Pew Sheet, Sunday, 8th December 2024, The Second Sunday of Advent
You know it is getting close to Christmas when the lectionary starts to include Old Testament texts which have found their way into common consciousness or parlance in the arts and other cultural artefacts which we cannot help but to associate with the Christmas season. Not least amongst these are the words which are spoken by the prophet Malachi in today’s reading, which we find in Part I, Scene 2 of Handel’s great masterpiece, ‘Messiah’. In Messiah, the phrase is ‘But who may abide the day of his coming’, the word abide being translated as ‘endure’ in newer versions of our Bibles, though it is clear that both the Biblical and Handelian texts both refer to the Messiah as one who will come to refine or ‘purify’ God’s people so that their worship will be worthy of God, and they will be released from God’s judgement. As with Handel’s oratorio, the central message of Malachi’s writings is that God will redeem his people through the gift of a Messiah who will purify them from their sins and make them worthy to be God’s people once more.
Malachi was writing after the majority of those taken into captivity in Babylon had been allowed to return to their homeland in Judah by Cyrus the Great and had rebuilt Solomon’s temple and its environs to the best of their ability at the same time, or perhaps a few years before Nehemiah returned to restore the walls of Jerusalem to keep both the city and its newly repaired temple safe. He was sent to call the people and their priests, whose fidelity to the Law and to the worship of God in the temple was already on the wane only a few years after their return from Babylon where they had lamented, yearned, and wept for the loss of the temple and the worship of God which it afforded them. Within a few short years of their glorious return, they were in danger of forgetting the call of God on their lives as they became absorbed by the petty concerns, worries, and selfish desires and behaviours which their comfortable lives under the unusually peaceable, wise, and prosperous governance of their Persian rulers had brought them. Malachi then, was sent to call both the people and their priests back to the Lord, and to remind them of the Messiah they could expect to come if they would but heed God’s commandments as he had asked them to do; and be more attentive to their religious and moral
duties required of them by the Law of Moses.
The name Malachi means ‘messenger’ for that is what Malachi was, and like John the Baptist, he was one who pointed the people towards the coming of the promised Messiah,, which is why his book bridges the four or five hundred year gap between the Old and New Testaments so effectively. Where Malachi ends, John the Baptist picks up that same message, for even though they lived centuries apart, their message is a similar one, and refers to the very same Messiah that each expected to come. The only difference between them of course, is that John lived to see the Messiah in the flesh before he died, but other than that, he might just as easily have used Malachi’s words rather than those of Isaiah when calling the people to repent and prepare for the coming of the Messiah by being baptised in the Jordan river which is where the Messiah is finally revealed.
Our readings today remind us of the continuity between the prophets of the Old and New Testaments, for Simeon and Anna, John the Baptist, Elizabeth Mary’s cousin, and even Mary herself were prophets in their own right, recognising and discerning the arrival of God’s Messiah in their midst and being obedient to the role which God had ordained that each should play in his arrival or coming. It is a wonderful testimony to their faith that they had not lost hope in the many centuries which had elapsed between the Old and New Testaments when many of their contemporaries had given up on the idea of the Messiah ever arriving, and had already in some cases, started to embrace the worship and practices of their overlords, as Herod himself had done when he allowed the worship of a statue of Caesar in his new temple which, for all its glory, was a pale imitation of the old in much the same way that our own church buildings are worthless to us unless Jesus is present in their midst as the only and sole object of our worship.
Collect
Almighty God, purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again
as judge and saviour we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.
Malachi 3:1-4
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. 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; 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. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Philippians 1:3-11
I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 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. 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 defence and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.
And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
Luke 3:1-6
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 was the ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 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.
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;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’
Post Communion Prayer
O Father in heaven, who sent your Son to redeem the world,
and will send him again to be our judge: give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming that when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This week’s events
Monday
Bell Ringing Practice, 7.30pm in St Laurence. Contact Jan on 07835 461361.
Tuesday
Zoom Morning Prayer at 9am ID: 748 9970 4493 Password: Trinity or contact Didier on [email protected]
Daytime Bible Study Group (2nd and 4th Tuesdays), contact Paula on 07803 942 687 for more information.
Evening House-group contact Jo on 07803 942 687 for more information.
Wednesday (Ember Day)
Morning Coffee from 10.00-11.45 in the St Laurence Rooms.
Midweek Holy Communion at 12.00 noon, St Laurence Church (Canon Alan)
Thursday
Daytime Homegroup, contact Jo on 07803 942 687 for more information.
Friday (Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304; Ember Day)
Junior Choir at 6.30pm, followed by full Choir Practice at 7.30pm.
Advance Notice of Christmas Services
Sunday 15th December
- Family Nativity Service, 09.30am at St Laurence.
- Nine Lessons and Carols, 5pm at St Mary’s Addington.
Sunday 22nd December
- Nine Lessons and Carols, 6pm at St Laurence.
- Nine Lessons and Carols, 6pm at St James’.
Tuesday 24th December
- Candlelit Nativity Service with Christingles, 3pm at St Laurence.
- Candlelit Nativity Service with Christingles, 4.30pm at St James’.
- Benefice Midnight Mass, 11pm at St Laurence.
Wednesday 25th December
- Christmas Day Celebration, 9.30am, St Laurence.
- Christmas Day Celebration, 11.00am at St James’.