The Refiner's Fire

December 5, 2021

Hope Lutheran Church

Rev. Mary Erickson

Malachi 3:1-4; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

The Refiner’s Fire

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Children need to be challenged. Maturing from a child into an adult requires challenge. Without it, we remain children. When we’re children, grown up people take care of our needs. One of the necessary parts of growing up is becoming more responsible. If children are to grow and mature, they need to be challenged.

Actor Matthew McCaughnahey says something similar. “My rule,” he says, “is to break one sweat a day.” If something is easy, if it requires no work, we say, “no sweat.” So if we have to break a sweat, something is required of us. We’re being challenged.

We’re in the season of Advent now. Once again, we encounter John the Baptist. John comes as a challenger. He’s the transition man. John’s purpose is to help us step into a new day. The Jesus Thing can’t happen without this Transition Man.

John prepares us. And he does so with a prodding stick. John comes with all the tact and grace of a drill sergeant.

The reading from Malachi foresees his coming. “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. But who can endure the day of his coming?” Malachi states, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” That’s who John is. John comes to refine us.

The process to refine raw ore is quite extreme. The raw metal is put inside a ceramic crucible. Then the crucible is placed directly into fire of an extremely high temperature. Before long the ore melts. The object is to raise the temperature of the ore to the point that all the impurities are burned off.

This process hasn’t changed over time. The metal’s purity isn’t reached without it being put to the test.

Our faith grows through challenge. Oddly enough, one of the popular interpretations of the life in faith states just the opposite. If we’re really good Christians, then life will be on Easy Street. Everything will fall into place. We’ll be blessed. Why? Because we’re good Christians!

But nowhere in the Bible do we see this played out. Jacob wrestles with the angel, and he limps for the rest of his life. The Hebrew slaves trek for forty years through the wilderness. When Mary said Yes to the angel Gabriel, she didn’t move to a house on Easy Street. She moved into a barn. And Jesus himself sweated it out in the Garden.

Walking in faith doesn’t put us in a protective bubble, removed from suffering and struggle. If that were to happen, if God would miraculously take away our struggles and meet all our needs, then God would be leaving us as children. If all of our needs were met, if God were to take care of us so that we never faced hardship or suffering, then we would go through life as immature beings.

You might say that God regards us with such dignity and respect that God allows us the opportunity to grow through the challenge of suffering.

This isn’t to say that God purposely sends us suffering for our growth. I don’t believe that. Suffering stinks. Suffering by itself is a bottomless vat of meaninglessness. But suffering can be transformed from meaninglessness into purpose when new growth is borne from the struggle. This is the heart of resurrection thought. New life springs from death.

Paul wrote: Suffering produces endurance; endurance produces character; character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

And Paul understood this first person. We This morning we heard the beginning of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi. Paul just gushes with warm fuzzies in this letter. He’s so filled with joy and encouragement over the friendship he has with the Philippians:

• I thank my God every time I remember you;

• I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion;

• This is my prayer, that your love may overflow;

Paul writes this glowing letter from prison. In his own way he was being held in a refiner’s fire. The physical conditions of prison in Paul’s day were grueling. He had no idea how long his imprisonment would be. All he could do was wait and reflect. Why am I here? What is my purpose?

As Paul waited in prison, his high places were brought low and his valleys were lifted up. And within the crucible of his own struggle, Paul’s soul was refined into an unrivaled rarity of being.

John the Baptist himself will go through a similar dark night of the soul. Like Paul, he also will be imprisoned. From his cell he will send word to Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Behind his question we hear his struggle. He has staked his entire life on this one crazy dream. Was he right? Has all the striving been for naught?