The scriptures referred to are Malachi 4:1-2a, Psalm 98, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and Luke 21:5-19.
The good thing about following a lectionary is that every Sunday we read 4 passages from the Bible: one from the Old Testament, one from the Psalms, one from the New Testament, and one from the Gospels. And over the three-year cycle, we are exposed to the most vital parts of the Bible. The downside is it reinforces the way too many of us approach the Bible: by reading isolated passages without context. Because a lot of problems have been and are caused by people seizing upon one verse or passage, taking it all out of context and elevating it to the most important thing in the Bible. That's why it is important to, say, occasionally read one of the shorter books of the Bible in one sitting. And to check with a commentary that looks at the book in depth, lays out the historical, cultural and theological environment in which it was written, looks at the question or questions it was written to answer and ties all the passages to its central thesis or its various themes. And then to put it in the context of the Bible as a whole. A lot of the problems we see in Christianity come from interpretations that are not Biblically balanced.
Today's readings are all about the same thing: the Day of the Lord. This is the time when God brings this chapter of the story of humanity to an end. It is not the end of the story. There is a sequel. But in the Old Testament it is the event when God brings all our endeavors to an end and judges us on the basis of whether we actually trusted and obeyed him. In the New Testament, the event happens when Jesus returns. All judgment is put into his hands. (John 5:22) Which is good. Since Jesus has lived and died as one of us, he understands human life and its problems. (Hebrews 4:15) But it also means he is not fooled by our excuses. It is much the same way with being in a 12-step program. Everyone knows and empathizes with your addiction. But they can also call you on your BS, because they have all seen these behaviors over and over.
Each of our lectionary passages are different perspectives on the Day of the Lord. Malachi, a book you can easily read in one sitting, was written in a time when the priests were corrupt and the people doubted God's love and justice. This is after the Babylonian exile was over and the temple had been rebuilt. But the initial excitement over this had faded. People had become lax in worshipping and serving the God who loves them and, as usual, this led to them being lax in loving their neighbors. God says, “I will come to you in judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who practice divination, those who commit adultery, those who break promises, and those who exploit workers, widows and orphans, who refuse to help the immigrant and in this way show that they do not fear me.” (Malachi 3:5) The book of Malachi is structured around questions which God's answers. It ends, as we see in today's passage, with a warning about the Day of the Lord. God will be like a refiner's fire, purifying the silver and gold and burning up the stubble and dry grass that act as fuel for the oven. (Malachi 3:2-3) The Day of the Lord is bad news for those who do not love God or their neighbors but good news to those who honor God not merely with their lips but with their lives.
Our psalm focuses on the good news—all the marvelous things God has done and how “the Lord will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.” In other words, God will bring justice at last to a world that has become unjust and will judge everyone fairly.
In our passage from 2 Thessalonians, Paul is dealing with a misunderstanding about the second coming of Christ that has caused a problem. In last week's passage from this letter, he dealt with a church shaken up and alarmed by people saying “that the day of the Lord is already here.” (2 Thessalonians 2:2) In today's passage he is addressing another problem: those who think that the day of Jesus' return is so close that they have stopped working and are sponging off of the other believers. A similar thing happened in the 1800s to those who believed Baptist preacher William Miller's very precise prediction of the date of Christ's return. Folks sold their farms and gave up their possessions and waited all day on October 22, 1844 for Jesus to return. Like all of the dates people have worked out for the Second Coming, it was wrong. It's almost like those who say they believe in Jesus don't believe him when he said, “No one knows about that day and hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36, my emphasis) I guess they think they know more than Jesus.
The verse that says “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat” is misused by people who say it is unbiblical to offer government assistance to the poor. But Paul is not talking about those who can't work but those who are “unwilling to work.” (v.10, my emphasis) Paul is not talking about the disabled (which make up 10% of the non-elderly recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) or the elderly (20% of those on SNAP) or children (39% on those on SNAP). So almost 70% of the people on SNAP are disabled, elderly or children. These are people no one in their right mind would expect to work. That leaves the unemployed. And anyone not rich or powerful who has spent any time trying to get a job knows that being unemployed doesn't mean you are unwilling to work. It means that you have not been able to get a job for various reasons, many of which have nothing to do with you personally. This year alone 13.8 million people have been laid off or had their job positions cut. They were working but now are unemployed. I doubt that a significant number of them are just lazy.
Paul is basically saying that Christians should not be idle while waiting for Christ to return. Jesus said, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.” (Matthew 24:45-46. Compare Luke 12:42-48) We don't know when Jesus is coming so we should continue to do the work he has given us to do: to love God and to love others by not only proclaiming the good news of Jesus but also by putting it to work in concrete ways. Malachi would agree.
