“How shall we return?”

             It’s one of twenty-two questions asked in the 55 verse book we know as Malachi—“How shall we return?” The question assumes that two who were once together are now apart.  Two who were once soul mates have separated.  “How shall we return?”

In the movie, Cold Mountain, Nicole Kidman plays a southern belle transplanted to North Carolina just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Jude Law plays her love interest.  Nicole, a preacher’s daughter, falls for Jude, who goes off to war only weeks after they meet.  The two exchange tin-types and a farewell kiss, which is also their first kiss.  The two hardly know each other, but they are madly in love. The movie spins around their separation and a longed for return. Time and again, in her dreams, Nicole cries out to her beloved: “Return to me. Return to me.”

Malachi describes togetherness in domestic terms—a son who knows his father’s love and honors him or a servant who respects his master and keeps household rules.  Malachi also defines togetherness in the language of covenant:  “my covenant [with Israel] was a covenant of life and well-being.”  Covenant keeping, in Malachi’s view, was marked by “reverence” and “awe” renewed by worship.  The covenant kept resulted in care for widows and orphans, fair wages for hired workers and welcome for immigrants.  The covenant kept resulted in marital fidelity, truth telling, and fully paid church tithes. But there is a breach in this covenant, a separation has occurred.  One party has failed.  Two who were once together as father and son, master and servant, have been torn apart.  The prophet knows but one thing: “Return to me.”  For Malachi, that is God’s constant plea to his people: “Return to me.”  But the people cry, “How shall we return?”

 

We don’t know much about Malachi.  We’re not even sure if there was a prophet by that name. The name Malachi means “my messenger.”  The title of the book is taken from chapter three, which we read this morning:  “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me.” 

Scholars believe Malachi was written sometime after the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple and sometime before Ezra and Nehemiah.  Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587.  Jews were taken into Exile and lived for a generation in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates.  When Persia conquered Babylon in 538 the Persian Emperor, Cyrus, set the Jews free.  When they returned the Jews rebuilt the Temple destroyed by the Babylonians.  While a pale shadow of Solomon’s Temple, worship at least resumed.  The Temple was rebuilt between 522 and 515.  Malachi dates some fifty years after reconstruction at a time when, in the words of one scholar, “[Israel] was a minor administrative unit in the vast Persian Empire.” 

To put it another way, Malachi lived at a time when nothing much was happening in Israel—not good, bad, or otherwise.  There were no great enemies to defend against, no persecutions to endure, no great things like Temple-building to achieve; in fact, no one noticed or cared what Israel did or didn’t do.  The people of the covenant had ceased to matter.  And they knew it. That knowledge gave rise to profound questions, among them:  “How have you loved us? Where is the God of justice?  What do we profit by keeping his commands?” 

Malachi was confronted by a people in deep spiritual despair: “It is vain to serve God,” they protested, which made the question: “How shall we return?” all the more impossible.  If it’s vain to serve God, why bother with returning?  Why return when it won’t make any difference?  Why return when God doesn’t do anything anyway? It reminds me of a line from the movie 310 to Yuma:  “I’ve been standing on one leg for three years waiting for God to do me a favor and he ain’t listening.”

“How shall we return?”

 

There’s a big blue sign attached to our church:  EXPECT.  Have you noticed it?  It’s kind of hard to miss:  EXPECT.  What do you expect God to do?  What are you waiting on this Advent?  How would you know God acted in your life?  Where is God present?  Does God ever do anything?  Does God ever show up? Or is God, well, is God more like elevator music—you know, there but more like background noise than a real presence?  What do you expect?  Does God ever show up? 

Malachi lived in a time when people had decided that God didn’t or wasn’t going to do much of anything:  “It is vain to serve God.”  That stance does not require a conscious decision. That stance does not even imply disbelief.  In many respects, people in Malachi’s day were thoroughly modern: they believed in God but they also believed God wasn’t going to do much of anything.  They were functional atheists.

Most people today believe in God. Most people believe God exists.  According to surveys, 95% say they believe in God. “Oh yes, I believe in God. You better believe it. I believe in God.”  The question is, “What influence does God actually have in your life?  Does believing in God actually make a difference in how you live?  Does it make any difference in how you spend your money?  Does it make any difference in what you read, in what you put on your body, in what you put in your body, in who you give your body to?  Does believing in God make any difference in what you expect, in how you spend your time, in where you spend your time, in what your dreams are made of, in what you hope for?  So you believe in God, what difference does your faith make?

