The Second Sunday of Advent
“For he is like refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver…” Malachi 3:2b-3a
Advent is a season of prophecy.
Prophets are often misunderstood, thought of as fortune tellers who predict the future. In fact, prophets are the keenest observers of their present time, and while they may use future tense, they are trying to reflect what’s true –and often ignored or hidden—in the world around us. Prophets also use familiar imagery, what their listeners can picture and imagine. They use what we know to help interpret the unknown.
And somehow, no matter their varied contexts, prophets in every age seem to have a similar message—radical change. Isaiah and John the Baptist, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, all these voices ask us to hold on less tightly to what we have and what we know, so that God can bring something new into being. Think, for instance, about what it would really be like if the hills were brought low and the valleys exalted. For all our Prophets, the love of God breaking into the world means transformative change, in ways both exciting and deeply challenging.
This season, I have found myself particularly drawn to these words from the prophet Malachi, this image of a refiner’s fire, of fullers’ soap. While you might be familiar with the notion of using heat to refine metals, the work of a fuller is a bit more distant from our modern lives. Fullers were the laborers who worked raw sheep’s wool into usable cloth. With fullers’ soap, wool that was matted and thick with the oil and dirt of animal life would be revealed as soft and clean. Both these materials are worked and cleansed in a way that renews them and gives them new capabilities to serve and delight others. And yes, the process that gets them there can be rough work.
In this season, how might you be renewed and transformed? What new dreams do you have for your life, and the life we all share?
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
– Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent