Fire and Soap; Malachi 3:1-4; December 9, 2018; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
The ancient prophet, Malachi tells of a figure who is coming “to prepare the way for the Lord,” a messenger who will purify people’s hearts. “God is sending a messenger,” writes Malachi, “who comes intending to cleanse your souls.” John the Baptist proclaimed a baptism—a washing,for repentance—for change, and for forgiveness of sins.
Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
Both of these prophets invite us to scrub-down and get clean. In fact, the call to repentance and forgiveness is strong in advent traditions. I remember saying words like these these weekly when I was growing up,
Others may have used words like: Oh God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You and I detest all my sins,because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life.
There used to be a lot of groveling and guilt in church and talk of punishments and rewards. One of the results of that focus was a strong picture of God as a strict disciplinarian or a fearful judge. When we see God as threatening and punitive then life becomes all about measuring up in order to avoid damnation. Life becomes all about requirements, laws, and failure.
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation” the main character, Mrs. Ruby Turpin, is the domineering spouse of a pig farmer. She is also an appalling racist. She categorizes everybody (black and white, rich and poor) according to an elaborate scale of bigotry that she is constantly adjusting. Worst of all, Ruby Turpin views her fondness for classifying or judging people based on race or class as a great virtue. She sees herself as the model of correctness and uprightness.
Then, one day, she is sitting in the waiting room of her doctor’s office, expressing gratitude that she is neither black nor poor. A young girl in the same room throws at her and hits her smack in the middle of her forehead. The book, appropriately, is entitled Human Development. The girl calls Ruby “a warthog from hell.”
Well, this accusation overturns Mrs. Turpin’s world. For Ruby understands this attack not to be simply the deranged act of an over-stressed teenager; rather, she understands this assault to be a message sent to her by God. Is Mrs. Turpin right? Does God approach us to whack upside the head and call us nasty names?
“Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” asks the prophet Malachi, “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.” Both of these images are a little frightening. A refiner’s fire is the forced-air, white-hot blaze that melts metallic ores and brings their impurities to the surface. Fullers’ soap is the strong, lye-based soap used to bleach the impurities from cloth. Fire and soap, says Malachi.
Malachi says a messenger is coming to prepare us for the Lord. The messenger will arrive with flames in one hand and a caustic detergent in the other. He comes to boil off the impurities in our souls and to apply a coarse scrub brush to our spirits. Currier and Ives, Malachi is not.
On a hygienic level, we all understand the need to be clean. Most of us can think of a mother or an aunt or a grandma who at dinner times would send people into the washroom with the phrase, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” It’s getting close to flu season when we will need to be careful to sneeze into our elbows and liberally use hand sanitizers. Where would we be, here, without Microdyne and purified water? Physical cleanliness is important for our communal health, for society’s well-being. It’s true on a spiritual level too. We can use a scrub down, a regular purification for our spirits.
In Flannery O’Connor’s story, when Ruby Turpin arrives home from the doctor’s office with a bruise on her forehead, she stomps out to her shed, picks up a hose, and begins washing down her pigs with a forceful stream of cold water. She is angry-angry at God. What right does God have to suggest that she, upstanding citizen, is “a warthog from hell”? As soon as her husband is out of earshot, Ruby looks to the heavens and growls, “What did you send me a message like that for?” “How am I a hog and me both?” “How am I saved and from hell, too?” she asks.
“How am I saved and from hell, too?” It is, I think, one of the most profound theological questions ever posed in American literature. It is also a question that we know quite well at this time of year. How can I spend hours trying to make a good Christmas away from my traditions up North and then lose my patience with my spouse over some dumb little thing? How can we hum Christmas carols and, at the same time, get irritated and overwhelmed by all the requests for financial gifts to worthy causes? “How am I saved and from hell, too?”
This question testifies to a classic theological formula: God both loves us and judges us. Or perhaps more accurately, because God loves us, God judges us. That is the deep truth that lies at the heart of Malachi’s prophecy. Our gracious God so loves us that God’s great desire is to see us freed from the grime that covers our souls. God is not saying: “I refuse to let you come near me until you clean up a bit.” No. God is used to having our messy selves around. Instead, God is saying: “I am going to help you clean up. I will assist you to throw off the tarnish that prohibits you from truly experiencing the joy that awaits you this season.”
So, what does it mean that God promises to judge us? Is it out of some deranged desire to see us dangle over the flames? No, quite the contrary. Is it to make us fear damnation and focus on rules and regulations? No, God judges us to save us. God seeks to purge our souls of every gunk and dross so that we might have life, and life abundant.
At the close of Flannery O’Connor’s story, Mrs. Turpin has a vision (a revelation) as she stands outside by her pigs. She sees a ladder on which people are ascending to heaven, walking together in the very groupings that she had placed them throughout her judgmental life. She and the others in her own category are bringing up the rear of the procession; they are the “last,” following all of those whom she and they have despised for so long. And O’Connor writes, “They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”
Sometimes the things that we need purged from our spirits are precisely those aspects of our personality that we are most proud of; even those pieces of us that we consider to be our strengths and our virtues are at risk when the purifier of souls comes to town. This is the promise of the season. The gift of Malachi is to picture for us a God who lays out fire and soap this Advent, a God who wants to cleanse us from everything that would diminish us.
Why does God do this? Well, one clue might
come from O’Connor’s story. The name of the girl who throws her book at Ruby
Turpin in the doctor’s office is “Grace.” Our Gracious God approaches us with fire and
soap this Advent, to sear away our old grudges, our hurt hearts, and heal us. Let’s
let God soap away the hardness in our hearts, and wash clean even those
attitudes that we think are virtuous. Amen.
Malachi 3:1-4
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 inwhom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who canendure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is likea refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifierof silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like goldand silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then theoffering of Judahand Jerusalemwill be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Our first reading for today comes from the last book in the Old Testament, Malachi. The word Malachi in the Hebrew language simply means “my messenger.” The prophet wrote at least 100 years after the city of Jerusalem and its temple were restored following the Exile. The prophet announces that a messenger would come to radically purify the temple and its priesthood.