Refining

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

December 9, 2012/Second Sunday of Advent

            A few years ago I had to have some surgery done on my foot.  It was this time of year, and I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to complete every Christmas task on my list before the holidays before the surgery, because I knew once that was done, I would be off my feet for several days. 

The morning of the surgery my father came over to take the kids to school.  It was a little before seven and when he walked in the door I was vacuuming.  Surgery or not, I just couldn’t leave the house without vacuuming.  Some of that was motivated by my nerves, but mainly it was because I wanted everything as neat as it could be before this happened.  I wanted to be prepared.

            You see, I have an inner neat freak.  It doesn’t always show up in my office or my house, because my life gets so chaotic that I can’t keep up with everything.  But it’s there.  And it pops out at odd moments – like when I’m getting ready to go in for surgery.  What’s really sad is that morning as they moved me into the operating room and had me move from my rolling bed onto the operating table, I reached over and straightened the rumpled sheet on the bed I’d just left. 

            You can probably guess then why this passage from Malachi appealed to me so much.  Any passage that has to do with soap sounds good to me.  But this isn’t a passage that I read very often, so I wasn’t familiar with Fuller’s soap.  It took some research to understand what these verses are referring to.

            First of all fulling was the act of cleaning and preparing wool for use.  A fuller was the person who did the fulling.  According to one source that I read, in the Old Testament there was a place outside of Jerusalem called Fuller’s field. It stands to reason, then, that this must have been the place where the wool went to be fulled.  The fuller’s soap was the soap used by the fuller to clean the wool.  It had to have been some pretty powerful soap.  The wool sheared from a sheep would have been greasy and dirty.  The soap used, along with a generous amount of hard scrubbing, would need to be able to remove the grease and grime that collected on the wool.  Fuller’s soap would make the wool snow white.  Fuller’s soap softened and relaxed the wool, so that it would be ready for whatever purpose it was put to.  Whether it would be made into clothing, bedding or rugs, the Fuller’s soap prepared the wool.  It made it ready.

            So the messenger that Malachi refers to is someone who will act on the people like Fuller’s soap acts on wool.  Because of this messenger the people will be made ready.  They will be prepared.  They will be washed clean. 

            “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.  The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

            Christian tradition ties this messenger that Malachi speaks of to John the Baptist.  We also read about him today in the gospel of Luke.  It seems that the lectionary has us working backwards from the end to the beginning.  Last week we read about the end times and the signs that accompany them.  Next week we hear of John’s birth.  But Luke 3:1-6, our verses today, begins the story of the adult John the Baptist.  Luke is the only gospel where we hear about the birth of John.  In Luke’s telling he is the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah.  Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of Jesus, are cousins.  This makes John and Jesus cousins as well.  Now the word of the Lord has come to the grown up John in the wilderness, and he’s preaching all around the river Jordan, proclaiming, as verse 3 tells us, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

            John is the one who prepares the way for the One to come.  John is the one who gives the message that Jesus is on the way.  John is the one to offer baptism in water, but he knows very well that the One to come will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit. 

            But the word of God has called John to be the voice of preparation.  So that’s what he preaches.  Prepare.  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” 

            Prepare.  Last week we were told to wait, to watch; to stay awake and to stay alert, because the coming of the Lord is like the coming of a thief in the night.  Unless we’re awake and bright eyed and bushy tailed, we’ll miss it.  We’ll be caught off guard.  But this week we have other kinds of work to do.  We have to prepare.  According to Malachi, we need to be washed with Fuller’s soap.  We need to be cleansed and brightened.  And the messenger of the Lord is the one to do this.  John the Baptist is like Fuller’s soap to our heart, mind and soul.  Prepare.

            But Malachi refers to more than just Fuller’s soap.  Even before he speaks of soap, he writes of refiner’s fire.  The messenger that Malachi talks of will not only wash us, he will refine us with fire.  He will refine us as a silversmith refines his chosen metal.  Our preparation is one of refining.

            The descendants of Levi will be purified like silver or gold.  They will be made clean and pure.  And as I said before, John the Baptist understood that his water baptisms could not compare with the fire baptisms of the Holy Spirit that would happen with the coming of the Messiah. 

            But what does it mean that we will be refined and purified with fire?  Does it mean that we must be burned before we can be pure?  Is this literal or figurative or a little of both? 

