All these calls to purification and repentance are invitations to let God transform you and me and the whole community into a life of shalom for us and for all things.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 3:1-6; Malachi 3:1-4; Philippians 1:3-11
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Shalom.
In Hebrew, that means “peace.” But also wholeness and health, completeness, safety, even friendship. To be in shalom is to be in a life-giving and gracious way of life. Little wonder our Jewish cousins greet others with “shalom.” As our Muslim cousins do with the Arabic “salaam.”
Jesus often spoke of such a way of life, and once he used a different word, “blessed,” to envision it. To be blessed is to be gentle, he said, to hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness, to be merciful. To be pure in heart and to be someone who makes peace. Even those who grieve or are persecuted find blessedness in God’s comfort and mercy, he said. Jesus envisions a blessed world radically shaped by shalom.
A world our readings today invite you to find. To live in. To become.
All this talk of purifying, of landscape flattening, of repentance, has a great “so that . . .” at the heart.
These calls all lead to shalom. God’s people need to be purified, Malachi says, so that their worship and offerings to God come from a good heart, from their love of God and neighbor. Before the exile God’s prophets criticized that they did all the worship and offerings but lived corrupt lives, oppressed their poorer neighbors, turned a blind eye to injustice. So for their worship, their offerings, to be pleasing to God again, they need to be purified into their true selves. Brought into blessed shalom again.
John’s call to repentance is about leveled mountains and filled in valleys, massive highway maintenance. God’s people are asked to repent – literally to turn their lives around – to clean off the roads, make sure everything is straightened out. So that they are walking paths of blessed shalom with God.
That feels much more hopeful than we usually feel from John the Baptist’s annual visit.
Purifying sounds frightening. Ore is taken into a blazing furnace and heated until the precious metal is drawn out in its pure state. If God is purifying us, it sounds like it will hurt. Burning away what is broken and bent in us that pulls us from God. But if God is working toward shalom, blessedness, purifying us to be our true precious selves, whole and well and at peace and merciful and gentle, to be peacemakers and makers of safety for others, that sounds really good.
And getting out the bulldozers and graders sounds frightening, too. What massive work does God need to do in me to make me different? But if God wants to straighten what is crooked so I am complete and whole, so I can walk God’s path of shalom as God’s blessed one, that sounds really good, too.
The key is, God is doing all this.
Paul joins John and Malachi together in a huge promise of that hope. God began this work in you, Paul says, and God will continue to complete it in you until the day of Jesus Christ. This purifying and landscaping leading to shalom is God’s gift, and God’s been working it in you from the beginning.
And no surprise, Paul says there’s a big “so that” here, too. God does this, Paul says, so that your love might overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight, to help you determine what really matters.
What really makes shalom. Blessedness.
And remember: Paul says God’s work is a long-term project.
God will continue to complete it until the end of all things, Paul says. But it will take all that time. You’ll be repeatedly turning around on your path. Because you’ll get lost and take false turns. You’ll need God’s purifying of various things again and again. Because it’s going to take time to draw you into the precious beauty God already sees.
And you’ll need God to do roadwork again and again. Roads in the desert sand over daily, and daily need clearing. Just as a shoveled sidewalk drifts over again, and you need to shovel it again. The path of Christ, the path of shalom, is easily blocked, and needs daily attention until your days are done.
God will complete you. But it will take time.
There’s one more thing, the best part: it’s not just on you.
Paul speaks to all the Philippians, so God’s working in their community to bring shalom, together. Malachi sees all God’s people as being purified. John calls all the crowds to repentance. This isn’t an individual thing. Shalom isn’t lived apart from others. Blessedness is only found in life together.
It starts with the individual. It’s hard to find shalom with others without finding it in ourselves. But it can’t exist there alone. So your faith, and my faith, your discipleship and my discipleship, your repentance and my repentance, God works together in this community until we become a blessed community of shalom.
And you see where this is going. When community after community are so turned, purified, transformed, eventually all God’s children everywhere find this joy, this blessed shalom of God.
So this is a day of Good News.
Repentance, turning toward God, is a gift to delight in because in turning you find shalom. God purifying your heart and mind and spirit, though sometimes painful, is a joy to relish because even you start to see the true you arising. Clearing the path for you to walk as Christ is a treat because even though it’s annoying to have to keep at it, when God does you walk in safety and wholeness.
And when we overflow with God’s love and insight into what really matters and act on that, we become part of God’s solution to the brokenness of our world.
God is committed to a world filled with shalom, lived in shalom, drenched with shalom. A world blessed by God’s people in it who know that blessed shalom is what really matters, and in whom God will continue the work of the healing of all things until all know this shalom, this blessedness.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