 

When South Vietnam fell to the communists, people fled the country by any means they could.  Many of you remember the scene at the American embassy in 1975—people grabbing helicopter skids—trying to get out.  One man who stayed behind opened a church. Not long after the fall, Cuong Nguyen started a church in Saigon with 70 members.  Over eight years his church grew to a thousand members. The government noticed.  Nguyen was arrested. His church was closed.  The Vietnamese pastor spent the next 13 months in solitary confinement. He was interrogated every morning and every afternoon.  Each day he was fed two portions of rice and a cup of water.  After four months, his family was allowed to send extra food. After 31 months, his family was finally allowed their first visit—15 minutes, that was it.  Three years later, Nguyen was released.

Nguyen spent six years in that communist prison. While in prison, he led 51 prisoners as well as some guards to Christ. Included was one of the harshest, a guy Nguyen had to eat with every day.  Today, Nguyen is president of a theological college in California which trains Vietnamese Christians for ministry in Australia, Europe, the US, and Vietnam.

Reflecting on his life, Nguyen said, “I have to be where my Lord puts me  . . . instead of where I want to be.  Vietnam under the communists [was] the place God want[ed] me to be.”

Maybe it takes that kind of extreme experience to realize the reality of God.  Or said another way, maybe boredom is faith’s greatest foe.  There is a spiritual lethargy that corrodes souls.  No one seeks that lethargy. Lethargy has a way of finding us.  It creeps in slowly.  Indifference, like rust, is nearly imperceptible, but it soon freezes the soul: “How shall we return?”

I don’t know what triggers lethargy, maybe disappointment, maybe being let down.  Maybe we had our hopes up or thought we’d get a fix to our problems.  Maybe lethargy results from nothing at all.  Nothing is as good a reason for spiritual malaise as anything.  There’s no one thing we can put our finger on—no several things. We simply don’t feel connected to God. We don’t fit in anywhere anymore. So we drift away.  Two who were once together separate.  “How shall we return?” 

That’s the problem with indifference.  We don’t know how to return. Indifference is a strange malady. When you’re indifferent, you don’t have the energy to change, you’re not motivated to change. And what’s worse, you don’t care. It’s not that we are unhappy.  We’re fully capable of being happy and indifferent.  We can be happily indifferent, even proud of our indifference. 

Spiritual lethargy is tricky business.  Indifference convinces us that we don’t need the communion of saints.  Spiritual lethargy convinces us that we don’t need to pray, we don’t need to tithe, we don’t need to change.  We are content with the way we are.  And that’s the problem.  Spiritual indifference makes us immune to repentance. Lethargy basks in contentment. When you’re indifferent you don’t care whether God cares. In fact, indifference suspects God doesn’t care.  If we thought God actually cared or if we thought God was actually going to judge us, or if we felt radically claimed by God’s love, we wouldn’t be indifferent.  We would return.  “How shall we return?”

Indifference is hard to get rid of, impossible almost.  A person who feels guilt, well, that person seeks forgiveness.  A person who feels lost seeks guidance.  A person who feels alone, seeks company.  Even a person who feels hate, knows they need something. But when you’re indifferent, well, you need nothing:  “Me? Who me?  I don’t have any problems. I don’t have any needs. It’s all good. I’m just fine.” 

Indifference is hard to get rid of because when you’re indifferent, you don’t notice your need. And even if you notice your need, you don’t care.  And because you’ve been at it so long and because you’ve gotten so good at it, your conscience is untroubled. “I’m ok.” 

Malachi’s cure for indifference was lye soap; his cure for indifference was a refiner’s fire.  I don’t know what that looks like exactly, but I have a suspicion it begins when we take a long hard look in the mirror. I suspect it begins when we stop beating around the bush about the things in our lives that keep us from following Jesus.  Malachi began with things we don’t like to talk about: church attendance, sexual morality, standing for fair wages, tithing, truth-telling, fear of the Lord.  Malachi preached that there would be a day of reckoning for how we conduct our lives.  Malachi believed that God actually cares how we live. He believed one day God would actually show up.

Of course Malachi could have been wrong.  Maybe the people were right. Maybe it is in vain to serve God.  Maybe we’re just fooling ourselves and this is a big waste of time. Or maybe Malachi was right. Maybe there is a day of reckoning. Maybe God does hold us accountable. And maybe God cries out to each of us and to all of creation:  “Return to me.”

“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?”

“How shall we return?”