Preaching and Teaching

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

December 27, 2009

Text: John 1:1-14

I was talking to a friend, another pastor, who had four boys, and the youngest child was very energetic, physical and active. He loved to move his arms and run around all the time. He was like a tiny tornado, destroying everything in his path. Andrew was shocked, because after having three well-behaved children, he and his wife thought that they had parenting pretty much figured out. Then they had this boy who would just beat up everyone who moved. The parents watched, amazed, as this tiny three-year-old guy hit his brothers who were twice his size.

“What did you do about it?” I asked.

They tried everything. Punishing, distracting, and talking–all of it worked a little bit, but they effects were always temporary. They watched how other their other children went through stages, and grew out of them quickly like a pair of shoes. But this seemed different, and they didn’t quite know what to do about it. They realized that they needed to do more than just work on the behavior; they needed to make sure that the boy himself moved in the right direction.

So with care and concern they began to experiment, until they figured out that the best way to work with him was to appeal to his sense of fantasy. They noticed that he loved to play “Jedi.” So they started allowing him to wear his Jedi outfit, they began calling him “Jedi,” and their home became a Jedi training camp. They told him that he needed to be a good Jedi and to work for good things. When he would hit someone, they took him aside and asked, “Is this what a good Jedi would do?”

As a result, the child just might see the age of five.

His parents are teaching him to fight for justice, to defend those who are smaller than he is, to look out for children who might be more vulnerable. He is learning to make sure that good will win over the bad things in the world, so that there will be peace on earth. And around the dinner table.

A Jedi is a Star Wars character. I know this fact, because when he was telling me this story, I remembered my light saber and my Princess Leia outfit. The saber was a large glow-in-the-dark piece of plastic that I kept in the bathroom, over the fluorescent light rod. It rested there, so that it would be charged up and ready when I needed to go into action. I loved playing with it, and saying cryptic things, like, “May the force be with you.”

In fact, all sorts of scenes flashed in my mind as Andrew talked. I thought of all the boys and girls who play, imagining themselves as Superheroes, defenders of justice and good. I never really thought about how that acting can form them into better people, stirring up their merciful imaginations, helping them the construct the framework that they needed to distinguish right from wrong, to be sensitive to others who were in distress or being hurt, to defend those who were smaller or weaker than they were, and to fight for justice.

I found it fascinating that the real world didn’t motivate the child—yelling, counting to three, time-outs, or taking away privileges. He couldn’t seem to make the cause and effect connection between bad behavior and punishment. The fact that every time he hit his brother, he had to stop playing and sit quietly in a room, didn’t seem to bother him. But being plugged into something much bigger concept did. Somehow he could understand this cosmic reality between justice and evil, and appealing to that made the difference.

Which seems so odd to me. I mean, “If you hit, you will be punished” seems simple and straightforward. Wouldn’t that fight between good and evil be a much more difficult concept to grasp? For the boy, it wasn’t. “Fighting for justice” made more sense to him than “don’t hit your brother.”

Andrew was still worried. He was nervous that the child’s playing still seemed too violent, and he was concerned that this would alter the child’s view of God. Star Wars is a great movie, but it’s not like George Lucas is a great theologian.

“We’ll sort out the theological implications later,” Andrew said, “but right now, he needs to identify with the good. He needs to be on the right side. When he hits people, he knows that he is not being a good Jedi.” The child is able to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, not by appealing to the sensible nature of rules and regulations, of discipline, but of appealing to this more abstract idea–his sense of fantasy.

It’s difficult to understand just how the minds of children work. Of course, each child is different, but as religious leaders, we are concerned about the formation of a child’s spiritual life, and how we can convey a loving, compassionate faith to them. We surrounded Owen this morning in his baptism, and we take those promises to heart. We are to care for our children, providing a nurturing place for their faith to form.

A lot of Christian educators will say that children only understand concrete ideas, and so we should not try to make them comprehend abstract notions about God. They just won’t be able to wrap their heads around them.

For instance, when we are children, we may understand God as our Father. Yet, as we grow older, we begin to realize that this image is a metaphor. It’s incomplete. God may be like a father, but the word “Father” does not encapsulate who God is. God is not a white man on a gold throne. God does not have a white flowing beard. As we get older we can begin to look at these metaphors more critically, and we begin to relate to God in the best way that we can. Realizing that our words cannot capture who God is, that none of our ideas about God are big enough for this divine reality, we can move from a concrete idea of God to something that might be more abstract. And yet, part of the beauty of the spiritual life is this endeavor to catch a glimpse of the beauty of this unfathomable God.

