Sun / Son

A Reflection on the First Reading for November 13th, 2022:
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Malachi
4.1-2

“See, the day is coming, burning like an oven,
when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble;
the day that comes shall burn them up,” says the Lord of hosts,
“so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

“But for you who revere my name
the sun of righteousness shall rise,
with healing in its wings.”

Every time I read the phrase “sun of righteousness,” I simultaneously hear and see, “Son of righteousness.” I wonder if the original translator thought about this inherent symbolism – sun, Son. Both bringing light to the world, both radiating purifying, cleansing heat. Both necessary for new life, for growth, for warmth.

There is so much symbolism wrapped up in this image of Jesus, the Son, as the sun. This passage seems to refer to a kind of scouring, a real separating of the wheat from the chaff, a thorough and unavoidable judgement. (Sometimes, I find the God of the Old Testament a little scary.) There’s a real fear here – as in, what if I do it wrong, what if I live wrong and end up being scoured away myself?

But the thing is, Jesus changes the whole story. Oh, the judgement on the last day will still happen, but now there is Love. The Son of Righteousness comes with healing in His wings – healing of our wounded, broken imperfection with impossible love. He would sweep us all up into the gentle embrace of those wings if He could, if we would let Him.

Sometimes, when I’m reflecting on faith, I think about C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and Aslan, and the way I cannot read those books without crying every time The Great Lion is mentioned or makes an appearance, because the allegory, the metaphor, is so perfect and rich and deep for me that I know Lewis is really writing, in his Lion, about our Jesus. That’s a little of how I feel when I read this passage from Malachi and encounter this beautiful metaphor that captures something of Christ’s humane and divine nature, both together. I feel ready to step into the cleansing, healing, loving light of God’s beloved Son, our Sun, our Light. 




Kim Tan

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