But What is Wrong?
Malachi’s first shots are at the religious leadership — the priesthood — though most of us today we are more likely to hear what God is saying if we think of the community of the faithful in general.
That way we begin with ourselves. It is easy to escape Malachi’s fire if we concentrate on the detail, because we don’t worship like that any more (1: 7-8, 12-14), but what happens if we go down a layer? Are we really offering the best in faith and worship, or have we become indifferent and slack, found ways of cutting corners or turning everything round to suit ourselves?
Take off another layer and we come to the connection between ritual and reality. Like us, these people had inherited a whole wealth of religion, worship, culture and tradition. To those who established the traditions every detail mattered — it had all been forged in the flames of controversy. These were the traditions they had fought and suffered to achieve, and far from being a burden or a boredom every detail provided a sense of joy, direction and satisfaction, like wings to a bird or sails to ship.
Now is different. The world has turned round. New issues and concerns call for new rituals, or at least for the reinterpretation of old ones, and the faithful are always in danger of being over-attentive to rites and rituals that have lost their pulling power while the rest of the people are ‘worshipping God’ in concerns and commitments which traditional religion has difficulty in recognising. Are we trying too hard to keep God ‘where he was’ and failing to notice ‘where he is’.
V 11 is said to be ‘one of the most difficult verses in the OT to interpret’ (Coggins) and capable of being read in at least five different ways, but when read alongside Psalm 50: 1b it suggests a God whose preoccupation is with the universe rather than routine sacrifices and temple matters. In other words, the faith of the world rather then the world of the faithful, and that takes us into wholly new and exciting territory.