“And what more shall I say? For time would fail me …”
“Behold, the days come,” we heard this morning from Jeremiah and now again this evening from Malachi, we hear “for behold, the day comes.” In the order of the Christian Scriptures, Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament and deliberately so, it seems to me. It ends, as we heard this evening, with the prophetic words about those who fear the Lord even if our “words have been stout against God,” provided we repent. “Those who feared the Lord and thought on his name” are those whose names, it seems, are recorded not in the book of the dead, as in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Sumeria, but in “a book of remembrance.” It ends with a sense of the day of judgment, “burning like an oven” that leaves “neither root nor branch” unscathed, but also with another sense of judgment, the sense of hope and healing: “for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in his wings.” It signals, too, the sending of the prophet, Elijah, “before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” who “will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”
Most intriguing words. In the context of Advent, the prophecy about Elijah is understood to be fulfilled in John the Baptist, the one who is sent to prepare the way of the Lord. No wonder that Malachi is placed at the end of the Old Testament, as Christians call the Jewish Scriptures. It points directly to the themes of the New Testament; in short, to the Advent of Christ.
This idea of Old and New, of the interplay and interconnection between the writings of the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures of the New Testament is wonderfully taken up, theologically and prophetically, in the lesson from The Letter to the Hebrews. Its authorship unknown, nonetheless, Hebrews offers a profound reflection upon the witness of the past in the history of Israel up to the present of Christ and Christianity. That is, of course, controversial and somewhat polemical; necessarily and deliberately so, for in the Christian understanding of things, the history of Israel has its fulfillment in Christ and that is the point which the lesson tonight makes.
All of these figures of faith belong to Christ and all participate in the mystery of Christ. The Old Testament stories and images are not repudiated but transformed. They are granted another significance. The recurring refrain is “by faith,” “by faith,” faith that looks beyond the moment, faith which looks to God and to his ultimate will and purpose for our humanity, faith which The Letter to the Hebrews so wonderfully defines as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”
“What more shall I say?” the unnamed narrator of The Letter to the Hebrews asks, “for time would fail me,” and here we are given a hint of what is meant, namely, “to tell” of all the figures of the Old Testament who lived in hope and faith, a hope and faith which is realized in Christ. The vision is a grand and generous vision, the gathering up of all the parade of the faithful, of those who looked for something more however understood and who are, in the Christian view, understood to have looked for what is proclaimed as accomplished in Christ.
The lesson ends with the great theme of the spiritual harvest of faith, the idea that we are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,” witnesses that include, graphically and dramatically, the various heroes of faith in the history of Israel and more, indeed, “a multitude which no man could number,” as The Revelation of St. John the Divine reminds us at All Saints’; “a cloud of witnesses” which are ultimately only known and numbered by God.
Times of ending/times of beginning. Such is the meaning of The Sunday Next Before Advent. There is something wonderful in our being reminded of the scriptural parade of faith and of how we are part of a far, far larger company than what we could ever imagine. It is always more than we can say for time would fail us. Such is the mystery of God. The Sunday Next Before Advent bids us look back upon the company of the faithful in the witness of the Old Testament who point us to the advent of Christ, to the presence of God with us in our lives in Word proclaimed and Sacraments celebrated. It should and must encourage us and stir us up to begin again in faith and in hope, in repentance and in joy.
“And what more shall I say? For time would fail me …”
Fr. David Curry
Choral Evensong
The Sunday Next Before Advent
November 23rd, 2014