From what I understand, being from Toronto means being familiar with “The Christmas Carol.” You know, Disckens’ classic that Disney remade as “Mickey’s Christmas Carol?” If you’re not, let me just pause to encourage you to go ahead and mark your 2007 calendar toward the end of November, so you will remember to go and see the local production. It is wonderful story, they do a great job with the musical, and you should all go and enjoy the show. Commercials now aside, “The Christmas Carol” is Charles Dickens’ classic commentary on the state of society in England in his day.
It is the story of one old buzzard, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is a successful businessman. Ebenezer didn’t become wealthy by accident. He was very thrifty. He had one employee, Bob Crachet, his nephew, he barely kept the office warm enough to keep one’s blood from freezing, and he believed in hard work and a lot of it. He is a stickler and never cuts anyone a break. His life is about making money.
We catch up with our characters on Christmas Eve as they are discussing the next day: Christmas Day. Crachet, of course, wants the day off to spend with his family. Scrooge, of course would rather work. He would rather get more money. After all, a day off is a day of lost wages. When Crachet won’t settle for a half-day, Scrooge gives in and agrees that his nephew can have Christmas off. Bob replies with a hearty “Merry Christmas Uncle.” Ebenezer spouts a miserly, “BAH, HUMBUG.”
As Scrooge walks home, everyone one the street greets him, it seems, with a Christmas greeting. He starts out just ignoring them all, but they finally get the best of him and he starts his usual “Humbug” retort to everyone he passes. He just doesn’t understand this day: Christmas. “What’s the appeal?” “Couldn’t we just all go back to work?” “Can’t we just keep making money?” Scrooge had lost sight of the real meaning of Christmas. He had lost sight of the real meaning of LIFE.
The people of Israel, especially the priests, faced a similar dilemma. They too had lost sight. They had lost sight of the real meaning of worship. They too had lost sight of the real meaning of life. It seems unfathomable, but they had. And in their blindness they led the people into a life of self-serving as well.
After loosing everything and living in exile for so long, they were finally brought home. The walls were rebuilt, the temple was rebuilt, their lives were rebuilt. But life was not as it should be. The priests were corrupt, worship was corrupt, life was corrupt. They regularly offered lame or sick animals as sacrifices and keep the best for themselves. They worship in vain. It would be far better to not worship at all. They cause the people to stumble. The people turn their back on God for other people. They question God. They suggest God is absent, or blesses the evil. Yes, Judah lost sight of the real meaning of life.
Life became soiled. It became so stained with their lives of sin, that God raised Malachi to give them warning. And so Malachi prophesied our text this morning:
“‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.”
I wonder what Dickens would have written had he been writing of Christmas in our culture. Dickens seemed quite put off that people missed the message of Christmas. He seemed agitated that Christmas had become just another day instead of the Holy Day it has always been. He seemed to have his feathers ruffled by those who used Christmas for self-serving purposes rather than others-serving purposes. How might he have viewed Christmas in the 21st century valley, instead of 19th century England?
Would he have found a people who genuinely sees Christmas as a time to celebrate that God became one of us? Or do we somehow still miss the point of Christmas? Would he find a Christmas that was a Holy day set aside for our worship of the Christ child? Or would he find that we still use Christmas as just another day? Would he find a people who truly makes room in the inn for the coming Christ? Or would he find that we still manage to use Christmas for our own purposes? These are questions I have been wrestling with lately.
Do I get it? Do I make Christmas Holy? Do I make room for Christ? As I have reflected on Malachi’s stern prophecy, I reflected on my life. I ask myself these questions. I think about how miserable I was going Christmas shopping. I was not feeling well, I had too many things to do, I was mad about not finding the restaurant I’d been looking forward to, I was quite irritated by the idiotic drivers in the parking lots and the marathon it took just to get to the mall entrance. There is nothing like Christmas shopping on a Saturday afternoon at the Robinson Mall to get me in the Christmas spirit!
I think about my schedule: the usual sermons and visits, decorating the house, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas baking, planning extra Hanging of the Greens and Christmas Eve service, Choir practice, Christmas parades and float building. I feel like I have more to do now than at any other time in the year. And what is usually the easiest thing to be put on the back burner? Prayer and Scripture - Christ?
I wonder how I will spend Christmas. I’ll be driving to Circleville on the 23rd to celebrate with my Mom’s side of the family and then back that evening. I will be having services on the Christmas Eve in the morning and the evening, but not too late because I want to be sensitive to people who have family they need to see – and because after the service I’ll be hitting the road again to see more family. We’ll spend a couple days with family and then be back. It will be another week as usual and then after worship on the 31st a trip to Cleveland to celebrate with more family. I wonder just how much room I’m making for Christ – and how much I’m giving to meet the expectations of others and myself. Am I making Christmas holy? Or am I taking it in vain so I can do the things I want to do, but am not willing to make time to do any other time? Somehow, when I hear the words of Malachi, I feel like they are spoken to me. I feel like a Levite who has taken what God has given us as holy and made it about me. You don’t have to be a theologian to know what the theological word for this type of twisting and spinning and refocusing of life. Sin. Sin is simply taking focus off Christ and focusing on something else.
