Sermon for the Presentation of Our Lord — Malachi 3:1–4, Luke 2:22–40
Proclaimed at Faith Lutheran Church, Mount Penn, PA
As I’ve been waiting for my time here to begin, I’ve been substitute teaching in the public schools nearby. I was eager, at first, to work in Hamburg. It’s where I grew up, and at the very least, I wanted to see the new high school, which was rebuilt shortly after I graduated. So a few weeks ago, I finally grabbed a half day in the chemistry lab. I’m not sure I’ll do it again.
Don’t get me wrong. The teacher was well-prepared and her students clearly love her. I had fun with the subject, and the students were easy to handle (though you’ll learn from my children’s sermons that cannot control children of any age.) But while the building is different on the outside, it’s much the same on the inside, and being there again after almost twenty-five years brought up a lot of feelings.
To describe myself as a lousy student would be kind. I hated school, and I hated my life there. Mostly because I didn’t care much. The academics were really easy for me, and I was one of those kids who could pass all his classes without trying. So I didn’t. I used my little energy trying to stay as invisible as possible. I was overweight and out of shape, I was smart and nerdy, I liked to read and didn’t care about other students’ usual interests. I was, in short, a target for the few bullies that were around, and an ignored social outcast from everyone else. I used every open period I could to hide out in the library, or the band room, or the physics lab—anywhere I could escape the boredom of regular life.
It’s become one of those “if only I knew then what I know now” parts of my life (not that I’m really old enough yet for that.) But it’s funny: walking through those hallways again, I felt sad. Not because of the misery I remember. Sad because of the wasted opportunity. I would love to have my days of old back, to do them better, to make good use of my former years.
If that’s how I think of my teenage years, how much more for those days of old in the Church. Almost everyone who goes into public ministry has a love for the Church that drives them to it. The Church has been important in our lives, enough to devote ourselves to its care. And I’ll say very quickly that this is also true for the faithful people of God who have been called to other vocations. You have a job, and on top of it, you volunteer for your congregation and the whole kingdom of God—sometimes with greater commitment than anything else in your lives. We all have a passion for God’s work here that forces us to labor for its future, usually because of what it meant to us in the past.
I’ve only been officially working for Faith Lutheran for two days, and I’ve already heard the sadness you have over the gap between that past and the expected future. We remember when the sanctuary was full every Sunday. When we could pay an experienced pastor full-time to lead our ministry. When this place was the center of a busy, active community. And we look around, and wonder what could possibly have happened, and we think we know what is next.
It also sounds like you already know how normal that is. The church is declining in membership everywhere. There has been a major change in the world’s values, and religious practice is no longer on the list. That is most true here in the West, but after a year in southeast Asia, I can tell you it’s true there as well. When we look to the future, it’s painful, and we cannot help but miss the days of old and the former years.
The prophet Malachi ends today’s reading by thinking about those “days of old” and “former years.” He is worried about the problems Israel is facing while rebuilding after being exiled to Babylon. People are home in the land, the temple and city are mostly rebuilt… but everything is going wrong. Poverty and hunger are widespread, the nation is still ruled by a larger empire. Where is God? Why isn’t God fixing this?
People are so poor that they can’t afford to give proper sacrifices. Deformed animals are brought to the temple, the runts of the litter, the only things people can afford as they struggle to feed their families. And the priests, whose job it is to make sure that sacrifices are proper and clean, are ignoring the rules. But what else can they do?
In his first two chapters, Malachi speaks out against this. People’s sacrifices are not offered in a holy way, he says. And on top of it, their lives are not lived in a holy way. They themselves are as unclean as their offerings. Change that, Malachi says, and God will work once again among you.
But you and I know that no matter how good we are, no matter how holy we try to be, we constantly fail. And Malachi must know that as well. “See,” he says, “I’m sending my messenger.” And not just any messenger, but God himself. “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” If God has been staying away because of all this unholiness, Malachi says, don’t worry. Before you know it, God will come.
And when God comes, it will be painful, horrible, difficult to endure, impossible to stand. God’s presence will be like the kind of fire that burns so hot, it can melt the impurities from metal. Or it will be like fuller’s soap, like the chemicals a dry cleaner uses to obliterate the dirt from cloth. Following God isn’t comfortable. If it is, we’re doing it wrong. The evil in us is torn away, and while that sounds good, we discover that we love our evil, we cling to it, it has become part of us, and it wounds us badly to have it removed. It scours, it poisons, it is painful beyond imagining. We can never go back to what we were before God purifies us.
But though it’s terribly painful, it will also bring us joy. In the Gospel reading, Simeon and Anna, two faithful elders, are in the temple when Jesus’ parents come to present him to God. Both recognize him as the long promised Messenger, the Messiah, the Lord who has come to his temple. I have always imagined eighty-four year old Anna shouting and dancing in the temple like a crazy person. And Simeon’s words show that he knows the terror that will come when Jesus is opposed and the thoughts of many are revealed, but he also proclaims Jesus as the salvation that comes for gentiles and Israelites alike.
Which is a shock to anyone reading the book of Luke. Right here, already in chapter 2, Luke says that the good news isn’t for just Israel. It’s for outsiders, too. And vice-versa, something we forget most of the time. God’s salvation isn’t just for us gentiles, it’s for his own first people, in their own way, too. God’s salvation for all isn’t like we we want, and it isn’t like we expect, not in any way. But then, Malachi didn’t promise us things would be like they used to be. He just says that they would “be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.”
There will be joy. But God knows that something MUST change for us to have the joy for which we are made. We cannot continue as we have been. We must grow, we must be cleansed, we must be made holy. This is what Jesus is about. He comes to show us God’s presence at Christmas. But he stays to teach us a new way of life, to proclaim repentance and new life to everyone, and finally, to offer himself as the perfect and holy sacrifice, better than any of those old blemished animals, he who is so holy that he will make us holy, too.
After my day at Hamburg, I got to wondering what made me feel so sad. I figured it out. The walls were the same, the rooms were the same, and they brought up unhappy memories, but that wasn’t it. The long list of student clubs on the bulletin board was different. And so was the way students interacted. And the creativity of the teachers’ methods. The place looked the same, but it was a whole lot “holier,” let’s say, than back in my day.
Perhaps, if I’d been raised in that high school instead, my life would have been a lot different. But to be fair, miserable as I was back then, I’m very happy with my life now. I’ve had a lot of adventures, and while my future—and ours as a congregation—is uncertain, living it in the presence of God is sure to be wonderful, whatever is next.
That is my job as your transitional interim pastor. I do not bring expectations or agendas with me, because that would impose something from outside that might not delight God. Instead, my goal is to help us, together as a faith community, discern what God wants for our future, and then begin to move in that direction. I have no idea what that might be, and as faithful followers of Christ I ask you to let go of your own expectations as well. I’m sorry to say that when we find it, it will NOT look like the days of old and the former years. But it will be joyful, and it will be holy. Not through our efforts, but through the presence of the messenger of the covenant, the Lord who is here in his temple. God has made us holy. Let’s encounter the new days and years ahead, knowing that whatever happens, God’s holiness is with us, and that as we delight him, and he will delight us. Amen.