Sermon
for February 2, 2014
Lessons for the Presentation of Jesus in Year A
Malachi 3:1–4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14–18
Luke 2:22–40
“Well if he’s gonna be there, then
I don’t want to be there. I don’t care, that’s just the way I feel!”
Wow.
Strong feelings there. This other person must be pretty bad. Who is this guy
that’s being talked about, and where is it that our friend doesn’t want to be
if he’s there?
It’s
everyone’s favorite whipping boy. Everyone’s first choice for the worst person ever
on the face of the earth…Hitler. And I’m not talking about Chris Hitler of
Chicago. (Can you imagine having to go through life with that last name?) I’m
talking about the one, the only, the unforgettable personification of pure
evil… Adolf Hitler.
And
where is this place that our friend doesn’t want to be if Hitler might be there
too?
Heaven.
I’m not making this up. I’ve
actually heard this from a fair number of people who are totally scandalized by
the Christian idea that Jesus came to save all of us, and not just those
who are somehow “deserving.” That’s actually funny, since those who would be
most in need of being saved would be those who were the least deserving.
These people are scandalized by the idea that this man who was the cause of so much
death and destruction, could possibly have any kind of a shot at Heaven as the
result of a last minute conversion experience.
They
figure that if he’s there, then there’s something wrong with “the system.” And
they figure that if he’s there, then they don’t want to be.
And
yet…many of these same people have absolutely no problem with the idea of Darth
Vader, who ordered the destruction of an entire planet, being redeemed
by his actions of killing Emperor Palpatine and saving his son, Luke Skywalker,
in the last minutes of The Return of the
Jedi.
Go
figure.
For he is like a
refiner’s fire…
I hear that line and I’m more
likely to think of Advent than of Epiphany. That’s because I think of it as
being a passage of Handel’s Messiah,
which I listen to every year around Christmas time.
But
here it is today, on the 4th Sunday of Epiphany, also celebrated as the Feast
of the Presentation. And when I saw it, I immediately thought of some of my
friends…and the party that they wouldn’t want to go to if a certain other
person was there.
For he is like a
refiner’s fire…
Now I’m not a metallurgist, and I
don’t play one on TV either, but thanks to the kind people at Wikipedia, I now
know just enough about smelting, and refining, to be dangerous.
Most
of you probably know that the metals that we use in our everyday life: iron,
copper, tin, and so on, aren’t just found lying out there in the ground in
their “finished” form. They come in ores, which are combinations of the metal
that we want with metals that we don’t want. In order to get the metal that we
want, you can either smelt the ore or refine it. Smelting is a process that’s
used when you need to separate the metal you want from the other impurities
that it’s chemically combined with. Usually this involves acid baths,
electrolysis, or both.
Refining,
on the other hand, is used when the metal you want is simply lumped in with
other, unwanted stuff, but has not made any chemical bonds with it. This
process involves heat to melt down the ore, since the wanted metal and the
unwanted one melt at different temperatures.
In
short, smelting and refining are ways of getting rid of the impurities, and
retaining the metals that we’re looking for.
With
that in mind, the line “for he is like a refiner’s fire” refers to us as being
the impure ore that has some trace amounts of a precious metal in it.
In
ancient Rome, the process of refining silver from lead was considered
economically viable if you could get eight ounces of silver from a ton of lead.
Let
me say that again…the process was economically viable if you could get eight
ounces of silver from a ton of lead. If you have no idea of the scale we’re
talking about here, let me break it down for you. At 16 ounces to the pound,
and 2000 pounds to the ton, we’re talking about refining 2000 pounds of lead in
order to get a half pound of silver. That's one part in 4000.
Kind
of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
For he is like a refiner’s fire…
Now, if we’re willing to
take the effort to find the half pound of silver in a ton of lead, then how
much more willing might God be to extract what little is good in any of us from
all that isn’t?
All
of which brings us back to our unwanted party guest.
The
people who say that they wouldn’t want to go to Heaven if Hitler were there
make three very big errors. The first is that they assume that the Hitler who
somehow managed to get in would be the same as the Hitler that the entire world
suffered through for 12 years. They don’t take the time to consider the
refiner’s fire. After the refining process, how much would be left of him
after the evil, and there was much of it, was melted, or burnt, off? If we compare
him to that ton of lead, what would be left after he went through the
refining process? An ounce? A half ounce? A molecule? Is the one good molecule
of Hitler too much for you to deal with? Would the few good molecules of Robert
Chambliss, Thomas Blanton Jr, Herman Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry; the men
behind the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls getting ready for Sunday School be
too much for me to deal with? I like to think that if any of them did make it
to the party, they’d be all of about a half inch tall.
The second error they make is
assuming that they’d make it through the refining process themselves relatively
whole.
Come
on now…really, how much of any of us here is gonna make it through the
refiner’s fire? Surely we all have our flaws and imperfections that need to be
taken care of. Surely we’re not all as wonderful as we think we are. Surely
we’re aware of the fact that a lot of us is gonna have to be melted off before
we get to the party.