The theologian, Augustine, calls this “faith seeking understanding.” We realize that we are not able to understand the vast complexities of God. We know that God has “thoughts that are not our thoughts and ways that are not our ways.” And yet, think of all the beauty and acts of compassion that spilled out of our human striving to understand God. For thousands of years, seminaries have been filled with theologians who write libraries full of books about God, preachers could expound for centuries, musicians could compose choral works and symphonies, artists could cover canvas after canvas, mystics could pray and try to understand what it means to be one with God, and men and women commit their lives to working with the poor and outcast. We do all of this to try to understand and convey the wonders of God. And even if we worked for the rest of our days, trying to know God, to understand who God is, and striving to live with the compassion of loving Creator, we only come up with a sliver of understanding. We would only know one ray of light that is reflected in that complicated diamond. And at the end of our days, we would realize that the more we know, the greater the mysteries are. We could never capture the enormity, the abundance, the love of our Creator.

And then, we enter this season. This first Sunday after Christmas, we move from trying to grasp the complexities of God, these cosmic realities. And suddenly we are confronted with the opposite! We are confronted with the claim that God becomes flesh, and walked around with us.

It’s hard to imagine. A friend was at the airport yesterday, sitting next to a man who was full of nervous worry from the recent bombing attempt, and he explained loudly, “I’m all for racial profiling,” blurting out a string of racist comments against Middle Eastern men. Then he sat down, pulled out his Bible.

She just shook her head, and debated in her mind whether to inform him that Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who would have fit his profile.

But we forget about the particularities of being human when we move into this cosmic idea of God—until Christmas, when we talk about a God who is with us. We proclaim that God became a child. God was an infant whose neck was so wobbly that he could not hold it up himself. God cried because it was the only way he knew how to say that he was hungry. God reached out for his mother’s milk. God learned to walk. God was potty trained and went through puberty, just like all of us.

And in Christmas, we realize that our writings, and our sermons, and our symphonies, and our paintings and our prayers could not encapsulate God, but somehow, this baby does. This child, in all of his vulnerability.

And somehow, it doesn’t only affect our image of God, but it I think it makes us look at humanity differently. It makes us look at children a bit differently. Because in this season, we understand the fullness of God by glimpsing into that manger and seeing that tiny child, who paws in the air with his clenched fists, all wrapped up like a burrito.

It makes us look at our own flesh differently. Until we learn to be human, we learn the difference between good and bad, we learn to construct systems of justice, not by relating to some Superhero, or fighting the causes for justice with super-human strength. But by studying the works and words of a human who walked alongside us, listening to those who were in need, reaching out to those who were vulnerable, filling the hungry with good things, and thereby bringing about peace and salvation.

May we go out, with the knowledge that Jesus Christ, that baby in a manger, is God with us. And may that reality change who we are.

To the glory of God, our Creator,

            God, our Liberator,

                        and God our Sustainer. Amen.

by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 24, 2009

Text: Luke 2:1-20

It is hard to imagine a more boring job—watching sheep. Add to the boredom the fact that the shepherds were stuck with the sheep miles from their homes. Because the landscape near Bethlehem is so stony and barren, the shepherds had to herd the sheep miles from home to find an area with enough grass for grazing. As a result, they were stuck staying up all night watching over these cute but smelly critters.

As the men sat on a hillside, huddled around a small fire to counter the seasonal cold, they looked into the skies. The nighttime sky in that part of the Middle East is famous for its beauty—stars standing out brilliantly against a pitch black backdrop. As was often the case, there were shooting stars flying across the night sky. Watching the brilliant celestial show, the shepherds noticed one star that they had never seen before. It was unusually bright and moving quite slowly but steadily toward them. They had never seen anything quite like it.

Sitting around the fire, the men swapped stories about things happening in their village. They wondered about Sarah and Salmon’s marriage. Every time they walked by their house there was all kinds of shouting coming from inside. They speculated about the future of young Simeon who clearly was the most brilliant child to be seen in their parts for many a year. The group concluded Simeon would probably be sent to Jerusalem to study with the senior rabbis. The men complained bitterly about the platoon of Roman soldiers who had come through the village, demanding food and wine but unwilling to pay for it.

