Getting Clean

Malachi 2:17-3:5a

Rev. Dr. Mary Alice Mulligan

Advent is a time of waiting for God. As the second week begins, we heard first from John the Baptizer (Luke 3:1-6), out in the wilderness, calling us to work while waiting for God’s arrival. Back then, when people expected a royal messenger, they removed boulders from the road and filled in ruts, so the envoy would have a smooth approach. Just so, John calls people to make our rough places into a plain because all flesh is going to see God’s arrival.

Now hear from Malachi, written hundreds of years earlier. God’s people, after decades in exile, are freed to go home. The Temple is rebuilt; life should be great. But as many of us know, just being home does not mean life will be perfect. We can imagine that Judah before captivity was a fairly homogenous group; but after the return? What a disparate group! While in exile, Jeremiah the prophet instructed them to promote the welfare of their current city. So, for 70 years they accommodated to life in Babylonian captivity. Of course, they return home with new ideas and practices and traditions. In addition, the many common people left behind tried to keep the old ways, even as foreigners (non-Judeans) moved in. Both groups intermarried, so Judah was already diverse when the exiles return with dramatically new customs and religious ideas. The writer of Malachi also observes Levi’s descendants, the priests, are self-absorbed, offer improper worship, and quickly reject other beliefs. Conflicts erupt frequently. Stubbornness is rampant, but so is a religious laziness. Look out! Judgement is sure to be coming. From the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Malachi, listen for the word of God.

You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, ‘How have we wearied him?’ By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.’ Or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’

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. 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; 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. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Then I will draw near to you for judgement.

As we read Malachi, lots of us immediately hear Handel’s Messiah in the background, where music and words together communicate the prophetic message. But this message is no pleasing Christmas concert. The words warn of the terrifying reality of God’s approaching to judge and purify humankind. Who could survive the appearance of LORD YHWH? Divine judgment fire burning off the dross; the soap and brush scrubbing away all that is not pleasing to God? Who could endure that appearance?

The passage is clear. God’s judgment is promised. Prophets are quick to warn us that divine judgment is certain. We will be held accountable. Even a cursory glance through the prophetic books of the First Testament reveals a sense of inevitability. Judgment is real, which shouldn’t surprise us. Don’t we all deserve divine judgment? Some of us live as if our faith makes very little difference. We say we are Christian but live just like everyone else.

A minister once claimed he could tell a person’s real priorities by looking at 2 of their books – their checkbook and their datebook. A person’s values are revealed in how they spend their time and money. For most of us, our daily activities fall woefully short of what our faith instructs.

In addition to our failings which deserve God’s chastisement, most of us also carry secrets. Down in the most private places of our souls we hide events we wish never happened. Life moments we regret; crushing words spoken in anger; actions taken which may have ruined a life; an evil deed done in the rush of youth. Although we rarely speak of the guilt we carry, we nevertheless believe we deserve punishment. Or the guilt may be over some shameful event that happened to us, of which we never speak. Malachi does not exaggerate when he admits, “Who can endure the day God comes? Who can stand in the presence of the One from whom no secrets are hid?” Politicians report many people cannot speak when they step into the president’s oval office the first time. How much more so when humans come into the presence of the terrifying glory of God? We can easily imagine ourselves on a day of reckoning, in God’s presence, like a drop of water splatting onto a hot fry pan. We should sizzle for a millisecond and evaporate. Who could endure God’s coming? Prophets shout the warning: Get ready for God’s judgment!

 But God’s judgment purifies. When God is done, people are clean. Malachi is not preparing us for punishment, but for cleansing, although the process is not painless. The harshest warning is directed at the unrighteous priesthood, but we are all included among those who offer impure worship. The images are fierce – scrubbing false worship from the people, as a fuller pours on lye and pulls out a stiff brush to eradicate impurities from wool cloth. This is no preschool lesson to “rub your soapy hands together and sing ‘happy birthday,’ to get the germs off.” Just as ancient fullers scrubbed fabrics with lye to remove unwanted oils and impurities, so might we imagine ourselves purified by fuller’s soap, scrubbed raw.

The other cleansing image is of the refiner’s fire which reaches a temperature where solid ore melts. The impurities fuse to another metal and the purified silver remains. We are invited to hold both the warning of the fuller’s soap and the melting fire of judgment and the promise that God’s judgment cleanses us from all our sin. God is not pleased with a variety of the activities we engage in, like lying to make ourselves look better than someone else. God judges and intends to scrub us clean, but this does not mean God will punish us – cause a car accident to teach us to behave better. Rather God’s Spirit works with and within us to make us aware of our failings and sin. Then it is up to us to allow the Spirit to correct and guide us, to scrub those impurities out of our hearts, and burn up the garbage we harbor within our lives.

Then amazingly, if God’s cleansing is real, when we look inside to recall our own sinful history, nothing will be there. Our secret places of shame and guilt are empty. God’s purifying erases them. As difficult as the refiner’s corrective fire is, we survive. We are not burned up in the Spirit’s refining fire, because God says we are the silver. God’s refining cleanses us because we are the silver, purified from our sinfulness. The word from Malachi is that God’s judgment is coming to wipe out the unrighteousness within us. And we are left with the promise that God’s judgment purifies.

Which means we are forgiven, friends of YHWH. This stunning good news means God’s judgment comes to humans as grace and healing. As forgiven people we are called to live in joyous righteousness. But of course those who have lived improperly, even if it was a long time ago, find it very difficult to believe they are forgiven. “How could God just erase my sin?” Lots of us even waste time looking into those secret places, to see for ourselves that our sin is not gone. We can picture it clearly. We feel like our sin is still in there, festering. But the truth is, the sin is gone. The forgiveness is real. Our problem is that it’s as if we’ve taken a picture of the sin, the pain, our sense of guilt. And we set that picture on some inner table to torture ourselves. But we are forgiven. Throw the picture away! It isn’t real anymore.

Of course we don’t want to just have the sin scrubbed out and go along as we’ve always gone, unchanged. In divine forgiveness we can find ourselves whole, able to experience a renewed fruitfulness in the presence of God, able to accomplish whatever holy tasks are set before us. Here we are, strengthened to live according to God’s will. One scholar noted, God’s judgment is “restorative, not retributive,” which means we don’t have to carry that guilt around. We can get busy being church. Malachi particularly addresses the descendants of Levi, the priests, who need to be cleansed to lead pure worship. He knew that when leaders worship correctly, it draws all of us closer to God. Even a group as diverse as Judah, with returned exiles and those who never left; or as diverse as St. Andrew, with lifelong UCC folks, brand new Christians, people still questioning, and travelers from other denominations. Together we can be a unified community, ready for Advent, preparing for Christ’s coming, because nothing separates us from God. We are able to throw ourselves into worship, full of holy awe in the presence of Almighty God. We are forgiven people.