Second Sunday of Advent 2021

Malachi 3:1-4

3:1 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.

3:2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap;

3:3 he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

3:4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 1:68-79

1:68 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

1:69 He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David,

1:70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

1:71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

1:72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant,

1:73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us

1:74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear,

1:75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

1:76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

1:77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.

1:78 By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,

1:79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Philippians 1:3-11

1:3 I thank my God every time I remember you,

1:4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you,

1:5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.

1:6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

1:7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

1:8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

1:9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight

1:10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,

1:11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6

3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,

3:2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

3:3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,

3:4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

3:5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;

3:6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

“Righteousness” is a theme this Advent. Have you noticed that? Malachi says Israel will be refined so it can make sacrifices to the Lord in righteousness. Paul tells the church in Phillipi they will produce a harvest of righteousness. And Zechariah’s Benedictus, echoing Malachi, claims that Israel will be brought into righteousness and holiness before God by the one coming to bring Israel salvation. But the focus of these readings is John the Baptizer. This is, after all, the Second Sunday of Advent. We have to prepare the way. And preparing the way is not done in righteousness; when it is prepared, it will produce righteousness. Our righteousness; before the Lord.

 This Sunday in Advent, not surprisingly, is traditionally given over to John the Baptist.  Malachi says here the messenger of the Lord, traditionally understood by Christians to be John the Baptizer, will be like a refining fire, and burn away all that is not silver and gold.  It's a frightening image, the image of fire; but it's a reassuring one, too.  John, the Lord's messenger, won't transmute base elements into gold, a la alchemy; rather, John will refine the people, and reveal the gold and silver that they are.  And by refining, what will he remove?  Malachi told us that, too; earlier this week:

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

We're not going to have the "Harry Potter" fundamentalist discussion here, so we'll just pass over "sorcerers" for now, and focus on adulterers and perjurers.  There is actually a similiarity in all three, outside of fiction (I have no problem with J.K. Rowling's works, IOW):  all three exploit others.  Sorcerers make grand claims of power, but it's all illusion and misdirection (and lies).  Adulterers subvert the social order and misuse others (wives and women, primarily; who would have been "weaker" in Malachi's society, but that just meant the burden was on the men to see they weren't abused and misused, and I don't mean just physical abuse when I use those terms).  Same is true of perjurers, who lie to the community, the group, to everyone else; for their own benefit.  If you prefer a more secular context, adulterers were the problem Ovid was writing about; and perjurers would be the problem of Iago, for Othello.  Both classes bring calamity to individuals and societies.

Those three categories stand close by "those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice."  There's more than a little relevance to current events there.  Again, Malachi is speaking of women, whose protection under the law comes primarily through men (a problematic situation at best, but let that pass a moment).  Men were then obligated to protect them, and those who failed to do so earned the ire of the God of Abraham.  We like to think we're much beyond such concerns, but the Supreme Court this week spent three hours discussing the precedent of Roe and Casey, and as was pointed out, no justice spent much time, if any, discussing women and the protection of their rights in these matters.  You can replace "widows" with "women" in Malachi's statement if you like; I won't object.  And in Texas, immigrants released into the United States by the federal government have been arrested by Greg Abbott's DPS, and held on trespassing charges.  Many are spending months in jail awaiting a hearing date, because the system is ad hoc and can't handle the number of defendants.  But they are being held, anyway.  We are depriving the foreigners of justice; but we are a "Christian nation."  All the supporters of Greg Abbott say so, anyway.

This is not sinners in the hands of an angry God.  This is God decrying injustice and unfairness and abuse and mistreatment of others, by....well, us.  And John's message is the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of our sins.  But that salvation is physical, not metaphysical; and it is here and now, right now, as it was then.  Because if the salvation of God can't be seen, if it can only be described, only conjectured, only be a concept, what salvation is it?

Righteousness is not an abstraction. Righteousness is how we treat others. Society puts obligations on us: responsibilities, duties, care for others. If I see a child about to run in front of a car, I should move to protect her, not get out my camera. If I see an old woman struggling with a door, I should help her, not push her out of my way. These things are not complicated, we understand them as simple human decency. Sometimes that’s all righteousness is.

Perhaps right now we are being refined. Perhaps right now we are being reduced, again, to gold and silver, to purer states. The surest way to upset people is to force them to give up their selfishness, their overweening self-regard. When people come to the wilderness to listen to John preaching repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sin, they ask him what they must do. John tells them to treat each other with justice. Justice does not come from a legal system. Justice comes from how we live with each other.  Righteousness does not come from moral authority; it comes from how we treat each other.  John tells his followers to show compassion to anyone who needs clothes, help, food. He tells them to deal fairly with each other, not taking advantage of whatever power you have over them.  In John's time it was Roman soldiers extorting extra money for themselves in making people pay Roman taxes.  In our day?  It's "civil forfeiture" by police officers. The more things change....

The salvation of God is here to be seen now.  It is not coming, it is not waiting for clouds of glory or the final trumpet or the seas to boil.  It is already here; it has already come.  It can already be seen.  Do we have eyes?  Do we see?

That's the continuing question of Advent.  That is why we have to prepare ourselves, again, for what comes. Perhaps if the refining fire makes us rigtheous, we will see and do justice.  There's no reason for us not to.  We are pure, like silver, like gold.  It is just the dross we need to dare burn away.  John told us, and Malachi told us, and Paul told us:  it is just as simple as what you do.