And he shall purify...

"And he shall purify," from Handel's Messiah

But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering of righteousness. (Malachi 3:2-3)

For other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. (I Corinthians 3:12-13)

We heard a fine sermon this morning from J., one of the handful of people who read these pages, based in part on the Old Testament lesson from Malachi, and the quotation from Isaiah incorporated into the day's Gospel account, St. Luke 3:1-6. She described how gold and silver are refined by fire, and how wool is “fulled” (and yes, I looked it up on Wikipedia as J. suggested: here is the link. In ancient times, it involved slaves walking on the woolen cloth ankle-deep in tubs of urine, which cleansed the raw wool from dirt, oils, and impurities.)

As J. said, none of this sounds easy if you are the silver ore being refined, or the wool being soaked in urine and beaten or trampled upon. But “he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap.” There is no getting around it; one way or another, all of us must be cleansed of everything that stands between us and God. It is not an easy process. All of this was in J.'s sermon.

I would add that when one starts with an ore that contains gold and silver, only a small fraction is precious metal, for example a quartz rock with a few tiny flakes of gold. That is how we are too – there is some “gold” in us, but there is a whole lot of other stuff.

St. Paul describes the work we do in apt terms: “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.” When it seems that we are working hard but making little or no progress, it is well to remember this passage. Most of what we do will not stand the fire – but by God's grace there may be a tiny bit of it that does. Rarely will we know which is which, except sometimes in hindsight. But God knows, he who is “like a refiner's fire.”

Music-making is one aspect of such work. We practice, we do our best, and it is never sufficient: most of it is “wood, hay, stubble.” But there is often “something” there, some element of true Music that shines like gold. If we persist, and if God persists with us, we improve; some of the dross is burned away, and we become better musicians. Someday (probably not in this life), he will have purified us completely, so that we “may offer unto the LORD an offering of righteousness.”

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.