" ....the entire thrust of Jesus' ministry presumes that it is too late for humanity to be striving for life. Jesus' ministry is about us preparing for death.
"We prepare for death by earnestly grasping the undeniable realities of our existence, understood chiefly in terms of our moral responsibilities. We are supposed to do good, and to own up to our not doing good. No religion and no ministry are necessary for us to realize such things."
The Gospel of Mark, the first--or at least the most elemental--of the gospels, introduces John the Baptist with the words of "the prophets": "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee" (1:2, KJV). This snippet is generally agreed to be from the Book of Malachi (3:1), though--like the quotation from Isaiah that follows--it is somewhat garbled. Malachi 3:1 reads, "...he shall prepare the way before me...." not "before thee." The difference doesn't seem to be a big one.
What I am not prepared to overlook, however, is the fact that Malachi in its entirety can be appended to the start of Mark's gospel (or any of the gospels) and serve as an appropriate condensation of the teachings of Jesus as I have described them above: "Jesus' ministry is about us preparing for death. We prepare for death by earnestly grasping the undeniable realities of our existence, understood chiefly in terms of our moral responsibilities." The Book of Malachi is, in effect, the first of the gospels. It is appropriate, if perhaps happenstance, that the name (or pseudonym) Malachi means "my messenger".
Malachi begins, John-the-Baptist-like, with a thorough undercutting of the Jewish theologians' attachment to ancestry. (This was, of course, the John who said, "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (Matthew 3:9).) Malachi relates:
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever" (1:2-4).
"They shall call them" is the notion of the characterization of Edom's fate as described above. Edom has all the hallmarks of a cursed people, in distinction to blessed Israel ("Jacob"). What is not described above is Edom ("Esau") as a people cursed in totality and finality. One might wonder why reputation, rather than fact, is used to describe the wretched descendants of Esau, until one remembers the "blessing" of Isaac for his elder son, tricked out of his expected true blessing by his younger brother Jacob:
"Behold, thy dwelling shall be [away from] the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck" (Genesis 27:39-40).
The picture of Edom, as related by the tale of their forebear Esau, is a picture of one who rises up; there is no available metaphor in Genesis of a finally defeated Esau. This is the Esau who overcomes his hatred of his brother Jacob, who lives to have Jacob call him "my lord" (33:15), and who in the end experiences the crowning dignity of their troubled family: "And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died....and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (35:29).
When the Book of Malachi presents a picture of Edom (as "Esau") thus: "Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down...," Malachi is describing an indominable, if troubled, people. It is left to the reader of Malachi's time, or Jesus' time, or our time, to decide if there is warrant to ever think of any people as being especially precious in God's sight.
This is brought home again later in Malachi, as the prophet depicts the Lord pointedly addressing "ye sons of Jacob": "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them" (3:6-7). One can only be reminded of Esau's plaintive cry, "Is not he rightly named Jacob ['trickster']?" (Genesis 27:36). Here again, Malachi presents the all-important (to some) fact of Israel's descent from the eponymous Jacob, and leaves hanging a choice of possible interpretations.
We will see that this is not the last such pregnant passage in Malachi.
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