Deleted Scenes: Dung-faced (Malachi 2:1-9)

At the first church I served in as a pastor, there was always a feature in the worship service called “the children’s moment”. It was where all the kids in the church would come up to the front and somebody would share a story or lesson of some kind. It was a pretty reliable source of comedy, intentional or not. As the youth pastor, I was a fairly regular contributor to the children’s moment. On one occasion, I shared a story about dirty laundry. It’s a legendary story that clearly illustrates my domestic inabilities. That’s not the point though. The point is that a couple of weeks later, the leadership of the church received a letter that was scathing in its criticism of me. Particularly, this person was adamant that I had a dirty potty mouth, on account of talking about dirty laundry and saying the word “sucks” a few times in a previous message.

Years later, I’m still confused about how a story about dirty laundry was deemed so inappropriate by this lady. It’s not the only time I’ve come across this kind of mentality in Christian circles.  Absolutely, we have a verse like Ephesians 4:29 that gives us instruction about our speech: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” At the same time, the Bible contains speech- from God’s mouth even- that is pretty edgy and even graphic.

I’m bringing this up because of Malachi 2:3, which we looked at last Sunday: “I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.” That seems...rude? I mean, if I got a scathing letter for talking about dirty laundry, I can't imagine what kind of feedback that verse would get. And that’s not the only verse where we read something like that. Here are a few more:

In both of those, we learn that certain rebellious leaders will share a similar fate to poop. Here are a few more verses that are similarly “colourful”:

I feel uncomfortable even copying and pasting Ezekiel 23:20.

And just to round things out, we can bring in at least one New Testament passage, Philippians 3:8. Paul says that he considers everything “garbage” compared to knowing Jesus. As I’ve said before in a sermon, that’s the Greek word “skubalon”. One commentator writes that this word is “well attested as a vulgarity, referring to excrement”. I think you can summon to mind a certain four letter English word that might be somewhat of an equivalent.

So what am I trying to say by bringing in all these passages? I’m not saying, “say lots of bad words!” I’m not saying “being authentic means you have a potty mouth!” I’m definitely not saying, “be edgy for the sake of being edgy”. There are few things as annoying as Christians who try to be “cool” by matching the vulgarity of those around them. None of the passages above are about that. However, all of them use strong, graphic language to express something of utmost importance. Some illustrate the severity of idolatry. Some express God’s judgment. Philippians 3 contrasts the treasure of knowing Christ with any other ambition in the world. The point of the language in these passages is exactly what Paul says in that Ephesians 4 verse above: to benefit others and to build them up in the Lord, which is what turning people away from sin is all about.

What I am saying here is that in order to do that important work, we need to use language that is appropriate for the task. Sometimes we are so concerned with talking “spiritually” that people will completely miss the gravity of what we’re talking about. Sometimes we are so concerned about offending people that our speech about God, judgment and righteousness is as bland as oatmeal. The prophets who communicated God’s word certainly didn’t have that issue. Maybe we polite Canadians have something to learn from them.