Malachi 3:1-4
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40

The book of Malachi and the letter to the Hebrews from which we heard our first two readings today seem to have a few things in common. They are both anonymous and they are both messages of encouragement to people who might be frustrated and disappointed. Malachi is speaking to the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and are discouraged because the return has not lived up to its expectations: economic conditions were bad, moral values were lax,the temple was in disrepair, the priests were offering impure sacrifices, and the political situation was a pale and sad reminder of the former kingdoms. The good old days were not returning, and better new days were not coming. To these despairing pioneers who were trying to rebuild their nation, Malachi tells of one who is coming to purify the temple and set things right. The letter to the Hebrews is speaking to people whose frustration is not as obvious, but can be guessed at from the various exhortations to “hold fast”, “do not become sluggish”, “rouse one another”, and “encourage one another”. The reason the people are told to throw off their frustration is because the purifier has already come – Jesus, a “merciful and
faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.” But once again, things did not turn out they way they were expecting. The temple had been rebuilt, but it was by a king they did not like or trust; Jerusalem had been rebuilt and the economy was not too bad, but they were under occupation from a foreign power and political unrest was abundant, and anyway, pretty soon all of that would be destroyed. Things weren’t turning out as they had hoped – the good old days had not returned, and better new days were not coming. The purifier had not done the job they were expecting.

Maybe we are not all that different from those other discouraged people. Sometimes, we despair because things aren’t turning out the way we had hoped. We can be easily disappointed, and in many instances we should be (because we should expect many things to change for the better), and in our frustration, we are sent messengers to tell us about the purifier coming to cleanse the temple and set things right. We heard two of these messengers today: Simeon and Anna.They knew about the purifier because they held him in their arms. But once again, the purifier does not meet many people’s expectations, and that’s a good thing, because he far surpasses anything we could ever hope for. This purifier cleanses the temple and sets the world right by bringing them into direct contact with God. This purifier makes
us his temple and his priests. The letter to the Hebrews tries to explain how this happens, and perhaps the best explanation can be condensed this way: whatever belongs to God is pure and holy. If Jesus (being God) lived a human life, then human life is pure and holy. We heard a little bit of that human life this morning, and one of the interesting things is the fact that the way Luke reports them, the sacrifices and the reason for the sacrifices don’t exactly match up with the Old Testament prescriptions. The purifier was in the temple, and they still got the temple ritual wrong. That could easily disappoint some people, but it did not seem to affect Simeon and Anna. Maybe that’s because they knew the real purification was still to come as Luke repeats in the last verses we heard today: “When they had finished…they returned to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of the LORD was upon him.” In other words,the living God had entered the true living temple, dwelling among the people as one of them.

The living temple of Jesus took an entire lifetime to build, and so do we. As Jesus “grew and became strong”, so must we,and that takes time and effort. Sometimes it seems as if we are merely spinning our wheels – going nowhere and accomplishing nothing. Other times, it seems as if we are being thrown into a furnace, with too much expected from us. We can easily become frustrated and God knows that, because Jesus went through the same slow, difficult process of growth. He went through the same wheel spinning, the same furnace, the same daily disappointments as we do, and in so doing, he made them holy. He comes to us now, if we let him in, as a purifier to make our own lives into a holy temple. It may happen in ways that we don’t expect, but we can’t let that cause us to despair. We may not see what we think are the good old days coming back, or what we think are the good new days appear, but as we slowly grow into living temples, we can bring the presence of God into our own worlds – helping and healing those around us, and setting things right in our own small circles of influence. We can also more easily recognize the temples being built around us, as others grow in their lives,bringing God to us.

Knowing all of this does not automatically free us from our frustration. We are still imperfect people, and we don’t always let the purifier work on us – sometimes we shut him out completely, other times we don’t cooperate with the work he is doing. That is why it is important to listen to the messengers still being sent to us to remind us to open up and let Jesus do his job.The need to listen is daily, and the need to open up is daily. Sometimes the daily listening and opening up seems like drudgery, but as God’s temple, God’s priests, and God’s body, we are worth the lifetime of work it takes to make us complete. Frustration, disappointment, and discouragement will come – we can count on that. But messengers from God will also come. May we never stop listening, and may we never stop being messengers ourselves.   AMEN