A few months
ago I went to Paris.
What a
beautiful city. Almost everyday I find myself dreaming of the city of lights.
Her splendor. Her cadence. Her virtuosity. Her people.
Around every
corner I felt as if someone was creating a piece of art. If they weren’t
creating art, the people in the small cafes were quietly sipping their
espressos pondering the city streets and their inhabitants as if that was art.
Indeed, often I
think about Paris.
Today’s word is
refine. It comes with this passage
from Malachi 3.2-3:
2But who can
endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is
like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit
as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi
and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in
righteousness.
When I read
this again the first thing that came to mind, if I’m entirely honest with you,
was this: Wait, is soap really in the bible?
Once I got past
that profound inquiry, I wondered, “What in the world is fullers soap?”
I knew what a
refiner’s fire was—great heat, burning out the impurities, etc, etc.
What about this
soap analogy?
Eventually this
is what I came across:
"A fuller was someone who cleaned and
thickened (to make it "full") freshly-woven (usually woolen) cloth.
The process involved cleaning, bleaching, wetting and beating the fibers to a
consistent and desirable condition. Fuller's earth was a variety of clay that
was used to scour and cleanse the cloth. Fuller's soap was an alkali made from
plant ashes, which was also used to clean and full new cloth. Since fullers
required plenty of running water, along with the natural substances described,
a fuller's field was a place where all were available for the fullers to
conduct their profession."
Honestly—I
still don’t know what to do with this. For some reason the image of a
relationship with the God will act to 'clean, bleach, wet and beat' our
spiritual fibers to a 'consistent and desirable condition,’ just doesn’t do it
for me.
However, I like
this idea of soap, though.
Which made me
think of a story Rob Bell tells in his book “Drops Like Stars.” He used bars of
soap to explain suffering. Rob tells “a story about a family who had to deal
with the loss of a baby. The family gathered all of their relatives to come say
their goodbyes. Around a month later another family member gave birth to a
child in the same room that they had just said goodbye in. This brought up the
idea of the "why" for suffering. Why did the one group have to lose
their child while the same family in seemingly the same situation loses theirs?
We have all asked questions like this. Why does a loving God allow this and not
that? Why would God do something like this to Haiti, New Orleans, ect?”
Essentially
suffering can be understood as an ending to a story or part of a story that
wasn’t supposed to happen. It is like going to a ballet seeing people in
tights, an orchestra tuning up and as you take your seat, the usher comes up
and hands you a squirrel.
Wait. What? A
squirrel? Shouldn’t I be getting a pretty, glossy program?
Suffering. It
prevents us from remaining in our safe places and preconceived notions. It is a
disruption to what we know…or think should happen.
So, what does
this have to do with soap…and Paris?
Rob goes on to
tell how he invited sculptors to come to his house to do some art. Their
material—a bar of soap and tools. These artists went to work and sculpted some
great things from faces, modern art, chains, bunnies, and words.
Suffering
friends helps us see what is at the core of who we are. It gets to the point of
the matter in our lives; suffering cuts away the clutter…
Which takes me
back to Paris.
Specifically Le
Musée du Louvre and one of the first pieces
of art I saw there: the Victory of
Samothrace. While I wish I could go on and on and on about the history and
importance of this piece of art, for your sake, I won’t. But I share this image
with you because of the bar of soap.
Stay with me,
I’m almost done.
As I mentioned,
suffering can cut away the clutter, kind of like a sculptor does with a bar of
soap or a block of marble. Michelangelo was quoted pointing out that his famous
sculpture "David" was always there in the stone and Michelangelo had
simply cut away the excess. The soap sculptures had done the same. They had
eliminated the excess around the great art waiting to come out.
I imagine the
one who created this winged female figure would say the same thing…
This is Advent,
friends. This is our lives in Advent. We are like bars of soap or blocks of
marble and God is shaping us as we speak. But God invites us to shape our lives
as well. We too are the sculptors and artists of this one wild and precious
life.
Advent isn’t
about providing clear, cut answers—or the answer to the ‘why’ question. We can
theologize and politicize and philosophize sufficient answers all day until we are purple in the face.
Look how far
that has gotten us…
Instead, