What appeared to be a turning of the tables with the kingdom of Persia happened to become a simple reshuffling of the items on the table. Some of the earlier oppression got better, only to be replaced by a much more subtle oppression that is harder to identify and fight. Instead of being physically persecuted and militarily dominated, they find themselves being enticed into a system that controls you from the inside out. Instead of being forced into physical servitude, you are forced into a cultural servitude that destroys your will to subvert the idolatry all around you. Instead of being robbed of your material possessions, you are robbed of your identity as partners of God.
This brave new world isn’t all it was cracked up to be — it rarely is.
The people mourn this loss and their situation. They begin to lose hope and lose the determination and inspiration that’s needed to subvert the ways of empire all around them. And so their struggles to walk the path well continue.
Ever been there? Have you ever found yourself longing for “the good ol’ days”? Do you ever get caught up in a wave of nostalgia and find yourself wishing that things could go back to the way they were?
Well, they can’t. They never can. Time only moves forward; you can never go backward. Instead, you have to think about all the possibilities that might lie before you in a new reality. If God is for us… if we trust the story… if we’re people of the Resurrection and new tomorrows and the Repairer of Broken Walls… then our best days must lie out in front of us, never behind us.
Rabbi David Fohrman recently gave a parsha teaching on the importance of what happens when we begin to lose hope. Is hope really irrational? In it, he brought up an amazing point:
“Do we imagine new tomorrows or do we lie to ourselves about a better past?”
I have realized that I have often lied to myself about a past that never was. I begin to think that “the good ol’ days” were far better than they actually were. And I’ve noticed that when I begin to believe this, I start to live much more poorly in the present. I begin to fall into bad attitudes and bad habits. Quite frankly, I find myself beginning to fall into the sins of the past, as well.
I believe this is what is happening to God’s people in the time of Malachi. And Malachi has been sent (or somebody has; malachi literally means “my messenger.” Some have argued that it isn’t even a name, but a reference to some nameless prophet) to shake the people out of their foolish nostalgia. Malachi does this by painting the picture of a dialogue between God and His people. They have a thorough Q&A interview process:
“A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty.
“It is you priests who show contempt for my name.
“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’
“By offering defiled food on my altar.
“But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’
“By saying that the LORD’s table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD Almighty.
Or later:
Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
Or even later:
“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’
“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.
“You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the LORD.
“Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’
“You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’ ”
But this time, God’s people hear the message of God’s messenger. We are told that there WERE people who belonged to a faithful remnant. They marked the moment by writing a scroll of remembrance and God marked the moment with a promise that extends through the final chapter of the prophet:
Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.
“On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”
That day, God once again found a partner. Sometimes it’s simply 7,000 people who haven’t bowed the knee to Baal in the midst of a nation corrupted with idolatry. Sometimes it’s a small group of twenty people who could save a city like Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes it’s just a few people, serving in the presence of a frustrated people who are losing hope, who put their names on a scroll and set out to become people of the promise.
I wonder what it would take for us to be a part of a faithful remnant.
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