But every year we face the same dilemma. Who gets one and who
doesn’t? What names do we drop from our list and who will we add this year? Of
the ones who get a card, who gets a personal note and who doesn’t? Who gets a
family picture, who gets pictures of the kids, and which cards go without any
photos?
It’s a hard decision to make. And what makes it harder is that
we face the same decision every year. While we do not allow money to be the
primary factor in deciding who is on our list or not, it’s also true that as the
price of cards and the cost of postage has risen over the years we have become
more and more selective – but we still sent about 85 cards this year.
Over the years, we have developed a set of criteria for our
list, but it isn’t an exact science by any means. Maybe you’ve tried to apply
some of the same criteria to your Christmas Card lists, too.
- If we hear from someone some time during the year, we usually keep their
name on the list.
- On the other end of the spectrum, if we see people regularly – once a week
or more often – we normally don’t send a card to them. They get personal
greetings instead – or maybe even a gift.
- Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandchildren get cards. Nieces and
nephews don’t.
- School teachers and bus drivers get cards. Principles don’t.
- People from the church we’re currently serving generally don’t get them –
but we answer with cards to people from churches where we used to serve.
And there are always exceptions! Anyone who looked at our list
would wonder if we had any set criteria. In fact, if you listened in to a
conversation we had this week about a couple of the names, you’d wonder how
justifiable our decisions have been.
But it’s our list. We decide who is on it and who is not.
You can offer all the advice you want about how to ‘scrub’ the
list to make it shorter, but our own emotional commitment to some people is
going to make a more significant impact on what the list looks like than
anything else.
We go through a similar exercise when it comes to gifts. Who
gets a gift? How expensive will the gift be? If I send one to my sister, do I
need to send one to my brother, too? Do they need to be of comparable value?
What about nieces and nephews?
The hardest years for me have been when I’ve done my shopping
early. On more than one occasion I was done before the first of December. And
then all month long I wondered if I got enough. What if it wasn’t the right
gift? I would second guess myself and end up getting still more gifts.
How do you know when you’re done unless you finish on Christmas
Eve and don’t have anymore time to shop?
One way to know is to make a list. I start my list early, but I
start my list of people and presents so I know when I’ve completed my shopping.
Sometimes that list has to be adjusted. We have two extra
children this year, so we changed our list. I had planned to take our grandson
shopping for a gift for his mother and ended up with a present for his mother,
his grandparents, his cousin, his step dad and his dad – in other words, Keith
changed my list, too.
Like a Christmas Card list, gift lists need to be reviewed
regularly. Sometimes we need to add to them; sometimes we need to delete from
them.
That purging process is difficult. The process of ‘making a
list, checking it twice,’ is a full time job for Santa because it’s not easy to
do. It isn’t easy to refine our list and make it perfect – especially if our
criterion is based on whom deserves a gift!
In Malachi, we are warned about the selection process that God
uses. Everyone receives an invitation to the great party at the end of time. But
Malachi says that not everyone will enter it. Only the pure, only the righteous,
only the perfect will be admitted as guests.
And in case you’re wondering, that leaves most of us out. None
are pure. None are righteous. None are perfect. No one will be admitted to the
great celebration at the end of time. No one.
The invitation may go out to everyone, but no one meets the
standards demanded for participation.
Except for one minor detail: God’s grace.
We had guests over to our house last night for dinner. In
preparation for the event, we cleaned the house – we even had the carpets
cleaned. Then we cleaned ourselves – each of the kids had their own bath, too.
We put on nice clothes and we set out the fancy dishes.
But we didn’t ask our guests to take a bath – though I suspect
they all did.
We didn’t ask our guests to wear clean clothes – though I
suspect they all did.
That’s because we invited people who already met our criteria
for participating in the dinner.
At God’s grand celebration, no one meets the criteria unless God
does the cleansing. No one is welcome except those God has made pure. When that
day comes – and come it will – we will have no recourse other than to stand and
be judged.
The good news is that God will make us pure. In fact, God has
already made us pure! That’s what Christmas is really about. God comes to us to
cleanse and make us pure. God comes to us in the form of Jesus who offers to us
a way to meet God’s criteria.
It’s a curious little side note, but the name “Malachi” means
“God’s messenger.” As I was studying this passage, I wondered if we should put
our own names in verse 1, so that it would read, “See, I am sending Randy – or
Eunice – or Mary – or Bill to prepare the way before me.”
If that is the case, I believe we have three ways to prepare the
way.
- We can offer invitations. We can make a list of people we know who need
to know about God’s grace and invite them to experience life as God intends
it to be lived, both in this life and the next.
We can provide an example of righteousness. God’s cleansing process is
thorough. It starts on the outside with the visible changes that everyone
sees and ends on the inside with our attitudes, intentions, and desires. We
can begin living our lives with a sense of God’s righteousness in our own
actions.
We can make room for grace. It’s only by grace that we can be made
right, and it’s only by grace that others can be made right. We need to make
room for grace in our lives as well as the lives of others.
I’ve never seen it done before, but I’ve been told that in the
process of refining silver, all of the crud, all of the dirt, rises to the top
and can be skimmed off rather easily. But the important key is that the refiner
must continually watch the silver lest the silver itself be consumed.
The refiner knows the process is complete when he can see his
own image reflected off the molten metal.
What a wonderful image of God’s love and grace! God not only
wants to make us pure God must stay and watch us all through the process. And
then when we fully become the image of God, the process is complete.
God is making a list, checking it twice. It’s a Christmas list.
It’s not just a list of wishes for the years to come; it’s a list of names. On
that list is your name and mine. God has invited us to celebrate in eternity.
But none of us qualify to receive the gift prepared for us.
Rather than shorten the list, rather than lowering the standard,
God offers to use fuller’s soap and cleanse us. It will be like refining us into
pure silver.
By God’s grace we can receive the gift of eternity. It’s the
gift we celebrate at Christmas; it’s the gift we anticipate in Advent.
Thanks be to God, for the gift of Christmas.
Thanks be to God, for the gift of Advent.
Thanks be to God, for the gift of Grace.
Amen.
Selected Bibliography
Achtemeier, Elizabeth. Nahum – Malachi
(Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching). Atlanta:
John Knox, 1986.
Kaiser, Walter C. Micah – Malachi (The
Communicator’s Commentary). Dallas: Word, 1992.
Polaski, Donald C. “Between Text and Sermon: Malachi 3:1-12.”
Interpretation (A Journal of Bible and Theology). October 2000 (Vol
54, No 4).
