Word to the Wise
Friday, December 24, 2010 - Thursday in the Fourth Week of Advent
[Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24 and Luke 1:57-66]And suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek, and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. Yes, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears: For he is like the refiner's fire, or like the fuller's lye......
One of the nicer "side effects" of the Christmas season is that one hears a lot of Handel's THE MESSIAH! The words from the prophet, Malachi, quoted above are part of one of the great "recitatives and arias" of the oratorio: "But who may abide...." and "And he shall purify.....!" If you have access to this glorious scriptural music, I urge you to take advantage of the opportunity! Neither Malachi nor Handel knew one another, of course, but the two of them are a great team (along with a lot of other scriptural texts) in this musically majestic preaching!
However, we can't let the music take over the message. Malachi means business! The early Christian community saw in Malachi a prefiguring of Jesus' cleansing of the temple! This scripture is paired with the birth of John the Baptist, which gives a stronger flavor to the images: Malachi and John - two prophets with fire in their eyes and thunder in their voices! At the naming of John, the question is: "'What, then,will this child be?' For surely the hand of the Lord was with him." Even if we know the answer to the question because we have the whole story in front of us, we are drawn as ever by the story into the action itself. We can look at the child in the manger and ask the same question! We can ask an additional one as well: "What difference does this child make to me?" AMEN
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