Malachi 3:1-14 Psalm: The Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79)
Philippians 1:1-11 Luke 3:1-6
This week has been wild. With squashed banana and congealing yoghurt, and sticky fingers on every pane of glass, there isn’t much purifying going on in the rectory and if this sermon begins to go all singsong, like a nursery rhyme, then I’m sorry, but we’re upright, and that’s the best we can expect right now, right?!
Fortunately, this is one of my most favourite passages in the Hebrew scriptures, this prophesy from Malachi about the coming king. Hear it again…
See I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple… He is coming. But who can endure it? For he is like a refiner’s fire. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.
Such rich imagery. What a clear picture. A refiner’s fire, a purifier of silver.
Several years ago, I investigated what it is that a silversmith does and, it was as I read that this passage rocketed up the list of favourite verses. Do you know how a silversmith refines metal? Do you know how a goldsmith tests for purity? Maybe I’ve told you before.
They sit, for long periods of time, holding the metal in very intense heat and they keep it there until the dross burns off and it is free from impurity. They burn it to make it clean. And how do they know it is pure? What is the test? It is only complete once they can see their own reflection in it. The face of the one who creates it.
So, what does this prophecy say for God’s people?
The Lord is coming.
And in God’s coming is the promise that we will be held in God’s fire until all that is dross burns away, and until God sees us as pure, and as perfectly reflecting God’s own face. We, and all God’s people, down through the ages, will be made perfect, so we can reflect the image of the Divine Silversmith – so people will look at us and see the Great Creator.
And as a gold or silversmith sits at their refining fire, are they concerned about the impurity? Do you think they spend time worrying about the dross and the grime? I bet they don’t. I expect they know that all that is precious is right there waiting to emerge, waiting to bubble to the surface. They simply hold that precious metal in the fire until their own face can be seen in it and then they know it is ready.
‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple’, says Malachi.
He promised this to God’s people 400+ years before…and then there was silence… nothing.
God’s people, through the ages, knew they were waiting for The One to come to the temple, ready to refine and purify, and reflect the image of the creator. Maybe they would be the generation that would be chosen to next reflect the glory of God. Always watching, listening, waiting, hoping. But for centuries it all went quiet…
And then suddenly we get this crazy prophet bursting onto the scene. John; the last of the Old Testament prophets, cries out in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
The time has come.
The time of purifying and refining, the holy burning, to remove the dross and reflect the Glory of the Divine…it is near.
Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand, Malachi’s prophesy asked. And I wonder what that is asking of us, here and now. Who can endure? Who can stand? Will we give in to the process of our creator, whatever it takes and wherever it takes us, so that we can be made pure – not sinless, not shiny clean, I don’t mean that – I mean truly pure so that, in the words of our gospel prophet a few decades hence, ‘we must decrease, and you must increase’.
God making us pure means seeing more of God in us. More of God and less of self, less of ego, less of our own good works and more of God’s work.
And that’s tricky, right, because we want to do those things that God asks of us, and sometimes we get in the way of God’s glory being seen, sometimes we might almost block out the light. So we must return again and again to the refining fire and hand ourselves over to the Divine Jeweller – make of me what you will, Great Creator – take my simple offering, my tasks, my hopes, my attempts, my heart and soul and burn off all that is impure and make it pure.
Handing ourselves over, even once, let alone over and again, sounds uncomfortable, risky even. Maybe that’s why the prophecy asks ‘who can endure and who can stand’. Knowing we are delivering ourselves into Hands, even the holiest of hands, where all that is purely-self is potentially painful. What if I like the bits that are burned away? What if I was particularly attached to them? But, it is the call of those who are seeking after God. It is the offer, the invitation, that we might be made refined and pure, that we might reflect God’s glory and not our own.
Uncomfortable, yes. But how liberating? Imagine the freedom of complete purity.
Yesterday Gabby posted another fabulous Gabby image on our Facebook page, with words from the Indigenous Leader, Steven Charleston. His poem ‘Wild Places’ perfectly span our two prophets for this morning – Malachi and John the Baptist. He writes this:
A voice crying in the wilderness.
The call of the Spirit does not come in quiet places of comfort.
It beckons us from wild places: that interior wilderness, just outside the walls of polite society.
The dark woods where we are afraid we may meet the stranger.
It is the risky land of encounter.
The invitation of the Spirit is to go out by going in.
To question what we know.
To encounter what we fear.
We are purified not with drops of water but with beads of sweat.
Amen.
Holy Adventures 