Remember the old poem, “There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile…”? Perhaps this weekend’s lessons are all about him–but you and I can listen in, as well. It seems like God is in the restoration business, cleaning up our lives. The texts to be heard at worship serve to remind us that God is at work daily restoring that which was called “Good”.
MALACHI (which means in Hebrew, “my messenger”) is sick and tired of the corruption to be found after the Exiles have returned from Babylon and (finally) rebuilt the Temple. In 3:1-4, he images God as a refiner of precious metals, burning away the superfluous to make the metal true again. Won’t this hurt? Yes, probably…but we don’t need all the trappings of society to be holy. Part of Advent is the expectation that our lives will be purified through God’s graceful presence in the ChristChild.
PHILIPPIANS 1:3-11 is Paul’s introduction to his beloved church in Macedonia. He asks that “your love may overflow more and more…so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.” He tells of the process of purity, which is unreachable by ourselves, given and supervised by the Christ himself. Paul’s encouragement to these ancient saints-in-training comes to the contemporary Church as well: those who hear these words may know that God is nearby to take away our brokenness and burn away our excess baggage.
Which brings us to the message of John the Baptizer as remembered by LUKE in 3:1-6. Recalling words of the Prophet Isaiah, Luke allegorizes John as “crying out in the wilderness”, i.e. the corruption of God’s Plan. The Wilderness is where we can see God–without the bright lights, the tall buildings, the business of each day. The People of (society’s) Exile are called across the desert from the delights of Babylon (see Revelation and also O. Henry) to reclaim the mislaid promise. “Prepare the way of the Lord…make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
Being refined is usually a painful process. We’ve accumulated lots of toys and other armor-scales which may or may not identify us. Yet in the long term, these extras mean nothing. God’s intent is to burn away the Stuff which separates us from the Kingdom of Heaven, and to stand tall in the nakedness in which we were made. Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Please join us to be confronted by Scriptural texts to be read on the upcoming weekend; every Tuesday at horacebrownking.com
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