Swift Justice
February 2, 2025 – The Presentation of Our Lord
Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40
As I stepped into a crosswalk on a busy street, a car sped straight in front of me. Not even a head turn from the driver. Just across the street . . . sat a police car. The officer turned on his lights. I held back from crossing the street and gave the officer a thumbs-up. Last I saw, he was on that driver’s tail.
Swift justice feels so good. I don’t wish cruel, unusual, or disproportionate punishment on that driver. But, I admit—I hope they got pulled over and were at least very late to wherever they were in such an oblivious hurry to get to.
In most cases, justice is anything but swift. In the days of the prophet Malachi, people had just rebuilt the Temple after Babylonians had destroyed it. Now that the Temple was rebuilt, they expected a golden age to follow swiftly. They’d see the destruction of their enemies, and prosperity for themselves. But as time passed, they kept asking Malachi, “Where is the God of justice?” (Mal 2:17). In response, the Malachi reassured—or maybe warned them—“the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
Half a millennium passed before Mary and Jesus arrived at the Temple, as told in today’s gospel. Other shorter but still painfully long waiting periods had passed as well. Anna and Simeon had aged in desperate hope that they’d see the Lord’s justice in their lifetimes. Then there was the long wait of Zechariah and Elizabeth to conceive their son, John. Luke the evangelist saw John as “the messenger” foretold by Malachi to precede the arrival of God’s justice. Then there was Mary’s own pregnancy. Then, a period of forty days after childbirth, before Mary at last came to the Temple, with Jesus, for purification.
In Mosaic tradition (Lev 12), a mother was “ceremonially unclean for seven days” after the birth of a male child. (Twice that long after the birth of a girl!) Then followed 33 more days when the mother couldn’t enter the Temple sanctuary or touch anything holy. But after the full 40 days, she’d bring to the Temple priest a lamb, and a pigeon or turtledove. Families who couldn’t afford a lamb, like Jesus’s family, could bring two birds instead. After the priest sacrificed these offerings, the postpartum mother was restored to purity.
Today, February 2nd, is 40 days after Christmas—the birth of Jesus. This day used to be called “the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin,” popularly known as “Candlemas.” Christians would bring candles to be blessed in church and used at home as small signs of the refining fire and revelatory light that Simeon and Anna saw in the Temple that day.
For Simeon and Anna, Mary’s arrival at the Temple, with her purifying offering of two pigeons, and with her son, Jesus, fulfilled Malachi’s prophecy that the Lord’s cleansing justice would show up. It would show up in the Temple like a smelting fire that refines precious metals. Like cleansing lye—the strongest soap in a launderer’s arsenal.
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But even Mary and Jesus’s arrival at the Temple didn’t fully satisfy people’s desire for swift justice. Even early Christian communities, and us more than two thousand years later, have asked the same question as the people complaining to the prophet Malachi: “Where is the God of justice?” (Mal 2:17).
The prophet Malachi initially offered people two things to tide them over in their wait for justice: first, a list of people to blame for the delay; and second, a list of people God’s justice was coming for.
Topping the list of people to blame for the delay in God’s justice were priests. They’d been offering the Lord only weak, sick, and disabled animals that were worthless anyway. But also, ordinary people were short-changing the Lord on their tithes. What’s more, Malachi blamed the delay in God’s justice on Israelites who’d married foreign women who worshipped foreign gods (though other Israelites disagreed). And Malachi bemoaned men divorcing frivolously, abandoning “the wi[ves] of [their] youth” (2.15). Malachi predicted that after a messenger expunged these impurities, justice would follow swiftly.
According to the prophet Malachi, this justice would come to purge “sorcerers,” “adulterers,” and “those who swear falsely.” This cleansing justice would “testify against . . . those who defraud laborers of their wages” (NIV), those who “oppress” widows and orphans, and “those who thrust aside the foreigner” (NCB) (Mal 3:5).
According to the prophet Malachi, a purifying messenger and the Lord’s cleansing justice would make God’s people as pleasing to God as they used to be.
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In our own world, when God’s justice feels distant and slow, it can be satisfying to make lists of why it’s delayed, or to envision who it’s coming for. But the prophet Malachi goes further. In response to the people’s question, “Where is the God of justice?” Malachi gives them a question to ponder as they wait. He asks them, “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” Maybe not them. Maybe not us.
Toward the end of his prophetic message—after our reading today ends—Malachi mentions one last category of people who God’s judgment might come after. They’re people who accurately observe that evildoers do quite well for themselves and often escape consequences. Seeing this, people conclude that there’s no point to serving God. People say to themselves, “evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test, they get away with it” (3:15, NRSV & NIV); “What do we gain by keeping his commands or by going about like mourners before the Lord . . ?” (3:14, NRSV & NIV). In other words, what’s the point of following guidelines if the rule-breakers and ethics violators get rich? What’s the point of repentance, if the unrepentant are off the hook?
It’s deeply human to desire swift justice. It’s also human to come up with explanations for why justice is delayed, and to lavishly imagine who would have to face God’s justice when it came. But as Malachi refines his message, the last thing he claims will have to stand before God’s justice is cynical despair. It’s those who see evildoers prospering and escaping justice, and then give up on ethics, and on repentance, themselves. It’s “those people” who sometimes include me.
In the book of Malachi, the people take to heart this accusation of cynical despair. Then, through his messenger Malachi, the Lord begins to make promises: “. . . once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. See, the day is coming . . .” (3:18-4:1).
Those of us who live to 84 like Anna might see that day. But any minute, we can at least see glimpses of it. Let’s hope we can stand the wait. But even more, let’s pray, through the pure offerings of Mary, and through the self-offering of Jesus her son, that we can stand such justice when it arrives.