To Quarrel is human, to end the quarrel divine. 

I don’t know anything more wearying nor as entrapping as quarreling.

All of us are veteran quarrelers. We started it as children, toddlers in fact, and throughout most of our live we have been crafting our skill within it.

The object of quarreling is simple, to win.

The puzzle of quarreling is it’s futility. We know by experience that quarreling pays out less predictably than the lottery, but we can’t keep ourselves from it.

Our options are usually two: to quarrel, or to leave while nursing the mental quarrel long after the fight is over.

The Quarreling Fantasy

Part of what fuels our futile entrapment within quarreling is the fantasy of victory. We imagine that we will unleash that verbal zinger and we will triumph.

The picture of quarreling triumph is telling. We imagine that our adversary is vanquished and must concede. We also fantasize that there is a group of witnesses who will validate our righteousness and observe the defeat of our adversary. We imagine that the strength of our argument and the uprightness of our example will prevail and in that moment the world will know that we are right and righteous. All who can see will come to our light and all who are true and honest will join with us in the humiliating scorn of our adversary and the enjoyment of their destruction.

The Mirroring Truth of Quarreling

To be human is to quarrel. To be human is to hold fast to our faith in maintaining the Quarreling Fantasy despite overwhelming evidence that it is merely wishful thinking.

The ironic, mirroring truth of quarreling is that our adversary faithfully maintains the Fantasy in reverse. It is our humiliation and defeat they desire.

The adversaries take the field. They have, or imagine to have their allies with them, anticipating the humiliation of their adversary and their own vindication and exaltation. Here we stay burning down the house we say we are righting to preserve.

To be human is to quarrel. Civil war is our destiny.

The End of the Quarrel

All that usually gets fueled, however, is the quarrel. The more each party pours into the conflict, the more each party gets poured back at them. To the degree that one prevails over the other, even in minor ways, the more the cycle of fantasy or real vindication and humiliation gets engaged.

The common conclusion to all of this violence, warfare and eventually cultural or material genocide.

The heart of the quarrel is that in the end there can only be one: one victor, one position, one truth, one who is righteous. All else must be annihilated.

To Quarrel with God

Israel as a name and a nation is birthed in an economy of quarrels. Jacob quarreled in the womb and grabbed at his brother’s heal. Caught between Laban and Esau he is ambushed by God at the river Jabbok. Jacob now contended with God and demanded a blessing even as God dealt him a crippling touch.

Israel the nation quarreled with God. It began even before she was freed from Egypt and continued into the promised land, through exile, and back again into the land again.

Last week we heard God promise that the new temple would outstrip the old. Four generations later they asked, “Well, where’s the payout?” Years after the people dug deep and completed the temple the prophesy is unfulfilled. They kept up their end, but the LORD failed to keep his end of the deal.

This despair has translated into sloppy housekeeping on the part of the priests. Why work this spiritual blessings machine called the temple if it doesn’t pay out? Priests present sub-standard sacrifices. Why keep faith in gifts to the temple or faithfulness at home if that kind of sacrifice doesn’t get you what you thought it would?

God in the Dock

Malachi 2:17 (NET)

¹⁷ You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” Because you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the Lord’s opinion, and he delights in them,” or “Where is the God of justice?”

The salvo of the inhabitants of Jerusalem is simple. The god-blessing machine doesn’t work. Why? Because their enemies, the ones without the temple receive good things. Their kids get into the best schools. Their wives produce more songs. Their armies raid the fields of others more successfully. God “favors” the evil. The people’s adversaries flourish while the people who are supposed to be God’s favorites suffer.

How should it be? Armies with Yhwh on their flags should always prevail. Homes with Yhwh on their doorposts should have stronger sons, more to eat, prettier daughters to attract wealthier sons-in-law, more success. Those who rob and deceive should be exposed and those who do the right thing should flourish.

How is it really? The strong take the weak. The immoral get away with theft and murder while the righteous are victimized.

These are potent arguments. Who can argue with them? Is it any different today?

God Shouts Them Down

The binary choice of quarreling is brutal. Even God seems caught in its grip. God can either walk away, or quarrel back. The book of Malachi looks like God’s side of the quarrel with its litany of divine complaints.

God of course, has resources that the little inhabitants of Jerusalem don’t have access to. We imagine God can shout them down, assert positional authority and appeal to his righteousness preserved by definition of deity. (Keep this thought, we’ll return to it later.)

