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Blind sideSaturday, December 11, 2010
Matthew 17:11-12 In the last book of the Hebrew Bible God says he will send Elijah "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord" (Malachi 4:5). He sends Elijah as a peacemaker, as a restorer: "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of their children to their parents" (Malachi 4:6). Jesus sees everything so differently from his disciples, and from the church leaders around him. Nothing short of the restoration of "all things" is enough for God, or Jesus. And tactics like war or rebellion or legalistic division play little or no part in his thinking. Jesus only thinks in terms of peacemaking, of restoring walls, dwellings, families, nations. Elijah prepared the way for this, Jesus comes to bring fruit. He seems surprised and disappointed at the rejection and disbelief he encounters. He expects the rejection to continue: "They did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer ..." What are these Pharisees thinking? The rest of the passage in Malachi, which they surely know by heart, says: " ... or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction" (Malachi 4:6). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. You promise to restore your children to the way you made them. What keeps me from opening my arms and receiving? Of course, I am afraid. But I should be so afraid to keep my arms closed. That is where the danger lies. Open me open me open me. |
Elijah has come, Elijah will come again. Elijah is the one man in history who did not die. According to eyewitness Elisha, who took his place as prophet (in 2 Kings 2), he was lifted up to heaven on a chariot of fire.