Fair Warning
Malachi 3:1-4
Rev. Heather Howland Bobbitt

I grew up in the rust belt of Ohio. It used to be called the steel belt but then when the economy went south most of the steel making plants from Michigan to Pennsylvania closed up shop and that’s when I was growing up in a culture of ex-steel workers. In my school they would show these amazing films about the steel making process: huge vats of molten lava-looking stuff, bright orange and obviously many thousands of degrees hot. It has to get that hot to burn off all the dirt and organic materials. It’s a purifying process that ensures that the end product is 100 percent strong and perfect. Then the film would show how one vat poured it’s molten contents into another to blend all the iron ores and whatever else goes into whatever titanic recipe it is that ultimately makes steel into building materials for high-rises and automobiles. It’s an amazing, technological process. To see it, even on film, and to meet the men involved in it and hear their stories of catastrophic accidents – well, it’s something else.

When I read this part of Malachi where it talks about a refiners fire, that is what I think of right away. But that’s not really correct. In this case, the prophet is speaking of the way silver and gold were purified. In those days and really up until the industrial revolution, these precious metals were chunked from the earth in little hard and dirty clumps – looked like dirt – hardly recognizable as valuable. And then put into a large stone bowl and slowly melted then heated to a super hot, boiling state for several hours to burn off the dirt and other stuff – same as refining iron but on a small scale. But the process was not finished – no then one had to pour out small amounts into even smaller bowls, about like a cereal bowl and heat that silver up all over again and this time watching it like a hawk. Watching that melted bowl of liquid gold or silver as it went from a foggy sparkling gray or yellow color until, when they looked into the bowl, it made a flawless reflection of the refiner’s face. Then it was pure silver. Then it was one hundred percent perfect gold.

So you see, this image of God as the purifier of the Hebrew priests is not one of fire and brimstone, not an image of destruction, but one of great care and careful attention. The idea here is that all of us are like chunks of precious metal pulled from the earth – still raw and dirty in our natural state. But God who loves us will cleanse away all that is not necessary from us, cleanse us with fire, until all that remains is what is absolutely perfect and reflects back to God, God’s own image in which we were all originally made.

Contrast this with John, who baptized with water. His place was to come first and do the first step in preparing the people of God for the true refinement in Christ Jesus. John said, “I come baptizing with water, but the one to come after me will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit.” And this was true.

Now imagine that we are looking at a wheelbarrow full of raw silver, hacked from beneath the earth’s surface. Imagine with me that these chunks happen to have fallen into the exact shape and pattern of the geography of your life. There are high places and low places. A lot of dirt has sifted to the bottom, perhaps. Just like your life there are patterns repeated in these little valleys and mountains – special, unique patterns that make up who you have been your whole life.

Now imagine that God has come to refine you, to melt all of this away and bring froth from it only the purest essence of who you truly are. God will look into you and never take God’s gaze away from you as the work of purification progresses. God will make straight the paths, filling in every valley and bringing every mountain low, making straight the crooked roads and the rough places smooth. God will watch all this happening and rejoice. And your understanding of this process will slowly become clear to you, like clouds parting from a rainy sky to reveal the true blue dream of Heaven. You will come to see God’s salvation.

For now we see through a glass darkly But then, we shall see face to face.

John came to baptize with water. John came to beg the world to repent and be forgiven of their sins. But even John knew that this was nothing compared to what God would bring to the world in Jesus Christ. But still, this was his calling. God loved the world so much that he gave it John, the last prophet, to give fair warning to God’s people that the time was at hand. The world was about to change forever. The process of refining was underway.

Let us pray: Lord today we remember and thank you for John the Baptist, the last of the old prophets who touched with water the first born of all creation. When we see doves woven into Christmas wreaths, help us to remember the Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus at the Jordan River on the first day of his ministry among us. When we see the snow fall on the heads of our children and loved ones, may we remember the baptism and respect one another as children called by you. Doves and snow. Silver and Gold. These are all holy Chrismons given to us by you Lord to help us celebrate your gentle son, Christ Jesus.

In his name we pray, Amen.