A man sat down on a park bench and after a while another man came along and sat beside him. And the first man looked at the second man and thought, ‘Oh my goodness! It’s Jesus! Jesus is sitting next to me on a park bench.” And so he said to this man, “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you Jesus?” And the man who looked like Jesus said, “Yes, I’m Jesus.”
“Oh my goodness,” said the man, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” And Jesus (because the man who looked like Jesus was Jesus) chuckled and said, “I think I know what the question is but, yes, go ahead.”
And so the man asked Jesus, “Why do you let bad things happen in the world?” And Jesus laughed. And the man said, “Why are you laughing at me, is there something wrong with my question?” And Jesus said, “There’s nothing wrong with your question. It’s just that I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Jesus, why do you let bad things happen in the world? And Jesus says, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
The book of the prophet Malachi starts off as a conversation between God and the people of Israel and this is a bit like the conversation that took place on this park bench. It’s a conversation between people who accuse God of not living up to his promises and God accusing the people of not having met their obligations to God.
In this conversation God says he has loved his people but they have not been thankful. He says the people have expected him to make everything perfect but they have been half-hearted in their worship and in their sacrifices. He says his people have accused God of not giving them justice but they have not acted with justice towards each other. And finally God says that the people have become arrogant, they have not really trusted God to make the world perfect but have reserved the right to moan about him when the world isn’t perfect.
And so a picture emerges of a people who expect a lot from their God; a people who think God should sort everything out and are then disappointed and disillusioned when he doesn’t. And meanwhile God looks for a partnership with the people, seeks to work with his people but they have failed to work with Him.
It’s a sorry mess. What is the way out of this mess? God and his people seem to be going down in a downward spiral. It is a hopeless situation. Everybody is looking to somebody else to provide the solution. It is much like the world of the park bench. We appear to have no way out. We’ve all given up. God won’t fix everything unless we play our part. Our willingness to play our part depends on us having faith in God. But we don’t have enough faith because what gives us faith is seeing God do things without us; doing things for us.
The word that comes to the prophet Malachi proposes three things to break out of this downward spiral, this vicious circle.
Firstly, God will send a messenger who will bring a message of justice and repentance. So people who do not behave justly towards each other will be judged but also offered a chance to mend their ways. Matthew’s Gospel identifies John the Baptist as this messenger foretold by the prophet Malachi.
Secondly, the prophet says that God has noticed that not all the people are arrogant evildoers who doubt the power of God. There are also some people who revere God and so God promised that he will save them in such a way that it will be clear who is righteous and who is wicked. He will separate out the righteousness and the wicked and deal with them differently.
This is the message of judgement that the church traditionally hears at this time of year. November is what we call the Kingdom season when we try to stand before the authority and power that God has vested in Jesus Christ. Sometimes we emphasise the mercy of God, we tell the good news that God blesses us and forgives us. But at this time of year the good news is that God cuts through the impasse that the world appears to be stuck in. He sends Jesus to judge us. He sends Jesus to rule.
Nowhere in the Bible is this made clearer than in the third message of the prophet Malachi which we heard in the verses that were read out today. That there will be a day of judgement when the arrogant and wicked will be burnt as stubble but for those who revere the name of God, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. And if you recognise those images that is probably because of the Charles Wesley Christmas hymn; Hark the Herald Angels Sing, which reflects that the church identifies the sun of righteousness as Jesus Christ.
What was it like to live in the world believing the words of the prophet Malachi were true? It is a world of injustice and yet a world that has not been abandoned by God because God is coming to save it. It is a world where the arrogant and the evildoers do not revere God and instead look to their own interests, but the righteous continue to revere God and act with justice confidently waiting for the end time when everything will be put right.
It is not a perfect world. It is a world with challenges. But it is a better world than the world of the park bench. It is a better world than the world where everybody appears to have given up; where God and his people accuse each other in a downward spiral of despair.