At then, at some point in the evening, their night changed radically and with it, all of history. What happened next has caused Christians across the ages and around the world to gather this night, immersed in our own dark surroundings.

An angel of the Lord appeared. A single angel. The mundane suddenly morphed into the amazing, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the natural into the supernatural and, not surprisingly, the shepherds were scared out of their minds. Had they angered their God? Was this the judgement day?

The calm angel dealt first with their terror, “Be not afraid, for I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.” The shepherds let out a huge sigh of relief but still couldn’t believe that what was happening was happening. The angel continued, “for unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Like everyone in Israel, the shepherds had heard about the coming of a savior since they were young. Their town’s rabbi often spoke of the coming Messiah. From time to time, an itinerant preacher would even come through claiming to be the Messiah. But like most of their neighbors, the men didn’t really think they would live to see the Messiah’s arrival. Someone would see the Savior. But not them, or so they thought.

The next part puzzled them, “you will find a child, wrapped in swaddling cloth and laying in a manager.” “What does that have to do with the Messiah,” they wondered. The Messiah was supposed to be a magnificent warrior who would lead them to victory over their nation’s enemies, not a baby.

Before they could pursue the thought further, the sky exploded with a heavenly host praising God. They had never heard or seen anything like it; never would again. The host exclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those whom God favors.”

As quickly and brilliantly as the sky had filled with the heavenly host, just as quickly the amazing host was gone, as was the angel. “What the heck was that?” said Ishbak, the youngest of the shepherds. The others hushed him and said, “Pack everything up; put out the fire; we are going to Bethlehem.” “What about the sheep?” asked Ishbak. “The sheep will have to take care of themselves for a while,” responded Issac, the oldest of the shepherds.

When they arrived in Bethlehem, it was just as the angel had predicted. A young couple, sitting in a lean-to structure were beaming over their baby. The uneducated but not unwise shepherds didn’t know what to say. They didn’t know what to do. So they just sat down and soaked in the moment. A perfectly appropriate response.

At some point, dawn perhaps, the men broke out of their trance and remembered the sheep in the field. “We need to get back there, right away,” said one. As they traveled to the sheep and then home, they told everyone what they had witnessed. Since people in those days were very open to supernatural experiences, most listened raptly.

The next thirty years are shrouded in mystery. Jesus was growing in spirit and truth. But beyond that, we know very little. We certainly have no clue as to what happened to the shepherds. A lack of specificity in a biblical text is a preacher’s field of dreams. I call it a hermeneutical void waiting to be filled. So let’s fill the void.

Since average lifespan figures for that period are skewed downward by the high infant mortality rate, chances are that most of shepherds would still have been alive thirty years later when Jesus began his ministry. If you made it to your teenage years, you probably made it well into your fifties. Most likely, in the years following Jesus’ birth, the shepherds continued with their work since there wasn’t a lot of upward mobility in their society. They probably remained in the same village since few people left their home towns.

Just as Jesus appeared out of the night in Bethlehem, he again appeared out of the night thirty years later. He came from nowhere—specifically the nowhere called Nazareth. He was not unlike one of those shooting stars the shepherds saw on the first Christmas night. The young preacher quickly became well and widely known during his brief, brilliant ministry.

When the shepherds heard about this precocious and powerful preacher, did they connect the dots? Did they realize he was the One they had seen in Bethlehem? We’ll never know.

What we do know is that this is how God works in our lives. God doesn’t come to us at the exact times and places we think it best for God to appear. God comes, seemingly, out of nowhere. And the angels speaking for God look very little like the angels portrayed in Christian art over the centuries. The angels of our lives come to us in surprising yet strangely familiar forms.

Yesterday morning, John Lytle came here to church for our men’s group meeting. As he opened the exterior gate to the church, John greeted a homeless man waiting to go into Miriam’s Kitchen. He explained to the fellow that he was going inside to attend a meeting. The man paused for a moment and then responded, “We live on opposite sides of the gate, don’t we?” An angel directing us to the inequities and inequalities in our world?

Nerdy accountant Itzhak Stern handed German industrialist Osckar Schindler lists with the names of Jews bound for Auschwitz, Dachau and other death camps. These compilations of names became known as Schindler’s List and the Jews fortunate enough to be on the lists were put to work in Schindler’s factory. As a result, they survived the holocaust to tell the tale of angels who intervened to save their lives, unlikely capitalist angels named Stern and Schindler.

