When I saw the Lectionary readings for this Sunday I thought to myself, “I’m gonna do it.” They won’t be expecting it, because no one ever expects it. But I’m going to. I’m going to peach on the book of Malachi. Hands up who has ever heard a sermon on Malachi. You never have. Think of all the great preachers – Billy Graham, John Wesley, Mark Waldo, none of them ever preached on Malachi. Which is a pity because one day, in heaven an old Hebrew prophet is going to come to them and ask, “Why did you never preach on my book?” And heaven will be filled with awkwardness. But not for me, because on 16 November 2025 I preached on Malachi. Those embarrassed clergy will defend themselves in the only way they can. They’ll say, “Well, Malachi, you were pretty obscure. I mean yours is the last book of the Old Testament, and it only take up two pages of the Bible. And the people who devised the calendar of Sunday readings decided that we should only read from your book twice in our three-year cycle. And, then, sorry to tell you this, Malachi, but there’s the problem of your message. It’s not exactly cheerful, is it? Your entire book lasts just 51 verses, and fifty of those are about God’s judgment. So, I guess, if you wanted us to preach on your work you should have gone with a little more encouragement and little less condemnation. You know, accentuate the positive, more blessings and fewer curses. I’m just sayin. Face it, you didn’t make many friends when you were alive, and you haven’t made many in the two and a half thousand years since.” And, to be honest, my fellow-preachers will have a point. Malachi is not the most uplifting book in the Bible. 50 of its 51 verses are about God’s judgment. Now, this morning’s lesson from Malachi is only 2 verses long. So being a wiz at math you have instantly worked out that at least 50% of those two verses and probably both of them, will be from the 98% of gloom that is the book of Malachi. “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” No surprise there. But, then comes verse 2 and our 50 verses of woe are worth it. “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Do you know the greatest phrase in the Bible? It’s ‘But... God...’. A writer will be describing a scene of pain or disaster or evil and you think it’s all bleak and hopeless and then they say, “but ... God...” Do you know how many times ‘but God’ appears in the Bible? Neither do I. But AI does, and it tells me it’s 587 times. 587 ‘but God’s’. “But God remembered Noah and the waters receded”, “And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him”, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart Jesus was crucified and buried, “But God raised Him from the dead”, “Peter said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean”, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, and will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to endure”, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…”. 587. That is about the number of times in my life when I’ve seriously messed up, made very bad decisions, acted foolishly, said something mean, been anxious, self-centered, and faithless. And each and every time, when I think I’ve gone just too far this time, I can now see those two words etched across the sky – but God. Cleaning up after my moral messes and my stupid mistakes. I messed up; but God. So I look at my life now and the whole enterprise, the entire Project Duncan can be summed in those two words. But God. So, we go through challenging experiences but God has a plan; we feel great loss, but God has a future; we shock ourselves by just how petty or small-minded or immature we can be, but God will take it all and turn it into the beautiful patchwork that is our story. Compose a list – a list of your 587 worst moments, and then see 587 but Gods. Now, there’s actually a very good reason why Malachi devoted 98% of his book to judgment. He was living in desperate times, around the middle of the fifth century before Christ. God’s people were having an identity crisis. They were spinning in disorientation. They were doubting themselves, and doubting God. They’d forgotten who they were and why God created them. And they strayed from their faith. Disorientation can do that, can’t it? Events can leave us confused, we wonder where God is, perhaps whether he even exists, and if he does, then why is he allowing these painful events. But God. God’s people had crossed a line. They had forgotten the gift of their adoption by God, and all the blessings that came with it. And now all around, there were the consequences – injustice in the marketplace, corruption in the law-court, and a self-serving religion overseen by uncaring and hypocritical clergy. Self-interest was the idea powering their society. And Malachi looked at his own people – a people who were the apple of God’s eye, and who were called and commissioned for a special relationship with God - and he was sickened by what he saw. His outrage and disgust was directed largely at the religious types and their self- satisfied priests, and this he pronounces reflects God’s heart of justice and goodness. 50 verses of judgment. Fifty shades of grave. Say what you like about Malachi, but here’s why I love him. As we doom- scroll our way through his short book, Instead, do a Malachi. Because, as we read his prophecy, we get so demoralized by this weight of impending catastrophe, and just as we’re about to be consumed by despair, Malachi lights a candle. In the overwhelming darkness, he strikes a match. It’s small and hard to spot, at first, but then as we edge tentatively towards it, feeling our way as we go, not daring to place too much hope in it, because the prospect of unfulfilled dreams is even more unbearable than never having had them in the first place, this light gets bigger and brighter. We feel the temperature rise as the rays reach our skin. And then like a burst of energy from an exploding star, it fills our eyes and floods our horizons. At first we blink, and even turn our heads away, unable to stand its radiance. But soon, we are able to open our eyes and we read boldly this one verse out of 51. “The sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” The flame that brought judgment is now bringing healing. Light that transforms, comforts, warms, emboldens us. I think I like the way that God inspired Malachi to prophesy fifty verses of judgment and one verse of hope. Because that is a good picture of Western society in 2025. There’s so much that challenges to our peace and joy. If you want to you can go through the day listening to fifty verses of judgment, fifty shades of grave. We’re bombarded with reasons to worry and despair – pick the one that fits you best – economic, environmental, technological. We’re presented with a non-stop stream of other people’s sins; we have been trained to suspect other’s motives and to dismiss their virtues. How hard is it to spot the single verse of hope? It is there, God has spoken the word of encouragement, the prophecy of hope, it’s just hard to hear it above the clamor of the other stuff, but it requires discipline and hard work to hear the verse of hope. Let me tell you my own struggle to spot the grace of God in among all the trash. I find it so hard that a few years ago I devoted a year to reading through the entire Bible, verse by verse – about three or four chapters a day – from Genesis to Revelation. And I did it to force myself to spot at least one hopeful verse each day. And I didn’t put down my Bible until I had found something in the day’s reading that said something positive. In the middle of Leviticus, it was tough. But I made myself do it. And I recorded it each day in a journal – just a few sentences about the hopeful verse for that day, and what it meant for me. And I think that daily discipline changed me. I learned to see the pain and the challenges of life in the bigger context of God’s love and his gracious plans. I got the perspective that Jesus is Lord over even the chaos and confusion. As I say, that was a few years ago, and since then I’ve lost that discipline. I once again find it hard to spot the reason for hope. A lot of the time I am anxious again, many days I struggle with gloomy thoughts. Telling you this convinces me I need to do this again and regain the ground I’ve lost. The sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings. If you are going to put a single positive verse in your 51-verse Bible book, write one with some powerful metaphors. Thank you, Malachi. The sun – SUN – rising with healing in its wings. Isn’t that lovely? The sun has healing in its wings. Just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, so we can depend on God’s healing rising for us. Healing. I need that – in my mind and my soul, in my relationships and my spirit. Where do you need God’s health? What wounds are still open? The injury was caused a long time ago, so long you maybe can’t even remember it accurately today. Truth be told, that open wound should have become a scar by now, but it still has not healed. It still bleeds, it still causes agony, it still disrupts your life. Well, hear the good, happy, positive word of God through his servant Malachi. The sun of righteousness has risen with healing in its wings.