Malachi 3:1–2 (NET)

¹ “I am about to send my messenger, who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,” says the Lord who rules over all. ² Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can keep standing when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like a launderer’s soap.

This is of course what we expect, like in any argument. One side lobs the accusation “It’s not my fault, it’s yours!” and the other side responds “Go ahead and try, you’ll get yours, you can’t touch me!”

Malachi 3:3–5 (NET)

³ He will act like a refiner and purifier of silver and will cleanse the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will offer the Lord a proper offering. ⁴ The offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in former times and years past. ⁵ “I will come to you in judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who practice divination, those who commit adultery, those who break promises, and those who exploit workers, widows, and orphans, who refuse to help the immigrant and in this way show they do not fear me,” says the Lord who rules over all.

God promises to bully them, to threaten them, to punish them until they say “uncle” and offer up the right sacrifices God demands.

Victims are Us

Common to a quarrel is to point out the deficiencies and failures of the other side, while asserting your own righteousness.

God’s salvo seems to expose something of Jerusalem’s vulnerability. Israel maintained herself in this quarrel narrative as the victim of Yhwh’s negligence. Yhwh has failed in justice (at least their idea of justice) and Jerusalem is the victim. Here Yhwh suggests that Jerusalem is hardly, simply a victim.

There are in Jerusalem those who are weak and who are the responsibility of the city. People practice divination to advantage themselves with insider information. Men aren’t faithful to their wives and look for other women who will give them the political and relational connections with stronger neighbors they imagine they require and deserve. Marriage in the ancient world is not about romance or sex, it is about ladder climbing.

The workers, the poor, the widows and orphans are exploited, not only by Jerusalem’s adversaries, but by Jerusalem herself.

The powerful of Jerusalem live by the same rules as their adversaries outside the walls, “My wellbeing at your expense”. The heart of their complaint against Yhwh is in fact that Yhwh has not allowed them to advantage themselves at the expense of their adversaries as they have wished. They wanted the temple to be their tool in this way of life. Since the tool has not worked, sacrifices are sloppy.

How do we know that is the code they live by? Because they employ it against those they have power over, and seek God’s help in employing it against those who have more power than they.

Deadlock

The quarrel has brought them to an impasse. Jerusalem claims that God is negligent and God claims that Jerusalem is a user of people just like the rest of the nations. The experience of slavery in Egypt didn’t somehow make Israel more sensitive to the weak. The success of David and Solomon didn’t make them magnanimous. The humiliation of the exile failed to yield a culture of self-examination, and now the restoration of the land seems to have accomplished nothing.

How can I illustrate the frustration and torture of a quarrel, except to remind you of the quarrels you know. Again and again you imagine that repeating over and over, louder and louder again, will finally make your adversary SEE how they have been wrong, and YOU have been right. Day after day, night after night, battling through small proxy elements, and large yelling confrontations, yet nothing is resolved. This is a picture of despair. There are no words that can open the eyes of your adversary to their blindness that is evident to you.

Did God Shut Up and Walk Away?

The rather benevolent Persians would be replaced by the Greeks, who hoped to “civilize” barbarian Hebrews by enlightening them with Zeus worship at the temple. The zealous would rise up to overthrow the Greeks, but the even the observants who could mobilize a revolt could be corrupted by power. Eventually the Romans would take the place of the Greeks, and the words of The Who ring true, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss…”

When the Jews weren’t battling abusing empires, they were battling each other. What they seemed to at least be able to agree upon was that the word of the LORD last heard in the book of Malachi closed book of the Law and the Prophets. Yhwh, perhaps, tired of the quarreling had simply shut up out of frustration. Would he speak again?

The Preparatory Messenger

Few of us today appreciate how big a rock star John the Baptist was in his day. Here was Yhwh once again seeming to re-engage in the quarrel.

Sometimes, when things are especially dark, even negative attention is better than no attention at all, and the people flocked to see and hear John rage against them just like the prophets had done of old. People flocked to the river to hear him preach and to be baptized by him. Could this be the messenger who would prove God isn’t negligent by finally exalting Israel as the ancient prophesies had promised?

Something New in the Very Old Tired Quarrel

Baptized by John was another who seemed to engage in the quarrel as the prophets had done of old, but also seemed to do something strangely new. He didn’t line up quite like John.

