This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105:1-22; Malachi 2:1-16; James 4:13–5:6; Luke 17:20-37
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
The covenantal life. “My covenant with [Levi] was a covenant of life and well-being, which I gave him; this called for reverence…” — Malachi 2:5. It’s worth pondering two features of the “covenant of life and well-being” that Malachi promotes, for they are as much about “life and well-being” in our own day as they were in his.
The covenant with Levi was a “covenant of life and well-being,” in the first place, because it called for instruction in God’s Word (Malachi 2:6-8). Priests are ministers of the Word, because from cover to cover the Bible envisions the knowledge of God and of his ways jacketing the whole earth: “But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). Thus, the goal of teachers of the law is to work themselves out of a job: “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:34). For instance, the writer of these Daily Devotions with the Dean will have done his job when his readers need him no longer. And until then, he is responsible to “guard knowledge” and to make sure it is true instruction that he offers (Malachi 2:7). Dear Lord, let it be so!
The covenant with Levi was a “covenant of life and well-being,” in the second place, because it bound God and us together in an indissoluble bond of mutual sacrifice. God established sacrifices of unblemished and specifically prescribed animals, a “pre-reflection” of a final and uniquely unblemished sacrificial lamb: his own dear Son. That sacrifice, in payment of the sin of the world, would restore life to spiritually dead people and return well-being to all of us whose lives have been wracked by the crushing consequences of sin.
Israel’s covenantal duty—channeled through, and overseen by, the priestly sons of Levi—was to make sure that God’s self-offering in sacrifice was matched by his people’s self-offering in sacrifice. That is why Malachi rails against the holding back of the best of the flocks (Malachi 1:8,12-14), and against the withholding of tithes and offerings (Malachi 3:8-9). Christ’s sacrifice marks the end of the need for animal sacrifice, but it only heightens the significance of our offering ourselves as “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1-2), and continuing to give “tithes and offerings” as expressions of the fact that we do not belong to ourselves, for we “were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23). “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee…”
God’s oneness and ours. “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another…? … [S]he is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did not one God make her?” — Malachi 2:10,15. Extraordinarily, Malachi anticipates the apostle Paul’s perspective on the way belief in the “oneness” of God shapes our ethical lives. In the letter to the Romans, Paul shows that, as a Jew who believes that there is “one God,” he finds it inconceivable that there would be different routes to a relationship with God—for example, one for the Jew and another for the Gentile. God is not the deity of separate tribes. He is the God of heaven and earth. Therefore, he has one plan for a singular redemption of the entire human race: his Son Jesus Christ. “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith” (Romans 3:29-30).
This thought has revolutionary implications for every aspect of life. It cuts the heart out of any form of racism, classism, sexism, or tribalism. It means those who believe in this one God are obligated to see in every human being an expression of God’s likeness and image. It means those who believe in this God must treat every bearer of his image and likeness with the same dignity, respect, and love that they owe to God himself. That’s why Malachi denounces teachers for “partiality in your instruction”—the spinning of God’s story in favor of one party or race or family or check-writer over another.
Thus, Malachi appeals to the fact that we have “one Father” and “one God” in order to rebuke people who treat each other faithlessly (Malachi 2:10). In doing so, he exposes all spheres of life: questionable business practices; “enhanced” résumés; tax fraud; plagiarism and academic cheating; narcissistic self-promotion; deceitful leadership; and exploitative relationships (to name just a few).
Malachi invokes the oneness of God, especially, to reprove husbands who have been faithless to “the wife of your youth … your companion and your wife by covenant” (Malachi 2:14). “Did not one God make her?” asks the prophet. I wish my mother’s father had asked himself that question when he left home to strike out on his own as soon as my mother graduated from high school. If he’d just asked himself that one question—“Did not the same God who made me also make Myrtle?”—what loneliness, bitterness, and desperation of straits might he have spared himself and his family? To state Malachi’s concerns in positive terms: the God who reveals himself in the Bible loves thriving marriages—not to mention flourishing friendships, smooth working relationships, functional governance, comity among nations and people groups—because he is about oneness. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternal communion, the Lord, invites the creatures whom he loves into an eternal dance of love and harmony. May you experience the dance.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+