            I once read a story about a women’s Bible Study.  The women were studying this passage and other passages like it that spoke of being refined and purified like silver.  None of the women could really visualize what it meant to be refined like silver.  So one of the women decided to find out exactly what a silversmith did.

            She looked through the phone book and on-line and found the name of a silversmith.  She called him for an appointment and went to interview him. 

            After he had given her a tour of his workshop and shown her the tools of his trade, he demonstrated how he created his silver treasures.  First of all he hammered the silver into the shape and style he wanted.  Sometimes this included using a mold or a form to get the shape just right.  Then, to prevent cracks in the metal, he used heat to soften and refine the silver.  In the old days, a silversmith, such as Paul Revere, would have used a fired and bellows of some sort.  But today’s silversmiths more often use blowtorches. 

            The silversmith heated an object to show the woman how it was refined.  She was impressed with all of this, and asked him one final question.  “How do you know when the silver is refined to the exact point that you want?”

            He smiled at her and said, “That’s easy.  I know it’s done when I can see my reflection in the metal.”

            The messenger that God is sending is about preparation.  That preparation includes cleaning, preparing and it also means refining.  We will be refined with fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, until we are pure.  We will be refined with fire until God’s reflection can be seen in us. 

            I do a lot of preparing in this season.  I make a lot of lists.  I scramble around trying to make ready.  But how much time do I really spend thinking about what I’m really preparing for?  And do I give any time at all to the notion that I might be the one who needs preparing?  I am the one who needs to be refined.  Refined to the point that God can see God’s reflection in me. 

            I’m not there yet.  There is still refining to be done.  But I pray this Advent that I’m a little closer, I’m a little more prepared, I’m a little more refined.  This Advent may soap and fire prepare and refine us all to be messengers of the good news, and reflections of God’s image to a hurting world.  Let all God’s children say “Amen.”

Project Advent: Close Up

            On a beautiful afternoon at the end of October my son Zach and I got to take a helicopter ride.  One of my parishioners is a pilot and owns a flight company.  He’d offered us this chance for adventure for a while, and we FINALLY got to take him up on his offer. 

            Zach and I were both excited, and I admit that I was a little nervous too.  I’m not afraid to fly, but I had never even stood next to a helicopter before, much less climbed in one and taken off.  I thought that the ride would be choppy and loud, but it was none of that.  It was nothing like I expected.  It was better!  Zach sat up front with Mark, and I sat in the back seat listening to their conversation and watching with wonder the landscape unfold underneath us. 

            I’ve been on plenty of airplanes over the course of my life.  I still remember the first time I flew with my mother from Nashville to Minneapolis when I was 4, and how I marveled at everything on the ground becoming so tiny and ant-like.  If you’ve flown you know that very quickly you lose sight of the ground altogether, and if you can see anything below you it’s so tiny it’s hard to make out any significant landmarks.

            But a helicopter is different.  You don’t fly as high in a helicopter.  You’re not hovering on the ground, but you are able to clearly pick out landmarks and places below you.  We flew over our house, Zach and Phoebe’s school, lakes, countryside, the interstate, the mall and our church.   As we hung momentarily over the church Mark and I both commented about how good it looked from the sky.  The building looked graceful and elegant, its dome gleaming in the afternoon sun.  But anyone who spends much time in our church knows the problems the building has, both inside and out.  Mark especially knows the problems the building has because he spends a large part of his time keeping the place running. 

Close up the dome is discolored and needs repair.  Close up the large columns at the front entrance are covered in rust.  Close up the semi-enclosed side porch where homeless people often take shelter has a ceiling that looks ready to collapse.  Close up there is a large chunk of plaster missing at the top of the left wall of the sanctuary.  Close up the third floor has sustained so much water damage, some rooms should just be gutted in order to have some use again.  Close up we have a small, aging congregation who is fierce in its love and loyalty to each other and to the congregation as a whole, but there is great debate as to what will come next – for the building and for us. 

Close up there are lots of homeless people in the neighborhood around the church.  Close up there are lots of hungry people and lost people and sad people.  Close up the problems and challenges, not just of our physical property but of the community in which we live and engage, seem overwhelming.  But for an hour or so I had the opportunity to see all of it from a different perspective.  For a little while I had the chance to step outside of it and myself and see my immediate world with new eyes.  I wondered as we flew if maybe, just maybe, that’s – WARNING!  Cheeeeeze alert.  What I’m about to say next may make some of you involuntarily roll your eyes and groan, but please be patient. 

