Refining Fires

Advent 2, December 9, 2018

Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Burlington, Vermont

The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling

Theologian in Residence

Malachi 3: 1-4

Canticle 16, The Song of Zechariah

Luke 3: 1-6

Since 1989, Paul and I have shared parts of our stories as witnesses to new life in Christ.

Let us pray:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. So help me God. Amen.

In the fifteenth year of our marriage, when my husband Paul and I lived in Newtown, Connecticut, and the President of the United States was George Herbert Walker Bush, when William O’Neill was the governor of Connecticut, and Joseph Lieberman was United States Senator from Fairfield County, during the high priesthood of Bishop Arthur Walmsley, and the Rev. Frank Dunn was our priest and rector, the word of God came to Paul in the wilderness. The wildman of locusts and honey, whose name was John Barleycorn, went into our region, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

At that time in our lives in 1989, Paul was one of the owners of the oldest manufacturing company in Connecticut. As president and CEO, he liked to tell people that he made chicken wire. At least that’s what he did during the day; but at night time, when darkness descended into our lives, he found his courage in a bottle. No one knew these things, of course, except me, and our young elementary school-aged children, who witnessed the arguments that escalated around his drinking.

Faced with the growing awareness of his illness, and a courage found from God, with the support of family, friends, and our Church, Paul decided to seek help for his disease at the Hazelden/Betty Ford Treatment Center in Minnesota. After calling family and friends, informing our children’s teachers, and writing a letter to all his employees, Paul spent the whole month of December in Minnesota. As for me and our children, our Advent season was one of waiting, preparing, and expectation.
Our adult daughter and her husband now live in Minnesota, and so I am particularly fond of this state. Last December, Katie Hines-Shah (December 8, 2017, Xian Century) wrote, “My great-grandfather came to Minnesota to build a railroad—a railroad that was never finished. Almost certainly the trouble resulted from problems of terrain, because between those 10,000 lakes is a whole lot of swamp.”
“Any engineer would tell you what my grandfather learned: it’s no small thing to build a highway, let alone through a wilderness. High places have to be made low, the rough places a plain. In the process, some people will lose and some will gain. For some the highway will seem like salvation. Others aren’t going to like the way things turn out. And yet, we still build highways.” (end quote)

When someone is suffering from any kind of addiction, it is no small thing to ask for help. Shame runs through that wilderness, and although recovery from this disease can be 100%, rebuilding one’s life and sustaining one’s recovery is a full-time job, one day at a time. Some people win. Some people lose. The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, and the path to salvation is a winding and uphill climb, one step at a time. I am grateful to Paul for his courage and commitment.

Malachi told the Israelites that God was about to send a messenger who would reunite and purify all of Israel. He spoke about John the Baptist, as the one who would prepare the way of the “Lord, the Lord whom we seek.”  But faced with the day of the Lord’s judgment, Malachi wondered “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” With help, ninety-five-year-old former Sen. Bob Dole stood to salute former President George Bush, who was lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda last week. Throughout our lives and at times of death, we all need help to stand up and endure the challenges we face.

When I left St. James’ Church in Glastonbury, Connecticut, in December of 2012, I knew it was time for me to leave, and yet I didn’t know exactly what was next. Christmas Day was my last Eucharist, after which Paul and I flew to Denver to visit our daughter Megan, and to do some skiing. Megan had graduated from the University of Vermont Medical School the year before, and was in her first year of pediatric residency at Colorado Children’s Hospital. She was on a steep learning curve with time pressures, and I suddenly had none; and so it was an anxious time for both of us. I hadn’t been downhill skiing in decades, and unlike Paul and Megan, I was not particularly skilled at skiing.

Did I tell you that I am afraid of heights? One day, the three of us joined another person on the chair lift in Breckenridge, which we thought would take us halfway up the mountain. At that point, I was ready to try skiing on a little steeper learning curve; and yet as we passed the “get off point” midway, the chairlift kept going, and I began to panic. My words of fear bounced off the heights of the peaks all around us. Unfortunately, Paul had told the person next to him that I was a priest, and my daughter kept quietly reminding me that I was not using holy language. There was no Fuller’s soap to be had, and there was no way down the mountain except by going up.

The level plains below me were growing increasingly distant, and I saw only high peaks, which were jagged with rock. Who can stand up when you’re shaking in your ski boots? Not me. As soon as we arrived at the top of the mountain, and lowered our skiis onto the snow, the other three people moved easily off the chair, and down the mini-slope. On the other hand, I was just barely off my seat when I immediately fell into a heap, and Paul had to drag me away from the next arrivals.

Fear and anxiety are part of our human condition, especially at times of transition and challenge.These feelings are infectious and can be debilitating. Like many viruses, they can run through communities, family systems, churches, and individuals if left unchecked. Some people use scripture to feed our fears by threatening us with the great day of Judgment. While John the Baptist proclaimed a baptism of repentance, Malachi argued that we need a refining fire to purify ourselves.

Our refiners’ fires come in various sizes and shapes, and at different times in our lives, don’t they? Once on a pilgrimage to the Borderlands Camp in South Dakota, I experienced a Native American ceremony in a sweat lodge. In the middle of a tent, our youth and I sat on blankets in close quarters, while the fire in the center grew increasingly hot. As sweat and impurities poured out from our skins, our fears and anxieties rose to the surface. We were being baptized in a ceremony of repentance, with fire and water, being made presentable for our thank offerings to God, which we made later that night.

There is a story about a group of women who “wondered about the nature and character of God, and how God might “refine us”; and so they decided to find out about the process of refining silver, and made an appointment with a silversmith to watch him work. He held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up, explaining that one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire, where the flames were the hottest, in order to burn away all the impurities. They learned that if the silver was left too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. One woman was silent for a moment and then asked, ‘Well, how do you know when the silver is fully refined?” The silversmith smiled at her and said, ‘Oh, that’s easy - when I see my image in it.”

Perhaps our fears and anxieties come from particularly hard times like we had in 1989,  when we’re faced with a life changing event, a particular illness, or a significant change. Or perhaps they are as simple as learning a new thing, like how to downhill ski in Colorado, or how to be a theologian in residence in Burlington. Either way, being refined and purified is part of the human journey, when we hear a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

God does not intend to destroy any one of us, no matter who we are or what we have done. Rather the God who created us, loves us and saves us. Every single one of us. We will all stray from the straight and narrow path, and fall off our chairs on the slopes or off the wagon; and yet God promises that the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. God promises that those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death will be guided into the way of peace.

God’s rebuilding process is never finished, even in swamps and rough terrains. “Things happen in the wilderness,” wrote the Rev. Deon Johnson. “In the wilderness, the needs are raw and real, and sweet words and hollow sentiment are not enough. We need prophets especially when we neglect to see the orphan, the refugee, the migrant, the widow, and the stranger. We need prophets to call us back to God, back to a place where hope is found not only in church, but in the world around us” and in twelve-step communities. (The Rev. Deon Johnson serves as Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brighton, Mich.)

We are all made in God’s image, and through these refining fires, that image can emerge. Can we build a railroad through a swamp, or get down the mountain without the need for a stretcher? You betcha! With God’s help, we can. Today, repent, and prepare yourselves for the coming of our Lord; for in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us. Salvation is God’s Christmas gift to us every year, indeed every day, and new life is just around the corner.