Many Messengers in Real Time

I was naïve enough to think that with the election over, my in-box would empty out.  No more political announcements or pleas for contributions.  No such luck.  The campaign now goes 24/7, 365 days a year.  To preserve my sanity, I just delete these messages wholesale.  Gone.  You’re done!

Only…only to now be besieged by Christmas messengers urging me to buy everything under the sun.  As one wit put it:  We are asked to buy a bunch of crap for people we don’t know and don’t care that much about that they don’t need and we can’t afford.

All to the nasal tunes of cartoon chipmunks crooning insipid tunes to trite words.  How is it that in this season of Peace on Earth has been transmogrified into a blizzard of annoyance?   Definitely these are not messengers of Peace and Goodwill to all people on earth.

The Old Testament reading comes from Malachi.  Actually, that was not his name.  It is a title.  It means in Hebrew, “My Messenger.”

Malachi prophesied in that time when the Hebrew exiles were returning from Babylonia to Jerusalem, sometime from 515 to 445 BC.  Jerusalem lain in ruins.  The culture of Judaism was dismantled with the destruction of the temple.  Not one stone resting upon another.

Malachi was God’s Messenger sent to these despondent and wayward returnees.  Much remained to be rebuilt.  The question was where to begin. 

That is the question for America following the 2024 election.  Many folks with many answers now appear.  Which one or ones should be listened to.

Of all the messages on various and sundry issues, how do we discern those that might have divine residue?  Those which build up?  Those which give hope?  Those which tell needed truth?

There’s an old song from Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, folk singers of the sixties.  Pete Seeger grew up in a Protestant home and much of his music caries the ethic of his early religious teachings.

This song most of us sung at rallies and on marches – known as the “Hammer Song.”  The verse I refer to goes:

“If I had a song
I’d sing it in the morning
I’d sing it in the evening
All over this land
I’d sing out danger
I’d sing out warning
I’d sing out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land, oh”

“Well, I’ve got a hammer
And I’ve got a bell
And I’ve got a song to sing
All over this land
It’s the hammer of justice
It’s the bell of freedom
It’s a song about love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land”[1]

I believe that messages like this protest song that relate danger, warning and a universal love between all our brothers and sisters are of holy import.  They convey divine impact.  They are God’s Hammer.

That was the message of Malachi.

“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.  The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.  But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

“He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descents of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.”

He will refine the descendants of Cranmer and Wesley, Augustine and Calvin.  Who can endure the day of his coming?  Her coming?

The Hammer Song gives us criteria for Holy Discernment of the many messages that besiege us.  Warning, Hope, Love – the key.

One of the messengers bearing the hope of Advent is Dr. Jamil Zaki.  His new book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness[2], relates recent research underlying the case for hope.  In most of us there is an innate goodness and trust in our fellow human beings that wins out.

He relates the tale of a boy who should have grown up cynical and distrustful as a result of early trauma from a rejecting mother.[3]

When Emile was born, this event changed his mother’s life completely.  After giving birth, Linda was plagued by “cruel, demonic voices that mocked and accused her – the torment of schizophrenia.  Trapped in her own mind, she left Emile and Bill, her husband, and lived on the streets of Palo Alto.”[4]

Disheveled, unsheltered and alone as a twenty-five-year-old woman she was subject to unspeakable abuse.  From time to time she would appear in Emile’s life but the relationship was extremely insecure.

Emile survived because his father went to extraordinary lengths to provide a loving household.  Being poor and single, Bill was an excellent, loving father.  “…Bill was doggedly present with his son, offering the ’underbearing attentiveness’ that Emile cherished.”

And amidst the uncertainty of the relationship, over the sporadic visits, it was clear that Emile and Linda cared for each other.

“Outside his house, just before the two would meet, she would sometimes be visibly distraught, fighting the voices.  Then, through force of will, she’d compose herself for as long as they were together.  Family members recall their reunions as peaceful and affectionate.  Mother and son carved out a small space, away from the devils in her mind.”[5]

When Emile was in his thirties, his mother Linda died.  By then she lived across the country and Emile flew back East to be with her in her last days.  He advocated for her with the doctors and others who attended her in the hospital.  He slept by her bed on the floor.  He provided the mothering to her she was unable to provide for him.

“After her death, Linda lived on in his memory, not despite her pain but because of it.  He lacked a ‘normal’ mother but had found a hero, and the beginnings of his world view…Linda marked him with inner ‘superpowers.’”

As a friend would remark, “He understood from early on that wonderful people could end up in terrible circumstances through no fault of their own.”[6]

This psychologist, in telling reality-based stories of hope and the attendant research, is certainly a Messenger of God, every bit as much as Malachi, every bit as much as all Holy Messengers, Attending Angels, sent to us down through the eons of time.  Every bit as much as those visitors who had appeared before the opening of Abraham and Sarah’s desert tent.[7]

Daily we’re attended by such.  Echoes of the Holy One we yet await.  Who are they?  I end with a portion of poem, “A Song of a Man who Has Come Through,” by D.H. Lawrence.[8]

“…. Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.”

Yes, admit them this Holy Advent.  Amen.

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[1] Pete Seeger, Lee Hays first released “If I Had a Hammer” on Hootenanny Records in August 1, 1950.  Later to be picked up and further popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962.

[2] Jamil Zaki, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024).

[3] Ibid, 38-39.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Genesis 18.

[8] D.H. Lawrence, Selected Poems, “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through (New York: Viking Press, 1959), 74/

December 8, 2024
Advent 2

Malachi 3:1-4; Canticle 16 (Luke 1:68-79);
Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

“Many Messengers in Real Time”