Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Near the front entrance of most modern grocery stores, you will find a machine. Most of these machines are about 6 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. Most of them are green, with an interactive computer screen at eye level. Most of them are named “Coin Star.” It’s where you can recycle your used or unwanted coins. In exchange for your coins, you can receive paper money, store credit to be applied against your purchase or you can even donate to a non-profit organization.

I visit “Coin Star” once a month, carrying to it a good sized box of coins that has been collected from our Mite Boxes. In all these months and months now of doing this, one thing never fails to amaze me. And that is how an inanimate electronic machine can be so demanding and so picky. If the coin is not a U.S. coin, it will be rejected. If the coin is damaged, it will be rejected. Even if the coin is too old or too dirty, it will be rejected. How does it do that?

When a coin is rejected it gets spit out into a special place where you’re supposed to reclaim that coin and put it back into your pocket. But, honestly, I don’t just automatically stick that rejected coin back into my pocket. Probably like most people, I attempt at least once to re-feed that rejected coin back into the machine, hoping it will change its mind and take the coin after all. Most times it doesn’t, rather rejecting it again and again until I get the hint and admit defeat. The machine is demanding. The machine is picky.

I guess you could say that’s a modern day application of Malachi chapter 1. Speaking through Malachi, the Lord God didn’t use a “Coin Star” as an example because they didn’t yet exist. Rather the Lord God used the human examples of a father and a master and a governor to draw a picture in the minds of people showing the inequity between how we treat human superiors and how we treat Him as our divine God.

Through Malachi, God affirms that a human father is honored. A master is respected by his servants. A governor expects and demands only the best. But to God, probably because He was not being looked at face-to-face, well, to God was being given the “leftovers,” the “rejects,” the “less-than-perfects,” the “well-if-we-really-have-tos,” and the “stuff that really couldn’t be used for anything else anyways.” Not only was God being given those less than acceptable sacrifices, but the people thought they were completely justified in their actions because, after all, what had God done for them?

That’s the wrong question, isn’t it?

God started His oracle by saying “I have loved you.” In the original Hebrew, I believe that’s one single word. “I have loved you.” “I have loved you.” That’s the basis and foundation for everything that follows. God loves His people. God loves you. God He loves me.

Even today, people snicker at that. Even today, people respond to that with statements like “Well, God’s sure got a funny way of showing His love.” Even today, people respond to that with statements like “I’m glad God ‘loves’ me so much. I’d hate to see what would happen if He didn’t ‘love’ me.”

Well, let me tell you what would happen if God didn’t love you. It’s exactly what God Himself said through Malachi. If God didn’t love us, we wouldn’t be here. We would be like Esau. We would be like Edom. You might ask, “Well, who are they?” And that’s exactly the point. They’re not around anymore. If God didn’t love us, we would be hated, the total diametrical opposite of being loved. Hate is more than just a emotion. Hate is an action, a consistent action, a consistent turning against. If God didn’t love us, we’d be totally and completely destroyed, never again to be anything but a uninhabitable, forgotten wasteland.

While many people may doubt God’s love for them, few people want to admit the possibility of God’s hatred – that’s interesting, isn’t it? – but that’s exactly how God answered His people, both in Malachi’s time and today: “If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you. I’d crush you. I’d totally destroy you so that I wouldn’t have to deal with you, but I have loved you,” says the Lord Almighty.

The physical manifestation of God’s love for us is the Cross of Jesus Christ. There, God Himself suffered and died. But it’s so much more than that! There, God Himself took the full brunt of His own hatred, the hatred that was supposed to be directed undiluted toward you and me. There God Himself experienced what it means to be hated by God as He damned Himself to hell, as He Himself experienced the everlasting fires of hell, as He Himself heard the sinister laughter of the devil and all his minions, thinking they had finally won.

No wonder that earthquake on Easter morning! It was more than just Jesus rolling the stone away from the entrance to His own tomb. It was more than just Jesus waking Himself after a three day nap. No, that earthquake was Jesus’ final response to the devil, expelling Himself from the fires of hell and declaring Himself in no uncertain terms to be the ultimate Victor and, because of His love for us, extending His victory to each and every one of us, truly a great King, truly a great Name to be honored among the nations, from the rising of the sun to the place where it goes down.

“I have loved you,” says the Lord Almighty. Of that, we can be certain!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena