000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

death and curse. “Law” illustrates how we are to love God by caring for
the last and the least in society, widows and orphans; by being honest in
business and seeing to it that justice is done in the courts; by guarding and
protecting the well-being of the stranger; by being responsible for the
world of nature as God’s creation and recognizing God’s covenant with all
the living things; and by the proper worship of God.
But in spite of the fact that the Judeans have ignored the commandments,
and argued against God, God’s love for them remains steadfast
(1:2). A remnant (3:16–18) will be saved from Judah. Our passage consists
of this affirmation. “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when
all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall
burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither
root nor branch. But for you who revere my name [the remnant] the sun
of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”
“Sun of righteousness” is metaphorical talk about God’s justification of
the people. It is “righteousness” in the sense that Paul used it to talk of
God’s “setting-right” of the relationship between human beings and God
and between the insiders and the outsiders of God’s house—the creation
of a worldwide community of life and blessing. This will be the “healing
in its wings.”
The good news in Malachi is that, although we sin long and hard, God
never gives up on us. God’s steadfast love is an adamant love, a love that
will not let us go. That is surely a good note on which to end one lectionary
year and move to the advent of the one through whom we Gentile Christians
came to understand ourselves in relation to God and God’s salvation.
Our passage is dialectically paired with Luke 21:5–19, in which Jesus
speaks of the coming destruction of the Temple, the Temple that Malachi
defended in his protests against the corruption of its worship by priest and
people (Mal. 1:6–2:9; 3:8–15).
Proper 29 [34]/Year C
Reign of Christ
Jeremiah 23:1–6
Proper 29 [34]/Year C 287
Ancient readers would have assumed two motifs in the background of
today’s reading. One is that ancient people often described monarchs as
shepherds. The other is that the monarch was responsible to the people