And then John the Baptist entered this world. He entered this world with words of judgement and encouragement to repent. Words that help us make sure we are on the right side of the line between the arrogant evildoers and the lovers of justice who revere the name of God.
And then came Jesus: the sun of righteousness with healing in his wings. The people saw the healing that he brought. They listened to his words and they followed him and followed him to Jerusalem.
But there in Jerusalem Jesus told them that these were not the end times; the end times were still ahead of them. The waiting would continue. The world was still a place of challenges. It would be a place of wars and earthquakes and false prophets and persecutions. The need to hang on and keep the hope alive would continue. This is our world today. It is the world of waiting and hoping and enduring and persevering and believing and not despairing.
And to help us to live in this world Jesus brings us to the image of the fig tree and all the trees. He says this:
‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near’.
We are living in anxious times. People are anxious about the outcome of the general election. The outcome is difficult to predict. The main parties are presenting us with very different visions of the future. People are anxious about Brexit. There are wars and insurrections in several countries in the world. There is the climate change emergency. The science tells us we only have a short time to change our ways and keep our planet the way God created it.
What is the message of the fig tree for us?
One message is that crises that make us feel anxious may also be signs that the Kingdom of God is near. The sun of righteousness is about to rise with healing in its wings. Not a hair on our heads will perish. By our endurance we will gain our souls. We continue to have hope even while others despair.
The other message is to believe the evidence of our own eyes.
It is important that we take our democratic responsibilities seriously. The Church of England always encourages people to vote at election time. But elections are times when facts are most distorted. Attempts are made all the time at the moment to wilfully mislead us. One of the things that happens is we are put under pressure to hold views that are not really based on our experience. The problem is not so much that we will vote the wrong way, the greater problem it seems to me is that having voted we will commit ourselves to false ways of thinking about the world in order to justify to ourselves how we voted.
Jesus calls on us to guard against these falsehoods by trusting the evidence of our own eyes. Our own actual experience. The things we know to be true. If we all voted based on our own experiences in life we wouldn’t necessarily all vote for the same candidates because our experiences are different but at least our decision would be based on something we knew was real.
This is my lived experience on Sunday afternoons.
At the end of the church service, I hear all your stories and reflect on the many ways in which God is at work in the world through you all. I see the partnership that Malachi is foretelling playing out in our lives.
When everybody has gone home from church I finish sorting out the food for our foodbank, the food that has been donated and collected by those who revere God and love their neighbour and build his Kingdom in the world.
Then I text the families we are supporting to say that the food is ready for them to collect and that reminds me about their poverty and the despair they feel and specifically the lack of adequate mental health services in this area which affects some of the people we support.
Then I let the chickens out and watch them briefly roam around the garden finding their food from the rich abundance of God’s creation.
And after lunch I go for a walk with Marian and we go to the allotment which has been flooded for weeks now because of changes in our climate so that we can’t dig the soil ready for the spring.
And we walk up the Edge among the majestic beech trees and look out from Castle Rock and Stormy Point and I am reminded of the awesome power and might of God.
And then we come down the hill past that house that always has two cars parked on the drive probably worth a million pounds and I wonder whether the families I texted have come to get their food yet or whether I will bump into them when I get home and if so, what news they will have to tell me.
This is my lived experience. We have a God who loves us and has always loved us and he is a God of power and might. We live in a broken world where many people have turned away from God and the world is therefore a world of injustice and suffering. But in this world there are people who still revere God and serve him in their lives. And so there is hope in this world and in the future. And we can live in hope.
We respond to the call God makes on our lives, knowing that he is coming and will judge the world. We engage in the debates our nation is having, we participate in them, seeking the Kingdom of God wherever we can, but we do not seek anxiously.God is working through your life. If you look, you will see the work you are doing with him. You will see that the leaves are sprouting. For the sun of righteousness shall rise. Light and life to all he brings. He is risen with healing in his wings.
Amen.