Last week’s text was one of hope. Christ is our hope. No matter how much I might mess up. No matter how much I might loose focus, Christ still comes no matter what. This morning’s text tells us Christ’s coming bring about our purity. In the coming of Christ, we are purified. The coming of Christ is like a refiner’s fire. It is like laundry detergent.
As I read, one author shared that not many of us have experienced a refiner’s fire. He talked about it in modern terms as a blast furnace. I thought to myself, “and what exactly can I say about a blast furnace that this church doesn’t already understand?” So I decided to keep reading and keep thinking. A blast furnace isn’t the only image Malachi uses. He also compares the purifying work of Christ to laundry soap. Now that’s an image we don’t look at very often. The blast furnace talks of power and heat and danger, but what about laundry detergent?
Laundry detergent provokes an entirely different image doesn’t it? It has to be gentle. It cannot be too abrasive because the clothes are made of delicate fabric. The clothes we wash are worn against our skin and so it must be gentle. It evokes an image of a loving mother, gently rubbing our soiled laundry with soap and then on a washboard, seeing to it that all is clean.
Mothers are just the best. You know what amazes me about mothers? My mother wanted nothing to do with cleaning fish, or touching worms. She didn’t even want us talking about such filth at the dinner table. Yet I could make no mess that Mom couldn’t clean up. My first job in Kansas City was as a babysitter for a friend’s infant daughter. Part of my job was changing her messy diapers. The wet one’s I didn’t mind, but I had to work hard to keep my lunch down when they were the other kind of dirty. Mother’s aren’t fazed by such nastiness. All I had to do with the diapers was take them off and throw them away. Most of our mothers didn’t have disposables. They used cloth. That means they had to change and clean us, but they also had to wash the diapers. I get nauseous just thinking about it.
How many of us were ever sick growing up? Now, how many of us made it to the trashcan or the toilet every time? Someone had to clean it up! It was probably Mother. Antonina and I still call our mothers when we just can’t get a stain out. They always seem to know just the right trick. There is nothing too dirty for a mother to clean up. Christ came to purify us and make us clean. He came with the power and heat of a blast furnace, and yet with the tenderness, gentleness and love of a mother who cleans up her children’s most vile messes.
Advent is about preparing for what is to come. How, then, do we prepare for the purity Christ desires of us? How, then, do we prepare for the purity Christ brings at Christmas? Malachi tells us there will be a messenger who will prepare the way. Our call to worship this morning was Zechariah’s song. It is the song he sings at the birth of his son John the Baptist. It was John’s purpose “to go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him (Luke 1:76b).” How did John prepare people fore the coming of Christ? Luke tells us, “He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (3:3).” We prepare for the coming of purity by repentance.
Sin is anything that turns us away from Christ. Repentance is turning back toward Christ. Repentance is returning our life to proper alignment with Christ. It is not just expressing sorrow or regret; it is turning. It is realigning our life to Christ. My grandfather was a navigator in the Air Force. He could navigate by the stars. It always amazes me that people can find their way in the darkness by observing the stars. Repentance is regrouping our life’s wanderings. It is finding that star that points us to Bethlehem. It is charting a course for the manger where we will find the Christ child wrapped in swaddling clothes. If you are like me, and I suspect I am not alone, there are many stars in your sky. Many stars tempt us to go in varying directions. Many things compete with Bethlehem as the destination we are seeking. Advent is the time to look within. Advent is the time to we look above. Advent is the time to find the star that points us to Christ. We turn, we repent, and we focus on Christ who will bring us purity. Who will cleanse us and purifies us from all unrighteousness.
Frederick Gaiser wrote, “Christ came to burn away all our impurities – and it pains us to know that our failures cost him his life. But his fire is the passionate fire of love. And we can warm ourselves in its glow. Yes, Christ came to wash away our sin – and it pains us to know that he had to wash us with his own blood. But in his tender scrubbing we feel the loving hands of a mother’s care. God’s bathtub is the font, where we can relax safely forever. Christ combines all God’s strength and fire with all God’s love and mercy. We need both to combat the dangers of the world and the sins of our own making. In Christ we have both: fire and heat, soap and water. Strength and love. Oh, yes, come, Lord Jesus. Make us clean (“Refiner’s Fire and Laundry Soap: Images of God in Malachi 3:1-4.” Word & World: XIX.1. Winter, 1999.).”
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