Judgment and mercy for real sinners

Malachi 4:1-2a and Luke 21:5-19

It’s that time of year, a few short weeks before Advent begins, when the assigned Bible readings serve up the terror of the end times. I’d rather preach on Jesus saying no to divorce than to have to deal with the threat of arrest and persecution when the authorities sense the presence of Christ in me. I would so very much prefer to avoid Malachi’s warning about the arrogant being burnt up and the evildoers being cut down like Iowa corn stalks reduced to field stubble and no-till acreage. But those passages of God’s Word have been read now. They hang in the air, forcing themselves on us. Now they won’t let us go until God has a chance to speak through them. If God’s Word won’t give us any other option, we might as well go after these passages and see if the Holy Spirit isn’t actually speaking in them.

The prophet Malachi’s words are a dire warning: For the arrogant and evildoers, that is, for sinners like you and me, the future holds very little hope. It’s going to be worse for us than what a menopausal woman means when she says, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” No, there’s a burning-up time a-coming. Just a few verses before our passage, Malachi says, “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.” The refiner’s fire is what a metal smith uses to burn out all the impurities in silver ore or gold ore, so that the only thing left is the purest of metals. Fullers’ soap is full of caustic alkali and in ancient times was used to purify wool to its ultimate whiteness before it could be used for cloth. The smelter burns. Alkali burns. And the Lord himself burns up all the evil he touches.

How is it that I am to be included among the arrogant, the evildoers and the sinful? Surely God would not move against me in such a violent, no-second-chances way! Yet I am included, and so are you. The sin and evil that the prophet rails against grows in the fertile ground of our hearts, for the Lord demands righteousness of his human creatures and, if there’s one thing we’re not, it’s righteous. We are not all God has made us to be. Who among us doesn’t know the foibles and peccadilloes we so slyly cover over daily, the corner-cutting, the getting by with good-enough? When we look at ourselves honestly, who among us has not committed a long list of sins, big and small, sins of commission and sins of omission? “I was hungry and you did not feed me,” Jesus says in Matthew 25, “I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

And when we hear the prophet speak these harsh words against us, it reveals something even worse. Not only do we sin, but when God sends a messenger to speak the truth to us, we react by becoming indignant. We refuse to confess our unwillingness to obey this almighty God, to confess our constant desire to go our own way, but we pile sin upon sin by questioning God’s judgment and will. “Surely God couldn’t judge someone like me who has such good intentions. God’s the one with the problem. And if it’s not God, then it’s God’s word or his messenger. For certainly the God of love would not turn away from someone who deserves divine favor like I do!” Ah, there’s the rub. Do you see how our very reaction to God’s judgment in Malachi reveals our core? For we, like our forebears in the Garden, have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have demanded our place in God’s judgment seat, where we will be the determiners of our own future and fate, where we will be the arbiters of our own salvation, where we gather a lifetime of evidence to justify ourselves. As Psalm 14 says, “They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.” And as Paul says in Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

I will often ask students in my courses if sinners get to go to heaven. The kids who have some church background will invariably say, “Of course, sinners go to heaven. A loving God won’t turn them away.” But the students who have little connection to Christianity know better. Their sense of God’s judgment is closer to the view of Malachi and of the rest of God’s word in scripture. These students have heard the rumors that God is a God who judges, who separates good from evil, and who desires righteousness not sin. The almighty God will brook no sin, allow no evil, make room for no self-seeking hearts in his glorious, eternal kingdom. God reserves his throne of judgment for the sentence he doles out. The jig is up: We sinners with our arrogance, our evil doing and lack of doing, our utter unwillingness and inability to focus on anything but our own will, we stand condemned and have a future as eternal field stubble.

