Refiner’s Fire (Advent 2C)
Malachi 3:1-4
Rev. Patricia Barth
December 10, 2006
"See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness." These words from the prophet Malachi bear one of the more unusual images of God; God as metalworker and refiner.
Nowadays there are many chemical ways to produce silver, but in early times a hot fire was the only means. Ancient metalworkers made silver by smelting lead ore, which was rich in silver content. After the ore was melted down in fire, hot air was blown over it with a bellows, which caused the lead oxide or dross to blow away as ash, leaving the pure bright silver behind.
We human beings are very much like that lead ore. We each have an essential core of goodness and beauty and purity, and we should shine bright as silver. A daunting task, shining bright in beauty and purity? We don't have to create that core of beauty and goodness all by ourselves. God has promised to come to us, and if we love God, the Holy Trinity makes a home in our souls. The gospel of John teaches us that. God's glory should shine through us like a bright light shines through a clean window.
But instead, we all have a bad habit of letting the dross dull and obscure our brightness; we let the windows of our soul get dirty and cloudy. This happens in several ways. First, as we interact with the powers and principalities of the world: our government and our "First World" culture with its heavy resource consumption. It's easy to let our busi-ness get the better of us, and we hang back, not taking that extra step to speak truth to power. Fear often sidelines us, too, and keeps us from speaking truth to power. Possessions and property distract us.
On a personal level, our anxieties and old wounds cause us to hurt each other, as we have been hurt. We may lash out impatiently at a loved one or a co-worker; or be jealous of another's good fortune; we may put down someone to make ourselves feel better, or perhaps take our anger and frustration out on the bearer of bad news.
Yet another way we cloud our brightness is through pride. This is a tough one, because pride can be very subtle. Arrogance and a sense of superiority are easy to spot, particularly in others (!). But pride also masquerades as self-esteem, self-sufficiency, or other good qualities. Pride is often lurking anytime we say, "I know best" or "I can do it alone" because we don't rely on God or other people to help us.
In a short story called "Revelation"[1], Flannery O'Connor writes of a woman who is defined by her pride. Mrs. Turpin thinks she and "her kind" are better than most of the people in her small Southern town, because her husband has a successful pig farm. She often says, "We have a little of everything, and the God-given wit to use it right." The Turpins and their peers were accountable for "good order and common sense and respectable behavior." (Sounds like Presbyterians, doesn't it?) Mrs. Turpin prides herself on her refinement and pretentious manners, feeling superior to black workers and poor white farmers. But then, her encounter with a disturbed young woman is a rude awakening. Mrs. Turpin is forced to examine her life for the first time.
"Why me?" she rumbles, "It's no trash around here, black or white, that I haven't given to. And break my back to the bone every day working. And do for the church." Angry at God, she roars, "Who do you think you are?" [2] Then, in the intense the glow of the sunset, she has a vision of people marching, leaping and singing on a vast swinging bridge to heaven. "Her kind," the respectable citizens, are not in front of the procession, but at the tail end, behind the black people and poor whites; behind the differently-abled and the mentally ill. They alone sing on key (!) but she could see by "their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were burned away."[3]
God wants to burn all our sins and virtues away. God wants to get rid of anything that keeps us from shining bright; toss out whatever is causing the dullness and getting in the way of God. God wants to refine us like silver; to blow away the ash, to clean the windows of our souls, leaving only the good and pure. To let God's glory shine in us. But it takes a refiner’s fire to do that.
Have you ever felt that you were going through the fire? We all go through bad times, even well-cared for children do. Teasing on the playground or in the locker room can burn like fire. Some people suffer abuse at the hands of people that should protect and love them. The death of a loved one is a time of strenuous, anguish-filled testing. So is illness and disability. Losing a job? It's flat-out frightening. Aging can be very difficult; like I tell the homebound people I visit, old age isn't for sissies. It's tough!
Unemployment; the difficult parts of aging; illlness; disability; death of a loved one; even loss of a beloved pastor who makes you feel good; they are all forms of loss, some certainly bigger than others; but loss is always painful whether it's big or small. Loss can burn like fire. We've all felt it.
But with each loss comes an opportunity for growth and new life. Some of you may still miss Pastor Laura; some of you will miss me for awhile, but new pastors bring new life. Soon Pastor Mark will be here, and I think you will do great things together. Even a serious loss can bring new joy. Dying people have told me they now were able to see a beauty in life that they had been too busy to notice before they got sick. Friendships mean more, and family is more precious, when you know with sudden clarity how little time is left.
We all have to pass through the fire; but it's up to us whether we allow it to refine us, and make us more pure; or whether we just go up in bitter smoke. We can let the bad times, the losses, consume us, and or we can take a chance on new life.
One day, so the story goes, a woman who had studied Malachi in her Bible study group went to visit a craftsman who continues to refine silver in the old way. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.
He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot, then she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver." She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that's easy - when I see my image in it."
Now I don't want to leave you with the impression that God causes every bad thing that happens to us. If that were the case, we would have no free will. There would be no laws of nature and evolution. Instead, I believe that life and death, gifts and losses, joy and sorrow are all mysteries. Some things just happen because of nature. Some are the result of other people's or our own choices, or our family systems. And some come from God. We will never know, this side of heaven, which is which. We do know, and I believe without a doubt, that God is always with us, in joy and tragedy both, working to bring good things out of bad.
God wants to see his image in us some day. Can we let our sins and pretensions and fears be burned away in her refining fire? God won't let us stay in the flames alone. She keeps her eye on us at all times, looking for that moment when the dimness is gone, the ash is blown away, and he can see his reflection in the gleam of our souls. Thanks be to God! Shine bright!
[1]Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux , New York.(Back to text)
[2]Ibid., p. 507.(Back to text)
[3]Ibid., p. 508.(Back to text)
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