Cheating on God

Don’t we all come from one Father? Aren’t we all created by the same God? So why can’t we get along? Why do we desecrate the covenant of our ancestors that binds us together?  Malachi 2:10

This is the starting point for today’s passage.

This should be the starting point for each new day, each relationship, each interaction.

We are all human. We all come from the same place. We were all created by the same God.

That’s why I love the concept of Namaste so much.

The divine in me bows to the divine in you.

It goes beyond acceptance and tolerance. It’s a profound respect for every single person we come into contact with. A celebration of what is is to be human. God is there to be found in every single person. In you and in me.

So why can’t we get along?

God made a covenant with His people way back in the book of Genesis. A covenant that started with Noah and was consolidated in Abraham.

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.  Genesis 17:7

A covenant based on relationship. That was the completely new thing about it. Every other interaction with the gods had been purely transactional. This was revolutionary. A promise of connection between God and His people for generations to come. All they had to do was trust and obey – to enter into this journey with God like no other journey ever before.

And boy, did they mess that up! Over and over and over again.

They did not trust.

They did not obey.

Malachi goes on to list the ways in which God’s people screwed up.

• they married women who worshipped a foreign god
• they have wept and wailed and asked why God has deserted them when the answer is simple: they have been unfaithful to their wife, the wife of their youth
• they’ve bleated on about injustice without looking at themselves and the injustice in their interactions with the most vulnerable in society (those who defraud labourers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice – how pertinent is that to what is going on in our world right now?)
• they’ve withheld from God what is rightfully His. They’ve robbed God of what He has required from them, forgetting that everything belongs to God anyway. 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. (Malachi 3:10)  That’s the promise here. Work with God and share everything with God and give Him your all and you will be blessed beyond your wildest dreams.

So how much of that speaks to us today?

Well, I’m not going to get into the divorce debate here. Who am I to pass judgement? It’s not my place.

I remember thirty years ago when it was the issue of divorce that was dominating the church. I had friends who were deeply hurt by the attitude of other Christians on this. Friends who were rejected and excluded from Christian fellowship. It angered me then like the whole homosexuality thing is angering me now.

‘The man who hates and divorces his wife,’ says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘does violence to the one he should protect,’ says the Lord Almighty.  Malachi 2:16

If we are to take everything we read in the Bible literally, then yes, divorce is wrong before God. For the record, there’s a lot more said in the Bible about divorce than about homosexuality. I don’t know how or why but thank God, the church’s position on divorce has moved on from where it was thirty years ago – and I’m holding out for that shift in attitude with regards to homosexuality too.

I personally don’t see how something written for a society that is well over two thousand years old can be directly transferable to our society in every single little detail. I believe God was speaking into a context and that He has plenty of stuff to speak into our context today. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready yo dismiss it all as irrelevant, Far from it.

Being faithful matters.

That’s what I take from this. The ideal is like the swans: one partner for life. That’s how it’s always meant to be and that’s the best way now. But life is not ideal, I recognise that. We mess up. We make mistakes. But let’s never lose sight of the fact that being faithful matters.

Showing justice and compassion matters. There’s this too. We can rant about society today and politics and wring our hands at world issues, but justice and compassion start at home in every interaction we have each day, in every situation we find ourselves in.

The people back then in the time of Malachi were waiting for God to do something.

But be careful what you wish for. That’s the message here.

‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.  Malachi 3:1-3

If the world is to become a better place, then the change has to start in each individual heart.

There’s a lot of purifying that needs to go on right now: on a global level, a national level, a community level – and an individual level.

All we can change in any situation is our own response. That’s the only thing we have any control over.

Faithfulness. Justice. Compassion. Generosity.

These are the ideals. These are the best way.