Is there no way out? Is there no small bit of allowance from God? Won’t God recognize some two or three atoms of sparkling goodness that remain? We’d certainly like that, but here’s the deal. God has taken on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. He is crucified and risen. And it all happens because there is no other way. God has done the saving deed, because human beings (you and me included) will not change, will not grasp God’s righteousness, and will always try to substitute our own paltry shadowy substitute self-righteousness in its place. In the coming month before Christmas and during the Christmas season itself, we will hear that God comes in Christ for you. If there were something you could already have done or some evidence you could present to God to affect his judgment on you, there would have been no need for Christ. And his excruciating death on Good Friday would be useless, except as a particularly awful role model for how to behave people treat you poorly.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is good news indeed. But he’s good news for sinners worthy of the name. In the gospel reading, Jesus says lots of people will parade themselves before you as spectacular examples of righteous, religious behavior. Some of those people will trot out a conservative view of righteous behavior. Others will send out a religious pop-up ad trumpeting a liberal view of righteous behavior. And yet our readings push back, saying no zealot knows the truth. The arrogant are headed to the refiner’s fire. Those who are cocksure of their worthiness have a burning alkaline fullers’ soap waiting.

But those who confess their sin, their inability to do and achieve righteousness, and their core desire to go it alone, these have another word that God stands ready to speak. In 1518, some six months after he posted the Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther was told to defend his teaching at a meeting of his monastic order. In his disputation to his fellow Augustinians, he said that only those who despair of their own ability to gain righteousness on their own are worthy to receive the grace of Christ. With that we come near to the rich, true good news hidden in the cracks and crevices of these harsh readings. Deuteronomy says, “See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.” The hammer of God comes down. The gavel of the divine judge bangs on his bench. The defendant is declared guilty, so that for Christ’s sake, the guilty party might be freed. The judgment comes so that you and I, sinners all, might confess or, as Jesus says in the gospel reading, that you might have an opportunity to testify.

One summer I worked at one of our Bible camps in South Dakota. Along with the new batch of fifth and sixth grader that descended on us each week that summer, the South Dakota State Hospital and School brought a bus-load of developmentally-disabled adults to be a part of our camp community. Each cabin of seven or eight kids had one of those wonderful, memorable people living with us. One week my group of boys welcomed 30-something Robert Schieffelbein to live with us. I remember Robert even though I can’t recall even one of the younger campers in that group. And what sticks with me about Robert Schieffelbein is that every time we invited him to join in on some camp activity he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.” We’d say, “C’mon Robert.” He’d say, “I can’t do it, buddy.”

Robert’s words are the words of confession, his testimony. “I can’t do it.” And they are the first words of our own confession. We come before God to say, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, divine buddy.” And then we point to the one who has promised to take us sinners on. The prophet Malachi promises, “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” To revere God’s name is to be able to name the one whom God established in heaven and on earth to rescue us sinners, the “we-can’t-do-it” folks. When Mark starts off his gospel, he says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” He’s saying that this good news starts, has its source, and completely stems from Jesus. But who in the world will hear about Jesus and regard it as good news? For whom will Jesus be such good news that they fear no worldly authority or virulent accusation? What kind of person can’t resist the kind of savior Jesus is? On whom does this sun of righteousness rise? Who finds healing in Christ’s outstretched, nail-marked wings? It’s sinners. It’s the ones who bear the badge openly, who confess, “I can’t do it, buddy, but Jesus does.”

While Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms in 1521, Philip Melanchthon, his fellow professor at the University of Wittenberg, wrote to him to ask how he could become a better preacher. Luther responded, “Become a sinner, a real sinner, not a sham sinner – one who knows the depth and breadth of your sin.” And Luther famously said, “Then sin boldly, and trust all the more boldly in Christ your savior.” So, if we ask if sinners in general go to heaven, the answer will always be, “No. Ain’t no room for that nastiness in the new Jerusalem.” But if we ask about real, particular and bold sinners who are up-front about their sin and unabashed about their Lord, then the answer is, “You can’t do it, buddy. Yet Christ does it for you.”

These are the ones for whom the prophet Isaiah speaks, when he announces the word of the Lord, saying, “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” Those who wish to stand before God’s judgment seat will only hear a sentence of condemnation, yet those who come fragile and broken to God’s mercy seat, claiming Christ’s mercy, shall hear this good news: The kingdom has been prepared from the foundation of the world, and this kingdom is now yours. Whatever calamity afflicts you, whatever disaster lies in your path, whatever betrayal breaks you, whatever portents indicate otherwise, the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, stands sure for you: You, sinner, are forgiven, claimed and restored already and eternally. Amen.