Refined and Repentant -- Second Sunday of Advent

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

December 8, 2024

 

            When my kids were little, I did my best to keep the house as clean and as organized as possible, for my own sanity more than anything else. It didn’t always work. Not because I didn’t try, but because, you know, life. Life, with work and home and activities, was busy and full and often chaotic. So, I just did the best I could to stay one step ahead of the constant mess.

            But during the summer when the kids were in the elementary school years, they would go to camp. They went to a day camp for a few weeks at the college in the town where we lived, and as they got a little older, they would go to an away camp for a week. And that was my time to clean their rooms. Now, they were supposed to clean their rooms themselves – pick up their clothes and their toys, make their beds, and so on. But that was just tidying up. While they were out of the house, I would do a deep clean dive on their rooms. I would organize, sort, discard. I’d pull out clothes I knew they’d grown out of and donate them. I’d vacuum, dust, wipe down, pick up, if it needed to be cleaned, I cleaned it.

            And when I was done, I would just stand and admire their rooms. They were clean, organized, beds made, clothes hung neatly, toys and books off the floor and on shelves and in the storage bins. You could actually see the floor! It was fantastic! There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. Their rooms would stay just like that – until they came home. The minute my kids walked in the door, I would plead with them to try harder to keep their room clean and organized. They would smile at me, nod their heads, agree how nice it was to have a clean room, and within ten minutes chaos reigned once more. But for those first ten minutes, it was great.

            For those first ten minutes, my inner neat freak was satisfied. With life as busy as it is, it can be hard to stay on top of the chaos. I know my office does not reflect the neat freak that lives inside of me, especially in really busy weeks or seasons. But my inner neat freak bides its time, and at some point the chaos becomes too much and I must clean. I must clean, my office, the house, my car, because I just can’t stand the mess anymore.  

            You can probably guess then why this passage from Malachi appeals to me. Any passage that has to do with soap sounds good to me. But this isn’t a passage that we read that often in worship, and the reference to fuller’s soap is unusual, so I wanted to familiarize myself with what it is. It took some research to understand what these verses are referring to.

            Fulling was the act of cleaning and preparing wool for use. It makes sense, then, that 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 or cleaned, and we can also assume that the fuller’s soap was the soap used by the fuller to do the cleaning.

I suspect that cleaning wool required some pretty powerful soap. The wool sheared from a sheep would have been greasy and dirty. Getting rid of the grease and grime that collected on the wool would demand a generous amount of elbow grease, hard scrubbing, and a strong soap. The fulling soap used would make the wool snow white.  The fulling soap softened and relaxed the wool, so that it would be ready for whatever purpose it was put to. Whether the wool was used to make clothing, rugs, or something else, fuller’s soap was necessary to prepare the wool. The fuller’s soap made the wool ready.

            This messenger that Malachi refers to is someone who will act on the people like a fuller’s soap acts on wool. The messenger will cleanse the people, soften them, soften their hearts, make them ready. Because of this messenger the people will be made ready.  They will be prepared. They will be washed clean. The people will be made ready.

            “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 Baptizer,  the subject of today’s gospel reading from 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, heeding Jeremiah’s words that surely the days are coming. This week the word of the Lord has come to 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 with a capital O. John is the one who gives the message that Jesus is on the way. John offers the people a water baptism, but he knows very well that the One to come will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit. 

            Yet 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 because surely the days are coming when the Lord will come like 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 must prepare, and we must be prepared. According to Malachi, we need to be washed with fuller’s soap. We need to be cleansed and polished. And the messenger of the Lord is the one to do this. John the Baptizer 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, but he will also 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 Baptizer understood that his water baptisms could not compare with the fire baptism 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 research the work of a silversmith.

            She found a silversmith and made an appointment to talk with 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 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 fire and bellows. But contemporary silversmiths 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 coming to prepare us. That preparation is both cleaning and 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 know that sounds daunting, maybe even a little frightening, but none of this is supposed to be easy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary or worth it. To be refined, to be made pure and polished is to be made ready for the Lord’s coming in our hearts, minds, and soul. Prepare

            I do a lot of preparing in this season. I make a lot of lists. I scramble around trying to get ready. But how much time do I spend thinking about what I’m preparing for?  And do I give any time at all to the notion that I might be the one who needs preparation? Because it seems to me that 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 and polished and made clean. I pray the same for all of us. I pray that soap and fire will cleanse and refine us to be more truly the people God created us to be, to be the people who follow Jesus first and foremost, to be the Church God called into being. I pray most of all that in this season of Advent soap and fire will prepare and refine us as followers of Jesus, as the Church who bears his name, to be messengers of the good news, and reflections of God’s image to a hurting world, a broken world, a world that desperately needs peace. May we be prepared.

Let all God’s children say “Alleluia.”

Amen.