I wondered as we flew if maybe, just maybe, that’s how God sees us.  (Brief pause until the groans subside).  I’m not trying to paint a picture of some smiling, removed deity hovering above us like a beneficent Santa Claus just watching us from afar.  I guess I see it as God having the ability and perspective to see all of the problems, disrepair, rust, crumbling walls and sadness that is the human condition but also being able to see the great beauty, the graceful lines and shining domes that is also the human condition.  

I think if there is one thing that keeps me believing in the divine, although so much evidence out there suggests the contrary, is my belief and understanding that God willingly, lovingly came into the close up.  How much easier would it have been if God had stayed outside of it all, focused only on the beauty?  But God became close up.  Isn’t that really what the incarnation is all about?  God becoming close up so we would know God close up.  God sees us close up, sees the terrible harm we do to one another, sees the destruction and the hurt, but never forgets the beauty.  That’s what we wait for during Advent.  That’s what we watch for.  God becoming close up. 

            Maybe we need to try a little harder to see us as God sees us.  Maybe we need to trust that the beauty is there in each one of us, alongside the bad.  I don’t think you have to believe in God to see the value in doing this either, to understand the value that comes when we see each person as having beauty first.  I am very conscious of the fact that I write this piece on the seventy-first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor – a day that irrevocably changed our country and the world.  I am not so idealistic that I think just seeing the beauty in everyone would prevent all wars or the evil we inflict on one another.  But maybe it would.  Have we ever really tried? 

            I also know that if anyone needs a wake-up call to the importance of seeing the beauty in others first, it’s me.  Trust me I could make a significant list of the people I’d like to drop kick into next year.  On my best days, it is a challenge to think some of these folks have any beauty in them.  Yet as I realize that I am a mix of both, I also must acknowledge that they are as well.  Perhaps if I can see the beauty in them, the grace and the goodness, I will be better able to treat them in a way that allows all of that to shine forth. 

            I do know this.  I am loved, by God and by others, close up.  I am loved in spite of my flaws and failings, in spite of the myriad of ways I screw up and fall down.  I am loved.  So in this season of Advent and in every season, I am called to love back.  Close up. 

Waiting

Luke 21:25-36

December 2, 2012

First Sunday of Advent

            We’ve come to that sentimental season again.  Last week I was home working around the house and I decided to program in a Christmas music station on Pandora – which is a customizable, online radio station.  One of the first songs to come on was Frank Sinatra’s version of I’ll Be Home for Christmas”.  I love all kinds of Christmas music, sacred and secular, and this one is a favorite. 

            “I’ll be home for Christmas.  You can plan on me.  Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree.  Christmas Eve will find me where the lovelight gleams.  I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams.” 

            Sinatra sang it so poignantly that I was flooded with Christmas memories; memories from my childhood, memories of my house in Nashville and what it looked like decorated for the holidays, and my family’s traditions, and before I knew it, I was sniffling and wiping my eyes.  I realized I was about to end up sitting on the kitchen floor weeping, so I changed the station and danced my way through the rest of my cleaning. 

            But it was an incredibly sentimental moment.  And that’s what the holidays can do.  They bring out our sentimental, nostalgic sides.  Truth be told, that’s what we’ve done to them.  We have sentimentalized this season in a variety of ways.  We have more than sentimentalized it in pop culture.  I can’t watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special without getting choked up when Linus tells the story of Jesus’ birth, then the Peanuts gang finally shows love to the sad little tree Charlie Brown picked out and it becomes this magnificent Christmas tree.  Or when the Grinch’s heart grows so big it busts out of that little measuring tool they have around it. 

            Those are just the TV specials.  What about the movies?  There’s the end of It’s a Wonderful Life when the whole town of Bedford Falls comes to the aid of George Bailey.  They start to sing, and then George finds Clarence the angel’s copy of Tom Sawyer on top of the basket of money.  Clarence has inscribed it, “No man is a failure who has friends.”  The bell on the Christmas tree rings, and ZuZu says, “Look daddy, teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”  George says, “That’s right.  That’s right.  Attaboy Clarence.  Attaboy!”

Lord help me when the Hallmark card commercials begin in earnest.  There’s one for Hanukah that kills me.  A grandfather is sitting with his grandchildren at a family gathering, and all the grandchildren plead with him to tell a beloved story again.  He tells them about crossing the ocean on a ship bound for America when he was a little boy.  On that ship he meets his best friend, Jake.  Their two families celebrate Hanukah together.  Just as the grandfather is saying he always wonders about Jake this time of year, one of the grandkids produces a card from, you guessed it, Jake.  Yeah, that one does me in every year. 