When I was directionless in life in my mid-twenties in Madison, Wisconsin, one of my co-workers at Oscar Mayer and I were discussing his marital problems. When we finished talking, he said to me casually, “You’d make a good minister.” Was this man covered with braunschweiger from head to toe an angel directing me to my Bethlehem?

Not able to follow his bosses orders anymore, a fire fighter in Birmingham, Alabama yelled to his colleagues, “Turn off the hoses.” With that, the torrents of water that had been pummeling civil rights protestors ended. Was he an angel sent to proclaim peace among humans?

In my personal experience and my reading of history, one thing is clear: God’s angels do not usually appear in the sky. With very human faces and flawed personalities, they come to us at surprising moments and their message is always the same. Reduced to its core, it goes something like this: “Be not afraid.”

To our anxious generation, the angels might say,

Be not afraid…of one another. Straight need not fear gay nor liberals-conservatives, rich-the poor, or Christians-Muslims. You are all one, big, diverse family. That is how God created you. That is how God wants you to remain.

Be not afraid…to pursue your destiny. You were created for a purpose. Find it. Live it.

Be not afraid… of illness or broken relationships or shaky economies, for our God is Emmanuel, God with us. Nothing but nothing can separate us from this God, ye denizens of the 21^st century.

So let God’s peace be among all of you and may it grow and prosper in your midst. Merry Christmas.

Western Presbyterian Church

December 13, 2009

Washington, DC

Text: Philippians 4:4-7

I saw the car commercial, just slightly in my vision as I was walking through the basement. I was doing laundry, but I could tell that the ad was showing footage of a beautiful, expensive, luxury automobile, zooming at high speeds around the highway curves. And there was some sort of prattle going on, I don’t remember the monologue, but I think it was a man talking about how he was going to his holiday family reunion, and he was going to show them how successful he had become.

I smiled. The messages of this season are so interesting. You can show people how much you love them with a diamond. Your can make your children happy by buying them a video game. Now, you can finally let your brother and sister know that you got the biggest piece of the pie. You own the most toys. You won the ultimate tug-of-war, because you have a shiny car. Not only can you buy emotional security for your spouse, happy memories for your kids, but you can win the final grand victory for your sibling rivalry. In fact, if we believe the commercials, the only thing that money cannot buy is poverty.

In this season, the idea that money will buy our happiness seeps into just about everything we do. And in this time when we are grasping for joy, we almost believe it.

Joy is part of our Christmas season, and it is a theme in the Bible. The command to “Rejoice” was repeated in our Scriptures and it is peppered in our hymns. And so we gather around, in this time when we know we ought to be joyful, with this expectation that we will be happy. We even read the command from Philippians this morning. “Rejoice!” the author, Paul, says, “And again I say Rejoice!”

And yet, let’s be honest, often with the shorter days, gloom and depression can set in. This is a time when expectations run high and money can run low. It is a season when we can be surrounded by people, but feeling utterly alone. It is a moment when we long to be with our families and our friends, and yet we find ourselves working overtime and attending those parties that we really ought to be seen at.  

So, with this command in front of us, and with these holiday pressures all around us, we have to ask, “What gives us joy?”

When I think about joy, two vivid scenes from the last couple of years pop in my mind. And please forgive me, because they are both bathroom scenes: one from a movie and the other from a book.

The first was from Slumdog Millionaire. I know that there has been some controversy about the portrayal of people in India and anger about the name of the movie itself. But, I must say, I liked the movie. There was this unforgettable moment in it. A little boy was in an outhouse, and his brother wanted him to come out of it. Just at that moment, a helicopter came flying over, and a celebrity was visiting the city. His brother locked him in the outhouse. The boy wanted so badly to see the man that he escaped the only way he knew how. He fell into the excrement.

Then the boy went to go meet the famous man, without wiping anything off. And the crowd of people who were surrounding the celebrity moved out of the way for the little boy. He smelled and they were all afraid that he was going to touch them! And the celebrity gave the boy his signature.

The boy yelled and jumped for joy. The elation, the pure happiness of this moment, when this boy is covered from head to toe in filth, was an amazing moment.

I found myself, during the whole movie, rooting for such simple things for these children. A home. School. Food. Safety. I thought that it would be a happy ending if they could only have these basic things.

