Categories: sermons
Date: 08 December 2012 20:29:32
The readings for my sermon tomorrow are taken from Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 1:68-79
Sermon - Preparing the Way
I want to take you to a rural land where people are struggling to survive. They are scared of attack and so many prefer to live in the countryside where they can hide rather than in a city where they could be victims of a siege or all out attack.
These people who are living in a small hill town and some surrounding villages are hungry and struggling, living on the edge between life and death. Recent harvests have been poor and swarms of locusts have attacked their largely barren and uncultivated land.
They have somewhere small to worship but it's a sad reminder of how things used to be. Back in the day before their ancestors were taken away into exile there was a beautiful temple which was large and ornate, there's isn't.
The people stick to worshipping the true God rather than alternatives, but when they go the temple it's largely out of tradition rather than any sense of engaging with a real, living God. It's certainly not the priority it once was.
They are asking what the minimum amount of time and money they could get away with spending on their faith is.
Their morals are beginning to fall too, it seemed where one generation had asked why bother with God? the next is asking why be good? Divorce and adultery are rising and there are a large number of destitute women who have no welfare state to fall back on.
It's been 100 years since their people returned from exile but they don't have a king or a palace, although Zerubbabel their governor comes from the same genealogical line as David one of their previous kings.
So they're disappointed, disillusioned and even despairing wondering if there was any point to it all and if they wouldn't have been better off if their ancestors had stayed in Babylon.
I don't know about you but I can hear the echoes of their experience in some of our own, particularly as we live in a post-Christendom world where church isn't what it once was to people.
But this is not a contemporary situation I'm describing. It was the world which the unknown writer of Malachi was living in.
In our old testament reading he tells them that God is preparing to send a messenger who will prepare the way before the Messiah they are waiting for, who will suddenly appear.
The writer warns them that they will be called to account because this Messiah is going to act as a purifier who will act to cleanse the people and particularly the priests who are the descendents of Levi. He is going to take the raw material and bring out the preciousness from the dirt and nonsense surrounding it turning their worship and lives back into something beautiful which will be just as pleasing to God as anything which went before.
Then it all goes quiet, very quiet. We don't have anything recorded for 400 years. God seems to have gone for the silent option - deciding that he's had enough and is taking time out from these people.
Except it hasn't life has gone on and the people have continued worshiping their God, however formally and out of a sense of duty that's been. He has quietly spoken to some of them over the years, faithful people like Anna and Simeon who we hear about later in this Christmas season, people who are quietly waiting. It's just that there is no big engagement with his people over that time.
The land in which the silence is broken is different to the one 400 years before but there are similarities. The people are still struggling only this time it's not poor harvests it's occupation by a foreign power which is their main concern. They as many others at that time have been taken over by the Romans.
However, there is hope somewhere within that community the light of individual and corporate hope which is found in their history and faith continues.
Zachariah's prophecy, a breaking of the silence, comes from this place of hope in the mist of fear, desperation and being caught up in the routine of the restricting ritual. He was a Levite, a priest he had been bought up to continue the faith and ritual. He had an in-depth knowledge of his people's history and faith. He conducted symbolic acts on behalf of his community, he was charged with keeping an important part of their communal identity in place during a period of political and military occupation. As a Levite this sense of what it meant to be a priest and the importance of that role for the wider community would have been handed down through the generations.
He also gives this prophecy from a place of watching and listening both to God and those around him.
Throughout Elizabeth's pregnancy he had been unable to speak and as a result his other senses would have heightened. There is a sense what pours out when his tongue is freed is all those thoughts he has been quietly and silently mulling over with God.
But he is not simply giving a prophecy, he is addressing a community who have heard through gossip what has been happening to his family and who have become fearful of the new born child John.
What Zachariah is doing within this prophecy is addressing them in that context. He is seeking to allay the fear of his friends and neighbours by pointing them back to God and putting it in the wider context.
In the mist of their fear he is bringing them hope as well as acting as a signpost.
Zachariah has a message to proclaim which can be seen as both political and spiritual. This prophecy is a breaking not only of his own silence but of Gods apparent silence.
He is telling them that the time has come and God is going to fulfil his promise to them by sending the Messiah.
He points them back to their history here, not to tie them down with more tradition but to free them by showing that God has not forgotten them and is fulfilling all those all sayings in the scripture.
He then points to his own son and explains the role John is to play. He proclaims that this little baby is going to be a prophet too. God is going to use him to prepare the way for the Messiah, just as Malachi had spoken about.
He recognises that his son is special but that his role is to prepare the way for somebody who is going to be able to do more. He is proclaiming that his son is going to prepare the way for a liberator who God is going to use to make life better for these people. Somebody who is going to bring life and light to a people who are living in darkness and the constant fear of death.
The silence is broken through a message of hope.
So what does this all have to do with us today? Surely these prophecies were about preparing the way for Jesus 2000 years ago, they were about what Jesus would come and do then for a people most of us don't belong to. They are preparing the way for the first Christmas, preparing the way for the ministry of Jesus, preparing the way for the road to the cross and preparing the way for Jesus resurrection but they weren't preparing the way for us now - were they?
Well, on one hand they were prophecies God was giving which related to Jesus first coming as a baby in Judea. The event we celebrate in a few weeks. But on the other hand they can I believe help us in the here and now, especially as people waiting for Jesus return and the fulfilment of history.
We are people who share some things in common with the people to whom the message in Malachi was given and to those in Zachariah's time.
Whilst in the UK today we are not living in a subsistence society where a bad harvest can wipe out our economy we are living in increasingly uncertain and precarious times. The level of fear amongst many people is rising as uncertainty about the future grows and many people are finding life increasingly hard. The coverage around and reaction to the Chancellors financial statement we've seen in the media this week has reflected this to some extent.
Whilst faith is vibrant and living in some people and places the truth is in many other people and places there is a feeling of disillusionment about the church. We are living in a Post-Christian society where people increasingly feel disconnected from organised religion and morals in society have appeared to changed reflecting this.
Within churches there are lots of people who are continuing with the ritual but have lost that spark and hope they used to have. They have a tendency to look back at how it used to be and feel a sense of loss and slight despair. They continue out of a sense of duty but little more than that.
God doesn't call us to look back in that way though. He calls us to recognise and value the faith which our ancestors had but not to dwell on it in a wistful way.
We are called to be prepared and have that mixture of hope and fear we find in Zachariah's time.
The bible tells us that Jesus will return and we have to be prepared. Luke 21 verses 25 - 28 tell us “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
This passage is one which people get very caught up in trying to interpret but the message of it is the same as the message which we find in Malachi and in the earlier passage in Luke we need to be patient and prepared. Christ will return and we need to be ready and expectant for it.
How do we prepare then? Is it by buying more and more stuff, or by putting together bunkers full of supplies for when disaster strikes as some people do?
No it's about carrying on as faithful people being ready to listen and come back to God. Worshipping out of conviction rather than routine. It's about taking seriously the four callings of the calling of the Methodist Church to respond to the gospel of God's love in Christ and to live out its discipleship in worship and mission through worship, learning and caring, service and evangelism.
This morning I want to end by encouraging you to see yourselves as faithful Zachariah's, people who are still here, still worshipping and still serving. People who are playing your part in the outworking of Gods grace through the big picture of history. People who are being refined and purified.
People who are being involved in preparing the way. People who have a message of hope to share.
*Key source for Malachi material was Pawson, D, Unlocking the Bible, Collins.