And
I’ll tell you of a guilty little fantasy I have…I want to see those
self-righteous people who are so sure that they’re right, while everyone else
is going straight to Hell, have all that smugness burned away, and come through
as just a thimbleful.
Oh,
but darn! That just made me one of them, and now I only get to make through in
a thimble…or less.
But
really…none of us should expect that we’re gonna make it through whole.
The third, and most glaring mistake
these people make is assuming that after they’ve been through the refiner’s
fire themselves, they’re still gonna care! Maybe this is one of those things
that we’ll all be purged of…the desire, the need, to keep score from our
lives here.
And
who knows…if this is true…if it’s true that our need to keep score from our
lives here is one of the first things to be burned away in the refiner’s fire,
then perhaps, just perhaps the very first people to greet what’s left of that unwanted
guest will be the people whose deaths he was responsible for.
Scandalous? For those who expect an
exact tit for tat accounting of everything, yes, it certainly seems so. At
least it seems so from our limited perspective. Perhaps that accounting is
being done in ways that we can neither see nor understand from where we are now.
Instead,
however, I see this as good news. I see the refiner’s fire as good news…because
the refiner sees us…each and everyone one of us…as someone worth refining and
getting to the crusted-over heart of, even if it is three…or 300…sizes too
small. The refiner sees each and every one of us as someone worth redeeming.
Which leads me, on a lighter note,
to a story from my past, and one that I love to tell.
29
years ago I went to Wilson’s Jewelers at ShoppingTown to place a deposit on an
engagement ring for the girl I was dating at the time. But things didn’t work
out as I had hoped, and she turned me down. Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough,
when I went back to Wilson’s they told me that they couldn’t give me my money
back because it was a sale ring. The best they could do was to give me a credit
slip that I could use at some other time.
“A
fat lot of good that’ll do me!” I thought.
But
then a year later I met another girl, and as this girl and I were getting to
know each other, she heard a lot of stories about my past…including the story
about the ring and the credit slip.
Eventually,
we decided to get married, and we went to look at wedding bands. As we walked
into the mall and I was heading for Zale’s, I felt a tug on my arm pulling me
in the other direction. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, “You
have a perfectly good $200 sitting at Wilson’s, and just because that other
girl was too stupid to want to use it with you doesn’t mean that I am. We’re
using it for our rings.”
Funny…had
I gotten the money back and been able to put it in my savings account, I
would’ve had no problem with taking that same amount out two years later to buy
wedding bands for someone else with. I guess mixing that money in with the rest of my money would've been like money laundering, and it wouldn't have been tainted. But somewhere the rules say that thou
shalt not buy the new girlfriend a wedding ring with a credit slip from money
meant for the old girlfriend’s engagement ring.”
Apparently
this girl didn’t know that rule. Or if she knew it, she thought it was a stupid
one.
The
word redeem can have a number of
meanings. It can mean something as simple as “to cash in” – like an iTunes gift
card. And that day, Cheryl and I redeemed that old worn out credit slip in my
wallet for two wedding rings.
But
it can also mean to rescue, to make right, to restore to honor. And when Cheryl
decided that the credit slip in my wallet was not something tainted that
belonged to the old girlfriend, but something that belonged to us, she
redeemed it in all the other meanings of the word.
We have often heard Jesus referred
to as our redeemer, and quite frankly, that doesn’t mean that he’s cashing us
in for something. It means that he has redeemed us along the same lines as the
way that Cheryl redeemed that credit slip, claiming us as his own, when others
might think that we were too tainted to be worth considering.
Well,
on this Feast of the Presentation, when we also celebrate the presentation of
the infant Jesus at the temple, I’d like to think that when we are presented to
God, he doesn’t just look at us, say “not good enough,” and give us the old
heave ho.
He
decides to redeem us. He sees something in each of us that is worth
keeping. He knows, with eyes better than ours, that even the best of us has
stuff that needs to be burnt off, and even the worst of us has some tiny little
something worth saving.
But if you’re still uncomfortable
with the idea of even one good molecule of a person like Hitler making it to
the party, let me give you the perspective of Sister Mary Catherine Hilkert, a
professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, who was interviewed on
NPR as part of its series What ComesNext.
She
says, and I knew this, but had forgotten about it until I heard the interview,
that while the Catholic Church has made public proclamations about saints, and
who it is confident enough to think they are, it has never…not once…officially
declared anyone as definitely being damned for all time.
That leaves the door open for a few
good molecules of even the worst of us, which are worth more to God than 8
ounces of silver, to make it through the refiner’s fire.
And
really…if you can believe that Anakin Skywalker, who destroyed a planet with
billions of people on it, can be redeemed and bring balance to the Force for
one merciful act near the end of The
Return of the Jedi, then there’s no reason not to believe that God can’t
redeem even the worst of us, and have us all at the party.
After
all, that’s what the refiner’s fire is all about.
This is most certainly true.
