, God has things to say through Malachi about what’s ahead: the coming of His messenger. There’s a particular message for us in here, as we prepare to move on. Rather different things await us, beyond this summer’s break; but, as ever, we won’t be ready for that unless we hear what God says to us NOW. That was the whole point of tackling this series, of course. As I said at the start of it, we’re very aware that as a Parish we have recently arrived in a new place. In order to be obedient to God in this new place, we are having to listen for His ways forward. And there’s every chance that’s based on how, and why, He’s brought us to this place, to where we are now.

Looking back over this series, as I’ve done this week, I do think that God’s messages to us from it are very clear. I’ll encourage you to do the same for yourself this summer, though: all the sermons are posted on our website, so do listen again for yourself. Yes, before I’m done I will tell you what I’ve been hearing; but first I want to return to those rearranged letters and words. I really do think there’s plenty about God, prophets – and human-kind – in there! To start with us: we have this set of letters that we read in a particular way. We could say that God sent His prophets to show people how those letters could, and should, be differently arranged. Given long enough, and the right hints, we might have got there by ourselves. But through these prophets God both speeded the whole process up, and tried to ensure that people heard Him.

The phrase that I used along the way for this prophetic task is forth-telling. This is about the prophets’ calling to tell the people how God saw current reality. As we’ve heard time and again, God’s view of reality often has the same letters that we’re looking at arranged in quite a different order! It’s not so much that we’ve got the facts wrong, but rather that the way we’re looking at them is. In fact, Malachi’s short book – a mere 55 verses in total (so a quick read later!) – is based on precisely that premise. So 47 of those 55 verses are God explaining to His people through Malachi just how they’ve got it wrong. The book opens (in chapter 1 verse 2) with God reminding His people how much He loves them. Their response to that is: “How have you loved us, God? All we see is that you really don’t.”

Now we know that’s never going to be a happy conversation! People telling God He doesn’t love us? (as if we ever would!) But that is how people felt in Malachi time: that is how they saw their reality – that God had abandoned them, and didn’t care. It’s time to put Malachi briefly into his context, then, as we’ve done with all these other prophets. He’s another of those about who rather little is definitely known. Malachi meaning ‘messenger’, that might not even have been his name. But the one thing all scholars do agree on is that he really was the last prophet. Not just in the Old Testament, but in date too; possibly even as late as the low 420’s (BC, obviously!)

If you’ve missed the chronology of which prophet was when and where, there’s another reason to re-read the sermons. The key facts are all in there each time: and they’re set in the sweeping history of God’s interaction with His people in the land that He gave them; through all the ups and downs of Israel, and Judah. Actually, reality is that there were way more downs than ups. The way that we humans like to shape the letters is to say that we’re on this upward trend of progress. Everything is getting gradually better for everyone, as we progress technologically and morally. I’m really not sure how much truth is in that; and the Bible certainly tells a very different story, not least in the Old Testament.

The high point in the Old Testament comes very early, with God’s revelation of himself to Moses. Wrapped up in that was the rescuing of God’s people from Egypt; the promise of a land; and the giving of the Law. Basically everything then goes downhill from there! Yes, there are occasional high points; but none of those were ever able to reverse the decline; or not for long. What occurs is that those who were chosen and privileged become presumptuous and downright rebellious. With the prophets both explaining and fore-telling the process, defeat and captivity are the outworking of God’s judgment, from which the people can never recover. And yet, the prophets also say, God’s not done; it’s not over: there is still hope – in Him.

The letters didn’t exactly read that way to God’s people in Malachi’s time. They’d come back home, from exile, over 100 years before. So their Temple had been standing again for the best part of a century; and it was even more second-rate than it’d ever been. There was no sign that God had filled it, or their nation, with His glorious presence again. Israel was still subject to the whim of any passing power; their life grew ever harder, not easier, it seemed; and the way that they treated God and one another reflected their anger and lack of hope. What Malachi offered them was God’s view of what these letters spelled; and it was very different phrase. Read the detail for yourself; even though it will be no surprise and nothing new. Malachi said that this mess was all because they had turned away from God!

The rest of God’s message through Malachi was a call to re-turn to Him. And haven’t we heard that before time and again throughout this series? The exact shape of how that’s required varies according to the people’s different circumstances; just as it also does for ours, of course. But the message time and again is to put right what we’re getting wrong; and to trust in God for what He is going to do. That may, it will, even, be different to what we’d perhaps expect: God’s message through Malachi is that there will be a burning purifying, of fire and raw bleach, to make His people fit for God again. And while they waited (and waited; and waited – though they didn’t know that was what it would be; for 400+ years!) they were to live right: for God and for each other.

There’s another whistle-stop tour through a book that bears in-depth study and preaching, I realise. As ever, I’ll encourage you to study it yourself: to take responsibility for how you listen to and live for God. We all each responsible for that, of course; and Sundays can only ever be a tiny part of it. It’s how we live day in, and day out, when nobody else is watching, that truly counts. If we’ve learned one thing from this series – though I’m sure that we’ve learned a shed-full, in fact – it’s that. God isn’t fooled by our best, or worst, efforts to make it look different to the way that it is. Whatever we may declare the letters spell out, God sees and knows the reality; and it matters. It matters: He cares; and He is in the process of sorting it, and us, out.

Now I realise that it’s notoriously difficult to try and draw too many conclusions from a series such as this. It has gone over such wide and varied ground; and the contexts have all been so very different to our own. My hope is that throughout it God has been speaking to us individually week by week, in the ways that we have each needed to hear. But to try and draw some wider, more corporate conclusions, here is what I’ve heard and seen over these 3 months. First and foremost I’d say that it is indeed God who has brought us to this place where we are now. I believe that we’ve been affirmed in getting to it by listening to what He wants, by putting Him first, and by being intentional and determined about doing that. We’ve worked hard at keeping God first, and at keeping on going when things haven’t been easy or quick. And God truly has honoured that; He has blessed both it, and us: plenty; and yet where we are now is still only because of His grace.

The message to us going forward is equally simple I’d say: keep on going! It’s not like we’ve already got to the end of the journey, so much as to the beginning of the next stage of it. It is so exciting that the Discovery report in particular scopes out the in-principle ways forward for that. The call to be God’s blessing to this community is one that fits very well with the message of these prophets. It’s about being outward-looking; loving; compassionate; caring about justice, in His name in this place; and that’s all based on keeping God first. And lots of us are going to have to turn, or re-turn, to the Lord, in all sorts of ways to make that happen. It’s not going to be easy or quick; we are going to have to see the letters form different words and phrases; and that is going to be life-changing for us: personally and corporately. The message of the prophets, not least of Malachi, as we head into this new phase is: hear the voice of God; and obey it. So is that an in-principle decision that you are willing to take today? If so, get ready to live it, because God will take you at your word if you take Him at His: and so let’s pray that we will do.