"See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings." (Malachi 4:1-2a)
I know these words can sound scary and threatening, at least the first half of them. But these very same words--even the ominous imagery of a fire that consumes the stubble--are also good news, too. We would do well to sit with them for a bit and let them speak hope to us, rather than rushing off to the more pleasant poetry about the sun rising "with healing in its wings." Even in the fire, there is good news.
So bear with me for a moment as we muster up our courage to jump back into these harsh-sounding words from the last book in our Old Testament, which many of us heard in worship back on Sunday.
The first thing I think we need to get clear on in this passage is how to make sense of this fire and oven business. We are used to hearing fire used as an image of punishment, like in the scenes of Dante's Inferno from the Divine Comedy, where sinners are tormented in flames out of some notion that God needs to inflict a certain amount of pain on people in order for justice to be done. And yeah, if that's what the prophet Malachi were envisioning, I'd be tempted to close up my Bible and go home. But that's a matter of us projecting our own baggage onto the Bible. The way Malachi uses the image of a fire in an oven isn't about punishing or inflicting pain. It's about saying that evil and rottenness will not get the last word.
In Malachi's day, that was a needed word of hope. For people whose parents had lived through the exile in Babylon, it sure seemed like the empires of the day always won. They knew the stories of how their mothers' and fathers' generation had seen the arrogant Babylonians mock the people of Judah, destroy their Temple, and kill their neighbors. Then, when the Babylonians were replaced by the Medes and the Persians, they saw more of the same: arrogance, cruelty, and crookedness from the new conquerors. Malachi might not have known it, but there were more of the same on the horizon, too--the Greeks and the Romans would follow, and they would also have their own peculiar violence and domination. And as Malachi watched the returned exiles try to start their lives over back in Judea and find some version of a "new normal," he is troubled at the signs that the same patterns of greed, crookedness, and corruption will spread to his own neighbors. And in times like that, it can feel like the crooks and the bullies will always win. It looks like nothing will ever thwart them, and that evil will win the day. Honestly, if all you, your parents, and your grandparents had ever seen was one round after another of villainy and brutality, it would be terribly easy to give up hope of things ever getting better. And it would be very tempting to give up on doing good yourself.
But Malachi is given this assurance from God--no, even though it looks like the tyrants and the terrors will last forever, they won't. They think they are immovable and eternal, but their empires will crumble in time, and they will end up in the dustbin of history It's in this context that Malachi warns that "all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble." It's not about God needing to torture people in flames as though God is a celestial sadist; it's about God saying that the "Big Deals" and bullies will not get the last word, and all the empires of history who think they are the be-all-end-all will be reduced to ash. It's a shocking and countercultural word of hope, especially for people who feel like, as Evey says in V for Vendetta, "Every time I've seen the world change, it has been for the worse." Malachi says in response, "No. That's now how it will always be." There will come a point when things are put right, and those who have been stepping on others for so long will be like the chaff used for kindling in the oven. The prophet knows that from the perspective of the present moment, it looks like the meanest, the loudest, and the most arrogant will never be thwarted. But from the vantage point of heaven--from the edge of the eternal, so to speak--cruelty, greed, and pride eventually consume themselves like the proverbial snake eating its own tail. God insists that there will be relief for those who are suffering, and the bullies will at last be put in their place.
In many ways, these words from Malachi are an appropriate prelude for the song of Mary we'll be hearing in just a few weeks, who sings in what we call the Magnificat about God accomplishing exactly what Malachi was talking about. Mary says that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts" and "brought down the powerful from their thrones," while having "lifted up the lowly" and "filled the hungry with good things" (see Luke 1:46-55). Mary dares to say that her baby, still growing in the womb, is the means by which God will at last stop the bullies in their tracks and put the world right again. But in a way, her song only makes sense as the answer to the promise that Malachi raises here. For people who have lived all their lives seeing schemers get away with their scams and pompous blowhards never being taken down a few pegs, Malachi speaks the promise, "It won't always be this way. Evil doesn't always get the last word. God is still committed to restoring everything that is broken, and to thwarting those who cause harm."
If you have ever ached for suffering to be stopped and for those who are hurting others to be restrained, then you can hear Malachi's message as good news. It will not always be this way. The rottenness of the present moment will not last forever. Some days, that's the most we get to keep us going--but that's enough. Sometimes, all we can cling to is the hope that God is not asleep, aloof, or indifferent to the pain of the world, and that God will not let evil get the last word. We still have to make it through the trouble of the present moment, but we do it from a different perspective. We face it with the confidence that we are not alone in this struggle, and God is longing for things to be put right, too. We may not get to see in our lifetimes how accomplishes that restoration--even Malachi didn't get to see the coming of Jesus, whom we Christians are convinced is the key to God's kind of victory against evil. But we do face this day without despair, even in the fire, because we believe that God is not giving up on making the broken whole again.
Maybe that's all we can pray today, but that will have to be enough.
O God, heal what hurts in the world; hold back all those forces that cause harm; and give us the strength to keep going through the troubles of this present moment.
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