The second bathroom scene that stayed with me this year was much different. It was from the book Eat, Pray, Love, when the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, was on the clean bathroom floor of her suburban home. It was a beautiful house, with new furniture. Gilbert had everything that a person could want, everything that we strive for—a great career, a successful spouse. And yet, she would find herself, late at night, on the floor of the bathroom. When she should have been sleeping, she found herself fighting a wave of overwhelming sadness, and trying to talk herself out of hurting herself.           

We talked about Eat, Pray, Love at the women’s retreat. We turned it over in our discussions, how the book has sold millions of copies. And we realized that it must be because a lot of people relate to the story–that story of finally having everything that you want and realizing that you’re miserable in the midst of it.

We see this unfold in the news all too often. We see the perfect “family man,” the sports star or politician, they seem to have everything together, then we watch them destroy their lives and themselves. And we scratch our heads and ask, “Why did they do that? They had everything that they could have wanted.” We look at their amazing spouses, and we realize it has nothing to do with what they already have.

Then, as the sordid details of their secret lives come out, we realize that men and women do not just cheat on their spouses because there is someone better who happens to be available. Sometimes they cheat because they are miserable. There is a giant vacuum inside of them that needs. And when they try to fill it with money, power, success, and accolades, and then it’s still there. So they grasp on to sex try to figure out if there is something else that can fill it.

Back to the two scenes, they contrast in my mind, and make me wonder—what is joy? There are studies out that say that in this time and age, even before unemployment got so high, when men and women had many more comforts of life, that we were more depressed than ever before.

Is it because we have too much money? About 15 years ago, I did some work in Kenya, and people in the villages would dance and sing all night long, completely outlasting my 20-year-old self. And after these long nights, my friend Grace would tell me, “We are poor people, but we are rich with happiness.” I never doubted it.

The experience had an effect on me. And I began to have this romantic notion that people who lived in poverty were somehow happier. On top of that, I had a sense of religious asceticism, and believed that when I gave material possessions up, then I would be satisfied. And when I left seminary, I decided to go to one of the poorest areas in the country to pastor in a very small congregation.

But, after living for a few years under the poverty level and realized that there is nothing satisfying about not knowing how I was going to pay for my student loans, or where my next mortgage payment was going to come from. The marital tension was overwhelming. And I quickly became a failed ascetic.

I am not so shallow to think that material possession can buy us happiness, and I learned that giving them up didn’t work for me. But I do wonder, where does joy come from? What sort of things need to be in place so that we might experience joy? Paul ought to know about joy in all kinds of circumstances, he is writing this from prison—and he is telling the community to “rejoice.”

There are things that we can learn to do-eat well and exercise. There are also spiritual disciplines that I have learned in my own life, and things that I have seen others going through as well.

Now, if you are experiencing chemical depression, then do not hesitate to get the help that you need. Often there is a chemical imbalance within our minds that physical and mental exercises will not resolve, and it’s important to get the help that you need.    

But, aside from that, there are some things that we can do.

First, we can understand that God loves us and wants the best for us. I know that this might seem trite. It might sound like a bumper sticker on the car of someone you would not invite to your holiday parties, but it is a powerful truth when we can internalize it. For some of us, we get God all mixed up with our parents.

And if we had a father who was never satisfied no matter how hard we tried. If we had a dad who was always absent from our lives. Or a mother who seemed so wrapped up in her own depression to be there emotionally for her child. Or parents who regulated the amount of money or food they gave to us according to how much we were getting along with them. Or if we had parents who abused us. Then, when we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” we might have the tendency to get the parental metaphor and God all mixed up, and we might imagine that we have a God who can never be pleased, who is never quite satisfied with what we do. Or we could even think that we have a God who dispenses joy and good things only as God is pleased.

But, if we can begin to imagine a God who loves us, who wants us to have abundant life, who wants us to have a deep abiding joy. If we can begin to imagine a God who will love us and hold us, who thinks that we are good, and delights even in the very smell of us, we can begin to heal from those wounds of our past.

The second thing is to make a gratitude list. Listing everything that we are thankful for. Paul says “whatever is whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

It is a rare thing to have everything that we need all at one time. If our job is going well, sometimes we do not have the relationship that we want. If our health is good, then we do not have the job that we want. If we have the career that we always dreamed of, then suddenly we realize that we miss that time with our family that we used to have.

If you are human, there will always a point of dissatisfaction in your life, a place where things seem unbearable. And yet, if we are able to take a few moments to step back, and remember all that we do have, then it’s like getting an injury when we are basically healthy. We can overcome it a lot easier.