The problem with quarreling is that you really can’t show someone their faults directly. The problem with us isn’t a lack of evidence against us, it’s our inability to see the evidence against us. What we need to be able to see our sin is humility and what needs to happen to end the quarrel is repentance.

Sometimes quarrelers long for repentance, but usually from the other side. Quarreling is fueled by strategy of “my wellbeing at your expense”. I must win, my opponent must be humiliated and destroyed.

This new kind of prophet showed himself quite capable within the quarreling arena. Again and again he shut up his adversaries.

In many matches the adversary may not concede defeat, the best you can accomplish is to have them shut up and leave. What happens, however, is that the one who shuts up and leaves usually nurses the wound and re-enters the arena doubly determined to exact revenge, to see the humiliation and destruction of their adversary.

A New Way to Purify

This new adversary of Jerusalem gave, refined and purified in a way that crossed all the lines. It wasn’t class warfare, because even the poor had to examine themselves to see whether they loved the handout or the giver of all good things. Those who were experts at playing the righteous in the quarrel were exposed as also being users of the masses for their own aggrandizement. The powerful were shown to be the users of the people that everyone knew yet this new man didn’t take sides in all of the old political disputes. This was the one spoken of in Malachi.

In the end the new man declared himself to be Yhwh come as a Jew who would express Yhwh’s way, “your wellbeing at my expense”, the way that was never understood in the quarrel. Yhwh’s opening salvo to Jacob “I will bless you” was understood as “if you bless me I’ll give you 10% back.” Israel never understood that she was mostly arguing with herself.

Self-Annihilation

What was inconceivable was how such a position could be maintained in the quarreling arena. Assuming such a position would have a predictable conclusion: humiliation and destruction. When the new man would lower his guard, refuse to use the power available to him, he would be taken captive, abused, tortured, humiliated and destroyed. The quarrel would be over with Jerusalem and way of “my wellbeing at your expense” would stand as victor of at least three days.

By the standards of the people of Jerusalem in Malachi’s day (2:17) the new man would not be favored by God, but humiliated while victory is grabbed by the power of the sword.

A New Creation

I mentioned earlier that from the perspective of us reading the book of Malachi God seems to shout down the complaint of God’s negligence in justice. I imagine that in Jerusalem at the time of the book of Malachi it would have seemed just the reverse. God’s complaint always seems to be small unless we read it into a hurricane, war or famine. Conventional wisdom would have asserted that the strong take the weak, that those in power will have their way, and that God does not act or seem to care.

Prophets in Israel met with a predictable outcome. They usually weren’t powerful enough to be taken seriously by the quarrel, and when they were they were shown the sharp end of the sword, just like Jesus was. People who practice “your wellbeing at my expense” get expended quickly.

What happened on Easter Sunday morning undid all of that history. It was a word of justice for the oppressed, hope for the weak, and all the victims of the age of decay.

What God did on Easter was to make the quarrel obsolete by making the cruciform life justifiable. Those who live by “my wellbeing at your expense” will exhaust themselves and their efforts at final vindication will be seen to be bankrupt in face of him whose flesh is imperishable and whose death was undone.

NT Wright points this out with he help of Oscar Wilde

I use as an epigraph for the last section of the book the lovely quotation from Oscar Wilde’s play Salome in which Herod Antipas hears by messengers about Jesus going around healing people, doing extraordinary things, and even raising the dead. It’s a wonderful moment in which Wilde has caught exactly the politically subversive nature of resurrection. Herod hears that Jesus is doing these extraordinary things, and he is quite happy to have somebody going around healing people, but then, “He raises the dead?” And the servant says, “Yes, sir, he raises the dead.” And Herod goes into bluster, “I do not wish Him to do that. I forbid Him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead. This Man must be found and told that I forbid Him to raise the dead?” The tyrant knows that death is the last weapon he possesses, and if someone is raising the dead, everything is going to be turned upside down.

Can You Quarrel with Resurrection?

In Jesus the quarrel is transformed. In his light we incriminate ourselves if we have the courage to see ourselves in his light.

The world may continue exhausting itself and trying to shift the cost onto the poor and the weak but the resurrection means that this strategy is on the losing side of the new history of the new earth.

The only question left is whether or not we believe it. And if we do, how then shall we participate in all of the quarrels around us.