Sermon-of-the-Month for December, 2006
The First Presbyterian Church of Dutch Neck
Rev. Dr. Floyd W. Churn
LIKE A REFINER'S FIRE
Texts: Malachi 3:1-4
1 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. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; 3 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. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-18
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee... the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
5 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;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.' "
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! ...9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" 11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" 13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." 14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people
LIKE A REFINER'S FIRE
It's modest beauty had been hidden for years... how many exactly I do not know, but I do know that four layers of paint along with probably several of varnish covered well the craftsman's work. In our small seminary apartment, we needed a dresser with drawers to supplement our Sears Roebuck early marriage bedroom set. And since our household treasury discouraged a visit to the showroom for something nice by Ethan Allen or Thomasville or even Erney's Unfinished Furniture, we settled on the used furniture section of the Trenton Goodwill Thrift Shop. Pickings were slim, but we finally spotted a simple, functional piece with three large drawers and two smaller ones side-by-side, that would fill the bill nicely. It was painted a yellowish cream color, and I could see from some chipped places that there was a coat of off-white beneath that. But we were in our blue period then, and antiquing was all the rage in the mid to late 60's, so...behold our blue antiqued bedroom dresser, a real one-of-a-kind.
Some years later, now in a first-time house, we were able to buy some rather nice second hand furniture from a Philadelphia Main Line Estate. But one of our young daughters now needed more storage space, so, to match the bright existing decor of a child's bedroom, the antiqued blue dresser became dark yellow - also with antiquing, which was still popular with finish-it-yourselfers in the mid 70's. It was a piece of furniture each layer of which could no doubt tell it's story of time, place, and circumstance, and I knew two of those four stories. It finally ended up in our little house on Cape Cod where it sat in its glazed mustard-yellow state for years. It was only a couple of years ago, noting that the drawer sides were not tacked but neatly dovetailed to the front, that I got curious about what lay beneath. And layer by layer - yellow-blue-cream-off-white - using lots of nasty and probably environmentally-unfriendly paint stripper, I came to the attractively grained oak that had been hidden for....who knows how many years. Now don't get me wrong, this piece of furniture would not set hearts a-flutter on the Antiques Roadshow, but there was a minor gem under those coats of many colors, crafted by some creator in oak as a thing of simple utility and modest beauty. Hidden...unseen for...how many years? I love to look at it now and think of its journey of recovery, and uncovering, and sometimes imagine the pre-Goodwill part of that journey.
(continued)
Advent is a journey...a season of preparation for Christmas. Its color is purple because it is a penitential season, a time to filter out all the happy Christmas music we've been hearing in malls and other public places for weeks now...and to make a serious spiritual assessment of our lives. Maybe part of that is stripping off some of the layers that are covering the real thing, the person God desires to reach with the message of Love come to be with us and for us. Advent should be characterized by unrelenting hope, not unbridled gaiety - so that we may finally receive the gift of joy. If we feel some measure of emptiness leading up to Christmas, maybe it's because there is a space within us that God wants to fill. But there's also a gem beneath the encrusted layers because the God who gave us life doesn't create junk.
I've long thought of these advent passages as fearsome, intimidating, and even terrorizing. They are fierce, but they do not speak of the destructive impulses of some angry God who has come to the end of his rope and now it's pay-back time. I have a recent New Yorker cartoon which shows God sitting on his throne on a cloud, looking sternly at the far-off earth and saying "Don't make me come down there!" Like a totally enraged and frustrated father to a persistently disobedient child: "Don't make me...!" Of course the irony of the cartoon, perhaps missed by the cartoonist, is that God has already done just that - come down here to handle things that couldn't otherwise be fixed. "Love came down at Christmas" - not to punish but to love, and the tough love part of that love might be described as refining - burning off the impurities that keep the gold and silver from being all they were created to be - or winnowing, separating the chaff from the wheat, the husk from the kernel - or, in my non biblical image, scraping off the hardened layers of coating that hide God's precious creation.
Fierce...but not destructive. I used to think of John the Baptist's work as more a message of severe and final doom and judgment than liberating love. From his very opening words -"You brood of vipers! (Try that opening, preacher!)... to his cutting down of the unfruitful trees... to separating of the good wheat from the useless chaff, which is then burned with unquenchable fire. I've always gotten a chuckle from the very next verse in Luke story of John: "With many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people." Good news? If this chopping, winnowing, burning is "good news," please spare us the bad news. But actually, while these are images of judgment, they are also images of liberating love, of purification, of getting rid of whatever is hindering our love. God's judgment is always gracious, just as his grace is not divorced from his judgment. The tree is cut down but the roots are not dug up and destroyed; "a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."Renewed life will happen. The wheat and the chaff are not two different grains but kernel and husk of the same head of wheat, not two separate people, one saved into the Lord's granary and one destroyed by fire, but a separation and burning of the part of us that is covering the essential you and me - the person God fashioned out of love.
(continued, over)
When I finally decide it's judgment day for that unattractive dresser, the mustard-colored, antiqued outer layer of which grows more offensive every day, rather than tossing it in the Large Objects section of the town dump, I notice a craftsman's touch, get curious and wonder what lies beneath and begin the hard task of separating paint and varnish and glazing from wood. A whole lot of scrapin' going on! And I discover the hidden beauty...the hidden beauty that God already knows lies beneath the layers that hide his precious creations of flesh and bone and spirit.
+Layers of pride, that keep us separated and aloof from one another.
+Layers of judgmentalism that devalue the gifts and perspectives and contributions of others                (that's one I had to have burned off at one point in my life)
+Layers of cynicism which keep us from being open to awe and wonder, and also keep us                obsessively suspicious of the motives of others.
+Layers of bravado that try to cover other layers of low self-esteem that cover the beloved, Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â valued child of God.
+ Layers of hardness and indifference that try to shield the vulnerability that must ever be a part of love.
+ Layers of rage or bitterness, as the good gift of anger expressed is held tight and becomes the toxin of anger nursed and fostered.
Whatever is covering, tainting, smothering the God-gift that is you and me. And I have to take the "me" seriously, because the prophet Malachi is addressing specifically and most pointedly the religious leadership - the "sons of Levi," the temple priests...the clergy folk. John's "brood of vipers" is all-inclusive.
Like a refiner's fire. Some women were studying this passage from Malachi - this is a true story -
and found themselves puzzled by one little word: The messenger of the Lord, the messenger of the covenant..." will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi..." Why "sit as a refiner"? So one of the women phoned a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him work. As she watched, the silversmith held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up, explaining that he needed to hold it in the middle of the fire, where the flames are hottest, in order to burn away all the impurities. But why "sit" - do you need to sit by the fire the whole time the silver is being refined? Yes, he replied, I not only have to sit there holding the silver, I have to keep my eyes on it the entire time because if it is left even a moment too long in the flames, it will be destroyed. And how do you know, the woman asked, when the silver is fully refined? "Oh, that's easy - when I can see my image in it."
(continued, over)
Sometimes we feel the heat of the fire and need to know that God will not take his eyes off us, nor leave us there a moment too long...only until God sees the divine image in us.
Sometimes we feel the winnowing fork tossing us up and about so that the wind of the Spirit can blow away the useless chaff and let us fall into our true home.
And sometimes, maybe we feel the sharp scraper and the harsh stripping solution at work, peeling off layer after layer of those weird and ridiculous coatings that hide the gift of beauty and usefulness fashioned by the master carpenter.
God won't stop burning, scraping, winnowing, until God sees remaining the one made in God's very image. It can feel like harsh judgment but it's how God sets us free from our spiritual disabilities to be the whole person we were created to be. It is good news after all.
Amen.
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