The third thing that we can learn to do is to help others, even with our weaknesses. Going back to this retreat, we spent a lot of time talking about archetypes. We looked at the archetypes in the great myths, some that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell pointed out, and as I was preparing, I noticed that archetype of the wounded healer.

It is a powerful metaphor. I have a friend who was sexually abused as a child, and I asked her one time how she was so resilient. How she was able to live such a productive life. I knew people who were in her same circumstances who were not able to get over the trauma. And she told me that she had learned to use it as a source of healing. Through her work as a counselor, she had been able to talk to people who had gone through similar circumstances, and she had been able to show them that they could live abundant lives. In some sort of emotional sense, it was like she was like she was able to show them her flesh, and to tell them, “Look, the scars will heal. They feel like they are gaping right now, and the pain seems too much to bear, but I have proof that they can heal.”

This is a season when forced happiness surrounds us. And it is a time when we are reminded of the spiritual discipline of rejoicing. We can learn to drink from that deep well of contentment that can fill us.  When we are able to use our wounds as a source of healing for others, when we are able to focus on the good things that surrounds us, and when we are able to trust and rest in the fact that God loves us and wants us to have an abundant live.

May we go out in this season, with an overwhelming sense of joy.

To the glory of God our Creator,

             God our Liberator,

                        and God, our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 6, 2009

Text: Malachi 3:1-4

In the Old Testament, we find two radically different expectations for a Messiah. The most widely held expectation was for a Messiah who would put an end to history as we know it. Engaging the forces of darkness in an apocalyptic battle, the Messiah would emerge victorious and reestablish the Davidic monarchy, elevating Israel to the top of the hierarchy of nations.

It was this expectation that drew individuals like Judas to Jesus. Called Zealots, Judas and his friends believed Israel was meant to install God’s rule and reclaim the political and economic greatness it possessed during the rule of David and Solomon. They thought Jesus, as the Messiah, had come to lead the struggle to create a divinely sanctioned nation.

It is interesting to note that this expectation is still very much alive in Christianity today. Every time someone says they want the United States to be a “Christian nation,” we hear the continuing hope for a Messiah who will create a theocracy. At times this theocratic vision of a Christian nation has come from very progressive, populist voices such as William Jennings Bryan. Today, we hear it primarily from the religious right, although it lingers in parts of the religious left.

This expectation of the Messiah also remains alive among those Christians who wait for the Second Coming of Jesus. In the Second Coming, they contend, Jesus will do what he didn’t do the first time around. The Messiah will vanquish the forces of evil once and for all and create a land of milk and honey for the faithful.

It is almost as if these folks didn’t get the message the first time. The Messiah is not coming to establish justice. That is our job. Unwilling to accept this revelation from Jesus, these Christians have resurrected and reasserted the theology of a militant, conquering Messiah.

The alternative to the mainstream expectations for the Messiah was largely ignored until the days after Jesus’ resurrection. Prior to the resurrection, even his disciples didn’t get it. During Advent, we read of this expectation from prophets. The prophecies are familiar to us. They were not familiar to Jews in the First Century.

These expectations talk not about a conquering warrior but a humble, suffering servant; not of unbelievers burning in hell but the lion laying down with the lamb. Here is the toughest part of the alternative scenario: the Messiah will destroy the forces of darkness. On the contrary and paradoxically, the Messiah will be killed by them. However, it was predicted the Messiah would rise again to show God’s ultimate victory of goodness over evil.

In the mainstream scenario, the arrival of the Messiah produces a concrete outcome. Evil is vanquished. God’s Chosen are vindicated. A nation of believers is built. No wonder it was popular then, popular today in prophecies of a Second Coming.

In the alternative scenario, the outcome is much more ambiguous. Yes, we learn that goodness ultimately triumphs over evil. But how does that ultimate outcome benefit our lives, right here, right now? We need help today. From whence comes that help?

Malachi gives us some help answering this very important question. After predicting the arrival of a messenger who will prepare the way for the Messiah, Malachi describes the work of God as that of a refiner. As a silversmith would refine and purify silver, God refines and purifies human lives. It is a fabulous metaphor.

Refining is a process. A refiner goes through the steps of refining methodically, skillfully, repeatedly. It takes a while. It requires a combination of skill, hard work and patience.

