The overwhelming coming of God

—Mark 1:1-4For God to be born as a human being was a wonderful thing for this world; it was also a deeply perilous thing for us. John the Baptizer understood this, and the writers of the Scripture understood this, even if we too often don’t. That’s why we have this curious little thing here in Mark, which I highlighted in this post: he says, “As it is written in Isaiah,” and then he doesn’t quote Isaiah, he quotes Malachi. It’s only after he’s thrown Malachi in there that he gets to Isaiah. The folks who like to look for errors and contradictions in Scripture jump all over this one, but the truth is, this is no mistake.It is, rather, the first example of a structure Mark uses in a number of places in his gospel—scholars call them “sandwiches,” in a rare example of a technical term which is actually intelligible.  By way of illustration, you can find another in Mark 11, in his telling of the story of the cursing of the fig tree.  Jesus curses the fig tree, it withers, and he uses that to teach the disciples a lesson. But Mark doesn’t tell that story straight through; instead, he separates it, and in between, he puts the story of the cleansing of the temple. The cursing of the fig tree “sandwiches” this story. Mark does this to give added emphasis to the cleansing of the temple, and to tell us that these two events belong together—we can’t really understand one of them without understanding the other one.It’s the same thing here. Mark says, “As it is written in Isaiah . . . the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” But he doesn’t leave this in one piece—he separates it, and in between the two halves, he puts Malachi 3:1.  It’s jarring—intentionally so, I think—as an audience expecting the great promise-proclamation of Isaiah 40 (because what else would he be quoting, given the context?  They knew their Scripture) gets instead the foreboding of judgment of Malachi 3, and the message that we can’t take Isaiah’s hope without Malachi’s warning.God came to earth, and is coming again, to deliver us from the power of sin and death, and to bring an end to all oppression and injustice; but we cannot imagine ourselves to be guiltless in this respect, and so as part of this, he comes to cleanse and refine his people, washing and burning away all our impurities.  Thus Malachi asks rightly, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” because even for those who love and fear him, his coming will not be easy—it will be overwhelming.  He will come not to affirm us as we are as wonderful people, but rather to purify us—to complete the work of smelting away all the slag and the dross in our lives.  In the face of that, who can stand? None of us. Not even one. The good news is, though, we don’t have to.  As the singer-songwriter Sarah Masen put it, “The fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace.” All we can do is cast ourselves on the grace of God, on the price paid for us by Christ on the cross; all we can do is lay all of ourselves at his feet and let him refine us and purify us until we can bear his joy, his love, his goodness, his holiness, his peace.(Excerpted, edited, from “Who Can Stand?”)