Happily Ever After (Malachi 3:13-18) 
Rev. Peter Heckert 
11/20/22

+ Grace to you, and peace, from God our heavenly Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. + Amen.

The text for our meditation on this Last Sunday of the Church Year comes from our Old Testament text, where Malachi proclaims YHWH’s Word, “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.” Here ends our text; my dear Christian friends 


Fairy tales. Not quite parables, certainly not in the way our Lord Jesus teaches them, but these fantastical stories still teach us much. “Sleeping Beauty.” “Jack and the Beanstalk.” “The Princess and the Pea.” Right and wrong. True love conquering all. Good versus evil. But have you ever heard of a “fractured fairy tale”? Odds are, you have, even if you didn’t recognize it as such. Fractured fairy tales are called thus because it’s a twisted telling of a well-known fairy tale. Sometimes these tales are told from the perspective of the villain, painting them in a sympathetic light. One by-product of reading these fractured fairy tales is making you wonder whether or not the “bad guys” and “good guys” are, in fact, bad or good respectively. However, there’s often another cynical, sobering side-effect of reading these stories: they call into question the “happily ever after” ending.

Which is fair. Fairy tale endings are, by their nature, idyllic. Everyone’s happy after the adventure is done and the threat is vanquished, the princess and the prince never have a fight or argue, they never face illness or old age. 
 Those who have spent any time in the real world know that a “happily ever after” in this life is nigh impossible. Things go wrong, relationships fall apart, people get sick and die. Famine, poverty, oppression, war, injustice, unfaithfulness – these are present realities in our world. Plenty of monsters, but not many heroes to slay them. But lest you think that this present time of suffering is special or unique, know that it’s not. Know that Man has been seeking to get back to the “happily-ever-after” of Eden since the Fall into sin. Pursuit of the fairy tale ending has always been a fool’s errand.

Case in point: our Old Testament text. Malachi is prophesying to YHWH’s people after the exile into Babylon, after the return to Jerusalem, after the city and temple have been secured and reconstructed. The Judahites thought they had learned their lesson. They vowed to not fall into the same traps that their ancestors did. No, sir, they were going to worship YHWH alone! Not Molech or Baal or Asherah, only the Lord their God! They committed to keep His commandments, and the thought was that God, in turn, would bless them. A happily ever after!

That turned out just about as well as you’d think. The fervor and zeal that the people felt after their religious reformation and recommitment 
 faded as the aforementioned difficulties of life persisted. They felt like they served God 
 but it didn’t seem like He was reciprocating their love and devotion. Indeed, from the way God speaks through Malachi, it sounds as though the remnant of Israel felt 
 betrayed!

Malachi prophesies, “Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.’” It’s a little hard to blame them. We look at the world around us, and it is anything but a fairy tale. Those who are wicked and faithless seem to get ahead in life, never being held accountable for their evil. Those who are arrogant are called “blessed,” sometimes even being paid as “influencers” for their arrogance. And those who try their best to do the right thing 
 are ignored, mocked, or blamed. It seems reasonable and pragmatic enough to conclude what the Judahites did: “It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?” The people seem to be telling a fractured fairy tale, where God is unjust and they are justified in their anger and frustration. And as fellow sinners, we understand where they’re coming from. 

There seems to be nothing to gain and a lot to lose 
 so why do it? Why follow YHWH Elohim and no other? Why bother baptizing your kids when they may end up falling away? Why receive Christ’s body and blood in the Supper, when there’s no perceptible change in your life and you still struggle with the same old tribulations and temptations as before? Why go through the bother of coming to church at all – indeed, why be a Christian at all? Well, if the focus is only on the here and now, yes, I can see how one would reach this conclusion. If our hope lies only in this life, in the short-term or even the long-term, absolutely, this worldview makes perfect sense 
 but it’s wrong. DEAD wrong.

The fact of the matter is, our hope doesn’t lie in this vale of tears. The fact of the matter is, appearances are often deceiving, and while the wicked may seem to flourish, justice is inevitably served. The fact of the matter is, YHWH Elohim has not forgotten His people, nor has He abandoned His creation, nor abdicated His rule. Those who see and decry the wicked prospering and the righteous withering don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, where the King of creation is doing something. At Malachi’s time, the people were impatient that YHWH their God was biding His time. He was waiting for the fullness of time, when He would send His Son, the second Adam, who would come when the time was right and begin the process of undoing the scourge of sin. He healed the infirm, He cast out the demons, He raised the dead, He proclaimed the Good News of the kingdom to the poor.

But even then, the people of His time certainly didn’t recognize what God was doing. They expected the Messiah to bring with Him the fairy tale ending; thus, when they saw Him, His arrest and “trial,” His torture at the hands of Gentile pagans, His cruel crucifixion and death, they saw just another disappointment. One who had done such marvelous things, cut down and cut short 
 but they didn’t know. They didn’t know that, appearances aside, this bloody spectacle was the means by which YHWH would bring ultimate healing and justice to this mad world. Though they heard the Prophet’s words, “
 with His wounds we are healed,” they didn’t recognize the scourged flesh and flowing blood from the cross atop Golgotha’s summit was the sacrifice necessary for the salvation of the world. No, God didn’t abandon His people; He became man and died so that man may live eternally upon His final word, “It is finished.”

I get it. I truly do. This life is no fairy tale. You’re heartbroken over the death of a loved one. Your marriage has soured and you don’t know how reconciliation can occur. You’ve been in agony for years at this point, with little to no relief. I’m sure the question, ‘Are You even there?” has passed your mind or lips more than once. But here, as we are about to enter the blessed season of Advent, celebrating Christ’s first Coming and anticipating His second, we remember that YHWH Elohim has not promised us a fairy tale, but that He remembers us. He claimed us as His own treasured possessions in our baptisms, marking us with His name. For the sake of the One who bled and died for us, we are spared the death and damnation that we deserve. By the Spirit of the living God, we fear, love, and trust Him, remembering His promises and His faithfulness in keeping them. No, there’s no such thing as “happily ever after.” Not in this life. But in the life of the world to come, at our Lord’s return on the Last Day, we will be admitted to the wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, which has no end. That is better than “happily ever after.” Indeed, that’s “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That’s, “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”

+ In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. + Amen.