In the refining process, a metal isn’t transformed into a different material as in smelting. Rather, the object of the refining is purified. For example, with silver, the impurities of copper or lead are removed. So refining separates the silver from the other matter.

The use of fire is an ancient method to separate the silver. Today, there are several other ways to refine silver. No matter the technique, the more refining done, the purer the silver produced. However, it is difficult. Highly valued sterling silver still contains 7.5% copper.

With that little Refining 101 course behind us, let us think about what Malachi is suggesting regarding the Messiah’s work. The Messiah does not come to transform instantly the world as God created it. On the contrary, the Messiah comes as part of God’s work to refine and purify the world, to introduce a process leading to a better world.

The process introduced has to do with purifying our lives of the impurities which create so many problems for us and others. If we allow God to refine and purify us, we will slowly begin to see the impurities in our lives disappear. I don’t think this so much involves a process of purifying our behavior as our attitudes are purified, since behaviors flow from attitudes.

As we allow God to refine us, where we once were filled with ingratitude, we slowly become grateful for what we have, no matter how small that might be. Once jealous, our inner fire of envy no longer burns so strongly. Once despondent, hope is reborn in the core of our being.

Understanding that God is refining us is so important to our journeys through life. We all get frustrated when we aren’t where we want to be in life. However, the thing for which we should watch is not whether we are where we want to be. It is whether we are closer to where we want to be.

As a pastor, I deal frequently with addictive behavior. People come to talk with me about all kinds of addictions—everything from substances to sex to work. Trying to be a better counselor, I have read and learned a lot about addiction. One of the key things I have learned is the notion that one isn’t a recovered addict. “Recovered” implies the addiction is over and done with. One is a recovering addict.

Addicts tend to relapse. A relapse, in and of itself, isn’t a failure. If dealt with in a healthy manner, it is part of the refining process. When addicts are making progress, they acknowledge relapses and return quickly to the steps leading to healthy behavior.

As I listen to and walk with folks, one of my frustrations lies in our very human tendency to want to be 100% silver—immediately. We get so upset with ourselves as we struggle with our continuing impurities. Worse, we use our failures to justify giving up on the refining process. “I’m not making much progress so why try? Why not just give up and enjoy myself?” we ask.

As I have undertaken this big lifestyle change regarding my exercise and eating habits, the biggest challenges come when nothing seems to be happening. I have days where I work out like crazy, eat very little and, in the morning, the scale shows no change. The refining doesn’t seem to be working. At that point, I have to trust the process. When I do, my change in a positive direction inevitably continues.

We all hit places where nothing seems to be happening in our careers, no matter how hard we try. Or a relationship seems to be stuck. Or a hobby where we can’t improve our skills. Or we can’t stop self-destructive behavior to our health.

When that happens, we need to remember that God is refining and purifying us. In any refining process, there are times when nothing seems to be happening. The refiner puts the material in the fire and just has to wait for the right conditions to develop so the silver separates from the lead or copper. We need to trust God and God’s processes.

In addition to refining us individually, God is refining us collectively. I simply don’t understand people who say the human race hasn’t made progress. Would any one of us want our daughters and granddaughters to face the limited options our mothers and grandmothers faced? Would any of us want people of color to be condemned to cleaning the master’s house instead of living in the White House? Would any one of us want to live in a world where we didn’t know about and have the ability to respond to a tsunami that devastates a remote corner of the world? Would we want the LGBT community back into the closet? That God is at work refining and purifying the human race, slowly removing impurities in the ways we relate to one another, is as obvious as the change of the seasons.

Are we constantly creating new problems such as our devastation of the environment? Of course. But let us not allow new problems to block out awareness of old problems we have overcome or are overcoming.

One last thing about refining ( A preacher can never let go of a good metaphor). Silver is an inanimate object. It doesn’t have to cooperate with the refiner in order to be refined.

We do. In order for us to be refined, we have to cooperate with the refiner. God can only refine and purify those who are willing to be refined and purified. God can only forgive those who are willing to be forgiven. God can only guide those who are willing to be led.

In this season of Advent, may each of us open ourselves in new and powerful ways to the refining and purifying power of God. As we do so, we will discover within us forms of righteousness that will shine brightly and brilliantly.

Let us pray: Gracious God, we are so grateful that you not only create us, you work with us as we evolve into what you created us to be. Help us not to lose patience with you, ourselves or others as we go through your process of refinement and purification. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.