Today’s Scripture Reading (July 30,
2014): Malachi 3 & 4
We are not a
people of great patience. Every day, if we tune in to any kind of media, we are
serenaded with a tune of how we can own now, but pay later. To a great extent
our economic structure is built around the idea of not waiting. So we are
willing to pay much more for things we want (a cost that is often hidden in
interest charges or miscellaneous fees) as long as we can have the items now.
We have come to believe that this is not only normal, but that it is our right.
In fact, if everyone in the cultural west were to decide that they would save
for the things that they want – which is exactly the advice that most financial
advisors have for us for our own financial well-being, the great economic
wheels would slow almost to a standstill. The extremely rich of our nations are
tremendously grateful – at least they should be - that most of us are willing
to sacrifice our own financial well-being so that they can live free and easy
with more money than they know what to do with. Of course, we would never
phrase it that way. We would simply say that we work hard and deserve to buy
now and pay later. We simply deserve not having to wait – and therefore to live
in semi-poverty.
So maybe it
is appropriate that the Hebrew Bible closes on a note of waiting. For the
Christian, the words of Malachi are the final words God speaks for four hundred
years. It is the beginning of the silence of God, a silence that will not be
broken until the birth of Jesus Christ. Now we begin our wait.
Malachi says
that God is going to send a forerunner before the Messiah will come. The
forerunner will be Elijah. Elijah is a significant prophet because he
ministered in dark and turbulent times. He was hunted by the authorities, the
king wished him dead – the king did not really believe that God even existed
and had gone off to worship the deities of his wife and her people - and yet
none of this stopped the prophet from speaking the words that God had commanded
him to speak. And so Malachi signals that when the Messiah comes, it will be a
similar time – a time when prophets will not be honored, a time when even the king
will not be a believer in God. And so the people started a practice, because of
these words, to set an extra seat and an extra place setting at their tables
during the Passover, believing that this might be the year that Elijah would
come.
Four hundred
years after Malachi spoke these words, Elijah came. Only we called him John the
Baptist, a cousin of Jesus and the one who by his own testimony God had sent to
prepare the people for the Messiah who was destined to follow him. And it
should not be a surprise that when Jesus asked his disciples who the people
said that he was, that the disciples responded that some believe that you are
Elijah. But then Jesus asked the disciples who they believed him to be, it was Peter
that responded – you are the Christ, the Messiah; the one who we have been
waiting for.
Finally, the
wait was over!
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 1
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