            It’s not just the popular culture induced emotions that get to me either.  I wait all year for Christmas Eve and singing Silent Night by candlelight.  But by the time we finally get to sing, I’m usually so choked up I can barely get through it. 

            Emotions.  Sentimentality.  Nostalgia.  Memories.  A baby being born.  Peace.  Goodwill.  Angels singing.  Signs in the sun and the moon and the stars.  Distress among the nations.  Confusion and fear and foreboding.  The coming of the Son of Man in a cloud.  The End Times.

            Wait?  What?

            That is how we begin this season of Advent.  That is how we begin the first Sunday of our church year.  We begin with the end.  And the effect it has on me each year is jarring, to say the least.  It certainly stands in stark contrast to the sentimentality I’ve described, doesn’t it? 

            We’re trying to listen for a baby’s cry and instead we get predictions of the end times.  I want to hear those angel voices and stand in awe of that approaching holy night, but instead we are told to watch and we are told to wait, to stay awake, to be prepared, to expect the unexpected. 

            I’ve told you before that one of the preaching resources I turn to on a regular basis is the sermon brainwave podcast through WorkingPreacher.org.  As the group of Biblical scholars discussed this passage in Luke, they questioned why we always start Advent with the end.  Even they were a little confused as to why.  One reason is that this passage also describes an Advent.  This is the second advent of Christ and it is as important for us to hear it as it is to hear of his first arrival as a baby in Bethlehem. 

            It is also true and, I think necessary, that we hear words of scripture that are anything but sentimental.  I am certainly not opposed to the sentimentality of the season.  It is deeply ingrained in me, and I can’t imagine not having some of that this time of year.  But let’s be honest, God becoming incarnate in human life, in the midst of us, is not sentimental.  We have applied that sentiment to Jesus’ birth.  We’ve made it a sweet story because anytime a baby is born we are overwhelmed with the sweetness and power of that moment.  But I repeat, the incarnation of God into human existence, God becoming us in the midst of us, is not sentimental.  It is radical.  When God comes into our world, into our lives, we should expect to be shaken up.  We should expect not only to see signs in the world around us but in the very cosmos themselves.  God becoming incarnate means change.  It means the end of what was.  It means that from this point on everything is changed.  We are changed.  How we can experience God’s incarnational presence and not be changed?  That is not sentimental.  That is radical and wild and almost incomprehensible.

            David Lose, one of the WorkingPreacher scholars writes about this passage from Luke as being in the realm of fantasy.  To say that the end time predictions are fantasy is not to say that they aren’t true.  It’s not to say that they are made up or make believe.  To say that they are in the realm of fantasy is a way of stating that they are so far beyond our everyday experience, our understanding of reality that they aren’t probable.  They aren’t possible.  But if you think about it, everything about our faith, everything that we profess, everything that we confess, everything we believe is completely improbable.  It sounds crazy.  It is as Paul wrote, “foolishness”.  It is fantastic. 

            I love good fantasy.  I think about the best fantasy that I’ve read in my lifetime.  I loved Madeleine L’Engel’s book, A Wrinkle in Time and the books that followed, C.S. Lewis’s The Narnia Chronicles and certainly J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.  All of those books are firmly in the fantasy genre of writing.  But all of them deal with what I think to be fundamental truths.  They express the power that love has to conquer the darkness, the dark forces that work against us.  They show the power of our own choices to bring about good or destruction.  These works of fantasy address the battle that wages every day between good and evil, light and dark, not just on a cosmic scale, but in each of us.

            It is fantasy.  It seems fantastic that the divine and mortal meet in the birth of a child born homeless to unwed parents.  It is fantastical to claim that God is now in our midst.  It is fantasy to see God in the death of man executed as a criminal by an oppressive, unjust government.  It is beyond belief that this dead man is raised from the dead, that he conquers death, and even more fantastic that death is conquered for us as well.  It is fantasy to claim that while we wait for that day when we see signs in nature and signs in the cosmos of the second Advent, we also claim that God is right here with us now.  God is with us at this table, in the breaking of bread and in the sharing of the cup.  It is fantasy.  It is improbable.  It is impossible.  Yet we state our claim that with God nothing is impossible.  That is what we are waiting for.  Let’ all God’s children say, “Amen!”