By the Rev. Audrey Sutton ‘21

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.” - Malachi 3:1

During this season of Advent, we have been looking at four different prophets from the Old Testament in connection with the coming of Jesus Christ; here we look at our second prophet, Malachi, in particular. Specific characteristics of the prophet Malachi have not been preserved in history, but we do know that he was probably among society’s  elite and that his name means “my messenger.”

He absolutely had a way with words–words that were forceful and really hard for the people of his time to hear. He was calling the people of Israel back into godly living and away from the corruption of their current lives. The people had been stealing and hoarding tithes from the temple and offering rotten and defiled food in their sacrifices to God. God didn’t even get the second best, he got the moldy leftovers from Israel. Things were bad and gross.

The difficulty, though, was that many of the people had been living this way for so long that they truly believed they were actually living in right relationship with God. But, in fact, they were not. How hard is it to hear something we don’t want to hear? How hard is it to hear that our comfortable way of life may not be fully honoring God? And how do we discern a situation like this? As a disclaimer, we all fall short in honoring God fully.

Malachi speaks to this. His prophetic words are cradled in God’s promise to us all: the Lord will  sit as Refiner and Purifier. His bold words in chapter three directly address the vivid encounter that would take place between God and all his people. This messenger is coming to prepare the way for the one who will refine and purify. 

Malachi reveals here the reality of John the Baptist: the one who would begin the initiation of the coming kingdom of heaven.This is the very John spoken of in today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke:

During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” (Luke 3:2-4a)

John, son of Zechariah; the one proclaiming a baptism of repentance; the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. This is the very messenger of the advent of Jesus as the Christ. John the Baptist was indeed preparing the way before him. The Christ is coming. He is on the way.

The Lord whom we seek, the one to come suddenly to his temple, as Malachi says, is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture asks, “But who can endure his coming?” Malachi 3:2 tells us He is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s (launderer’s) soap:

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 fuller’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. (Malachi 3:2-3)

He will refine and purify.

In Malachi’s time (c. 420 BCE), the process of refining was somewhat different from how metal work is done today. Silver and gold during the fifth century BCE were primarily a symbol of status and privilege. This was an image most would have understood – the elite and those from other socioeconomic places.

The refining was a hard, dirty job; the freshly mined silver or gold was often contaminated with other metals, like ore or lead, and had to be “fired” in a series of processes, so the lead, ash, ore, and other metals could be removed. 

This was all done by human hands and primitive tool work, intentionally delicate, with temperatures close to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The final step included the refiner manually blowing the molten ore from the precious metal. 

Sometimes these steps even needed to be repeated. The refiner knew he was finished when the silver or gold produced its unmistakable pure glow. The reference to fuller’s soap was also a well-known process to Malachi’s audience and provided another image of hard, dirty work and the prized possession of clean materials. A fuller, the person who used fuller’s soap, refined and purified wool; they cleansed and bleached it until it was stark white.

This was a stinky process, often requiring designated areas, called the “fullers field,” for this work. The soap was made from naturally occurring alkaline chemicals and materials, which stripped oils, dirt, impurities, and color from the wool. The cloth would be soaked and saturated with the soap and water, then beaten, stomped, and pounded to remove all of the impurities. This prepped it for dying and made the fibers stronger and more resilient. What was left was a pliable, durable, beautiful piece of pure white cloth. How wonderful to be promised an unmistakable pure glow, to be promised durability, beauty, and purity.

A promise is made specifically to the Sons of Levi. This is a promise to contemporary Christians, as well. The sons of Levi were the Levitical priests of Israel. As Christians, we have been adopted as heirs to the Kingdom. In 1Peter 2:9-10 we read, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

We are now a chosen people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. It is because of Christ’s resurrection and in our Baptism that we have been adopted as his beloved children, made into a true priesthood of all believers. And we are promised that he will be our refiner and purifier.

Again,  how hard is it to hear something we don’t want to hear? Being refined by fire and scoured clean by fuller’s soap does not sound pleasant. The removal of what stands in the way between us and God can sound unbearable. 

But we, as God’s people, are so precious in his sight that he is willing to do the work. He is willing to sit as the refiner at the fire until we reflect that unmistakable glow. He is willing to scrub away our impurities, strengthening our every fiber, revealing the purity only found through his work in us.

He promised to send the messenger, to prepare the way. He has promised to sit as our refiner and purifier. He has promised, and he is on the way.

The Rev. Audrey Sutton, (‘21), was ordained to the priesthood by the Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, on October 2, 2021, at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Frisco, Texas. Mtr. Audrey serves as curate and director of mission at St. Philip’s.

To watch the preceding sermon, please visit: https://www.stphilipsfrisco.org/mediacast/hes-on-his-way-refiner-and-purifier/