12-06-09 2nd Sunday in Advent Refiner's Fire

Are you ready for Christmas? Before you answer that question, let's see what we might learn about the needed preparations from the Hebrew prophet, Malachi who proclaims the terrible good news that the messenger of God will come with refiner's fire and fuller's soap to cleanse and purify our souls, our congregations, our world! As Kathryn Schifferdecker puts it:

Malachi ... warns his hearers of the coming judgment: "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap" (3:2). Like one who burns away the dross in order to refine silver, God will burn away all the evil within us. Like one who uses harsh soap to clean a garment, God will bleach out the stains that sin leaves in us. Refining silver and cleaning clothes are positive activities, but from the perspective of the silver and the clothing, the process holds the prospect of much pain. We would do well to feel some fear.  

Wait a minute! We're getting ready to celebrate the birth of a baby, aren't we? Where are the angels and the shepherds? Where is the visitation to Mary and the dream of Joseph? Those are the stories we want to hear. That's the good news that makes us smile. We want to sing "Away in a Manger" not "Change My Heart, O God". We want the "joyful hope of the Bethlehem manger not the anxious anticipation of the One who will set right all the world's wrongs by presiding in glory and in justice over a sinful humankind." Who wants to think about sin and judgment at a time like this?

But maybe that's the point. Maybe until we understand that the baby whose birth the angels proclaim is the One who comes to turn us and the world "right-side-up," we cannot truly kneel at the manger and sing "Peace on the earth good will to all, from heaven's all gracious King."

Now those of you who know me, know that sin and judgment are not topics I often talk about, because I grew up in a church that talked about nothing but sin, how awful we all were and how we all deserved to rot in hell. I grew up believing that I was less valuable than a worm and that if I didn't behave appropriately God might decide to zap me right off the face of the earth.

It was not until I was an adult, in a different congregation, that I heard the word of grace: "I am created in the image of God, precious and valuable in God's sight, loved just as I am, forgiven and set free in the love of Christ." It was a powerful word, a transforming word, a word that allowed me to begin to truly love God and this being God created. But then I didn't know what to do with the concepts of sin and judgment and how to hold them in relationship to grace.

After years of struggling with this tension I finally came to understand that sin is not all those things we do wrong. Sin is not primarily failing to follow the Ten Commandments, although the commandments point to the kinds of behavior that reveal how life lived with God might look. So do those sayings of Jesus known as the Beatitudes and so do the words that capture what Jesus called the greatest commandment "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and also love your neighbor in the same ways and with the same depth as you love yourself." Sin, first and foremost, is separation or alienation from God. It is putting your small limited self in God's place. It is believing that you don't need God and living as if God doesn't exist or care what happens to you or the world. And all those things we usually name as sin -lying, cheating, stealing, killing, adultery and the like- along with those things we fail to name as sin -like greed, hate, fear, abuse of our bodies, abuse of the earth, narrow-mindedness, neglect of the poor, the orphan, the widow and the outcast, and all the isms you can think of- all those things are the result of being separate and cut off from God who is both within and among us. It's a vicious cycle really, because the more we allow these little sins to take hold in our lives, the more alienated from God and God's dream for our lives we become and the more alienated we become, the more we engage in these little sins.

Gradually I came to understand that what I experienced in my church growing up was condemnation and condemnation is, I believe, one of the sins that arises when we put our selves and our limited understanding in God's place. But the God we meet in Jesus does not condemn. What God offers is judgment and judgment, believe it or not, is just another face of grace. Judgment is the mirror God holds so that I can look honestly at myself and see the ways I fall short of God's dream for my life. Judgment is seeing that I need to wash my face or my soul. Judgment is recognizing that my world is upside down, my values are out of whack, my behaviors and habits keep me from the fullness of life God wants for me and my world. And grace, grace is the assurance that God doesn't just hold the mirror, but rather picks up the wash cloth and turns on the furnace, rolls up her sleeves, puts on his fireproof apron and begins the work of transforming my heart and my life.

In a sermon on Malachi 3 one preacher puts it this way:

Why does God promise to judge us? Is it out of some deranged desire to see us dangle over the flames? No, quite the contrary. ... God seeks to purge our souls of every gunk and dross so that we might have life, and life abundant.

There's a story about a group of women who were studying Malachi 3. They puzzled over what it meant that God refined us like silver. So, one woman offered to research the process of silver refining and report back to the group.

The woman went to a silversmith and asked to watch him work. She watched as he held a piece of silver over a flame. He explained to her that it was important that the silver be held in the hottest part of the flame to ensure that all the impurities were burned away. The woman asked the silversmith if he had to sit in front of the fire the whole time. The smith replied that not only did he have to sit in front of the fire, he couldn't take his eyes off the silver for a moment, for if the silver was left too long in the flames, it would be ruined.

The woman then asked, "How do you know when the silver is refined?"

"Oh, that's easy," the silversmith replied, "when I see my image in it."

Amen