Refiner’s Fire

AM Psalm 82, 98 • Malachi 3:1-5 • John 3:22-30
PM Psalm 80 • Malachi 4:1-6 • Matthew 11:2-19

Sometimes scripture can offer unexpected and unintended belly laughs. Today’s reading from Malachi is an example. It is one of many Old Testament warnings from God about a final punishment for various misbehaviors. Besides laundering us, Malachi says, God will purify us “like a refiner’s fire.” It’s a common and effective metaphor. Gold and silver are cleansed of their impurities by being superheated in a forge. I’ve stood near something like that in a smithy. The heat is literally blistering from several feet away. What it’s like at the center is unimaginable.

That’s what awaits us, Malachi writes, if we persist in our sins. Adulterers, perjurers, “sorcerers,” all who act unjustly to the weak and vulnerable will face this immeasurable torment when God comes to put us on trial. Who can endure that day, he asks, “Who can stand?” Yipes.

And then the punchline: “But do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty.” It is hard not to laugh at that, albeit nervously.

The line also can serve as a reminder of what we know as Christians. I personally am not guilty of the specific offenses listed (although sometimes navigating the internet can feel like a kind of sorcery), but none of us can claim innocence of any injustice, unfairness, prevarication or any of a long list of sins. But if we recognize them and confess we are assured of mercy and forgiveness, nowhere more eloquently than in the wonderfully named “Comfortable Words” from John in rite one: “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Following Malachi, they are comfortable words indeed.

Written by Elliott West

Elliott is emeritus professor of history at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member of St. Paul’s for more than thirty years.