Tuesday, December 9, 2003
Malachi 3:1-4

We continue today with Malachi Chapter 3, Verses 1-4. This passage is like the one from Jeremiah 33: 14-16, which we examined last week. Desolation surrounded Jeremiah. Jerusalem was in ruins and the kings of Judah were routed. The land was a waste without humans or animals. And the Lord promised Jeremiah that a righteous branch of David would spring up bringing justice and righteousness. Justice and righteousness would produce peace and safety in Jerusalem. Here, in Malachi, justice again precedes peace: first the fire that produces righteousness, then the peace of God will reign.

In our public and personal lives, we strive to reverse God's ordering of events. We demand peace and safety as preconditions for justice and righteousness. We tell ourselves that "current circumstances" legitimize injustices that we consider necessary for just a short time until peace and safety come along. Once we have peace and safety, we claim, then we will be just.

I heard a Homeland Security official justify our inhumane imprisonments at Guantanamo Bay by saying, "Well, 9/11 changed everything." Sixty years earlier, she would have made the same argument with different dates: "Well, 12/7/41 changed everything." That motif was first played at the dawn of human existence.

We understand now that some American responses to Pearl Harbor were wrong. Japanese Americans should not have been deprived of their rights after that attack just for being Japanese. We overreacted, justifying our behavior by the perceived exigencies of the day. Fifty years hence, we will understand our post-9/11 behavior as a regrettable, if not reprehensible, response to provocation.

Will we also understand that no provocation is ever truly fresh? When will we understand that terrorism grows from injustice, that it is the response of the dispossessed to other organized aggression and repression? Injustice is the ladder that promoters of evil climb in their quest for power. It discredits the advocates of peace and diplomacy and gives war its constituency.

It is easy to see this work among nations, but do we see it in our own lives? Often we hold grudges thinking we will set them down when the grudge-target corrects their behavior. We behave like naughty children, answering the call of peace and forgiveness with the blood-stained phrase, "Well, but..."

We too, each of us individually, postpone the dawn of peace and justice by clinging to our grievances. We close our eyes to the light in the eastern skies as we tighten our grip on our own cargos of injustice, clutching worldly wealth in one hand and our stock of hatreds in the other, planning to let go of neither until peace and safety are guaranteed.

We have a choice. We can sit here clutching our wealth, defending our position atop this reeking dung-heap of human hubris, or we can hear the words of Jeremiah. If we listen, we will learn that peace and safety come after justice and righteousness. History bears ample witness that their order is not reversible. Soon we shall go forward into a new year. Shall we go in war or in peace?

Mark Bromley

All contents copyright 2003 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.