The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
The reading from Malachi sounds very much like our own times. We continually hear people commenting that God is a figment of our imagination, that we should live for the pleasure and profit of the moment, and that all the "old-fashioned" customs and rules of life that shaped the way of living of our parents and their parents are unnecessary and irrelevant. Our friends tell us that we might as well miss church on Sunday and go to a picnic or a bowling tournament because, after all, pleasure is more important to them than God is. People think that a family party or shopping trip is more important than worshiping God and receiving the Sacraments. Many do not believe in God at all. And many folks really don't care if they harm others or ignore the pain and need of others...they just want to make a good profit and have a good time, and if the apartments for the elderly or the poor are pulled down to make a new golf course, so what?
Yes, we understand what God is saying to Malachi.
Jesus' answer to his disciples who asked him about the end of the world, the Day of the Lord, is similar. In fact, Jesus' description of the terrible things that will happen during the chaos and upsets of the Last Days, when good and evil come to an outright war, sounds very much like the descriptions we have heard of life in Communist Russia and China during the Cold War years. Family members betrayed one another, everyone was out for what they could get...just like in the days of Malachi. Good people who get in the way of corrupt government or companies that are trying to make big profits, get put in jail or have other problems that keep them quiet so the corrupt leaders can get on with whatever they want to do. And it even seems that nature is getting into the act, with hurricanes,
volcanoes erupting, floods and wild fires and droughts making terrible problems for people in
different places.
So what are we going to do, with all these things happening all around the world? Terrorism, corruption, bad weather, civil war, economic problems...we have them all now. What are we going to do about it?
The reading from Malachi makes it clear that one of the most important things we can do is
respect God and live according to his law. That means a big change in life-styles for many people of this generation, who grew up ignoring God and his law.
Paul's letter to the church in Thessalonica gives us more help. First, he says, we have to understand that while God will help us, we must do our share. Part of our share is keeping God's law, of course. But there's more. We need to work at living a good life, work at helping others, work at making the world a better place. This is a difficult idea for many people. We all have a lot of "labor-saving" appliances. We want to be able to sit in our easy chair and watch TV while the dishwasher does the dishes and the washer and dryer take care of the laundry. We don't want to work at growing food, so we call an order to a market or a restaurant that will deliver to our front door. We don't go out and pick up wood for a cooking fire; we turn the knob to get the gas or electric stove to start cooking, with an automatic timer to turn the oven on or off at the right time. We like to be lazy, and, Paul says, that's a "no-no" for Christians. If we are honest, most of us will admit that we use our "lazy" time for things that are not good for us...eating too much and getting fat, getting drunk, wasting money on gambling when we should be using it to help the poor, and so forth.
Paul also recommends that we stop meddling in other peoples' business and pay attention to our own. One reason that our country is in such a bad position today is that we keep meddling in other countries' business, starting wars here, trying to influence an election there, using gifts of food and money and weapons to get other countries to do what we want. We do the same thing with people in our family or in our group of friends: "If you will drop these clothes off at the cleaners' for me, I will take your kids to the circus." Paul thinks we should do our own work and pay attention to our own business, not other peoples' business. And of course it is part of our own business to follow God's law and obey him, because he is our father.
Jesus also has some advice for us. He wants us to be strong in our faith, strong in our obedience to God's law. Even if we get handed over to non-believers, God will help us and tell us what to say. But if we are strong in our faith and our obedience to God, we will also be strong enough to resist the people who follow the Devil, the prince of evil.
You see that the advice we get from the prophet Malachi (which comes straight from God), the advice we get from St. Paul, and the advice we get from Jesus are all very much in conflict with the way most people think and feel today. And that is the whole point of the problem. The war between good and evil, between God and the Devil, has already been won by God. Jesus won that war when he died on the cross and rose again, proving that all the forces of hell cannot get rid of God the Son, or keep God's people down. If we really believe that, we will accept and follow the advice today's Bible readings give us: love the Lord, follow God's Law, work at living as Jesus taught us, and grow each day to be stronger in our faith and our obedience to God. Then when the end of the world comes, and the war between good and evil is fought, we will find ourselves on the side of good, the good God; and we will go home with him to live in happiness and holiness forever. Amen.