In our passage from Luke, Jesus is emphasizing 3 things about the Day of the Lord. First of all, he is warning us not to follow false Christs and prophets. You would think that this would be obvious to Christians but throughout history folks have gone after people who proclaimed that they were either the new spokesman for God or that they were God or Christ. Wikipedia has a whole page of people who claimed to be Jesus, 40 of whom have lived during my lifetime of 71 years! Yet people ignore Jesus' warnings about these charlatans. They let these people contradict Jesus' teachings and exploit them spiritually, financially and sexually. They don't acknowledge the bad fruit of their deeds. (Matthew 7:15-20) They don't even use the test of whether a prophet is true or false laid out in Deuteronomy. “Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?'—whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22) In ancient Israel the penalty for being a false prophet was death! That's how serious it is to falsely represent God or what he has said.
Secondly, Jesus is discouraging us from interpreting every catastrophe as a sign of the end of the world and his return. In the parallel passage in Mark, Jesus compares these disasters to the beginning of birth pains. (Mark 13:8) If you or a close loved one has ever given birth, you know that it is a long process. A woman can be in labor for 20 hours! So just because it looks like things are getting very bad, it doesn't mean that Jesus is about to appear. This doesn't mean that he is never coming. The Bible says, “The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) God is waiting until everyone who will eventually repent and turn to him does so.
Jesus wants to prevent the kind of thing so-called prophecy books and conferences do in order to get people to listen: namely, to announce that the numerous bad things in the daily news mean that the Day of the Lord is imminent. We don't know; it will come like a thief in the night. (Luke 12:39-40) Jesus wants us to be prepared but not to be anxious.
Thirdly, Jesus warns us that Christians must be prepared to endure persecution. For the first 300 years of the church, this was an ever-present threat. The apostles faced local persecution as we see in the book of Acts. By 64 AD, Christians came to the attention of the emperors. Nero made them scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome. Other emperors saw them as traitors because they wouldn't make sacrifices to the Roman gods or to the deified emperor. Today Christians still face death in certain countries that have official religions. In early America, Baptists and Roman Catholics faced persecution. That's why James Madison put in the very first amendment to the Constitution a prohibition on the government making anything the official religion.
I think the most surprising development in the US these days is the persecution of Christians by other Christians. Specifically, it is going after Christians for agreeing with Malachi about the things God condemns, like “those who exploit workers, widows and orphans, who refuse to help the immigrant and in this way show that they do not fear me.” And these so-called Christians also denounce other Christians for upholding things Jesus clearly said, like that those who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit those in prison and welcome the immigrant are doing it to Jesus because these unfortunate people are his siblings. He also says those who don't help these people will not get into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 25:31-46) Just because you call Jesus Lord doesn't mean you know him. (Matthew 7:21-23) Some people just want Jesus as their mascot, not as their Master.
We don't know when Jesus will return. But we know what he doesn't want us doing in the meantime. He doesn't want us to try to figure out when that day is or mistaking other people for him or God's new direct spokesman. He doesn't want us panicking every time the world seems to be getting worse. He also doesn't want us just sitting around or thinking that following him is always pleasant or that we should get everything we want just because we have faith. There will be times when following Jesus will be hard or even dangerous. Nor does he want us arming ourselves for Armageddon. Christians are to be witnesses, not warriors. God fights his own battles. Read Revelation 19.
So what do we know about actually preparing for the Day of the Lord? We need to love God and love our neighbors and our enemies, that is, all human beings. And as Jesus said in his new commandment, we are to love one another as he loved us. (John 13:34) That means helping those who need help and correcting those who have got the message wrong. We are to help others, not harm them or allow them to be harmed.
The end of the world will not be as sexy as the doomsday preppers think it will be or as apocalyptic books and movies depict it. The old earth will be in its death spasms, possibly brought on by human arrogance, as Malachi implies. No one wants to live through the events of Revelation chapters 6 through 19. But that's when people will need us the most. Christians have gone through persecutions and disasters from the beginning. They were martyred, took care of plague victims at their own risk, were executed by kings, were killed by mobs for being abolitionists, were killed by Nazis for opposing Hitler and were killed for opposing white supremacy. Still they built hospitals for lepers, brought modern medicine to people who had none, helped enslaved people escape via the Underground Railroad, hid Jews from Nazis, and continued to work for civil rights. The body of Christ showing God's love in action is the work Jesus gave us to do.
Jesus' words are helpful even when it isn't the end of the world for everyone. One day it will be the end of the world for you. You will face your own mortality. It may be sudden or it may be the gradual loss of your ability to control your own body. When that day approaches, keep loving God and loving others. Don't follow false prophets. And take comfort from God's promise in Malachi: “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in his wings.” Coming into Jesus' loving presence, all our fears and pains will be healed and our greatest hope will be fulfilled.
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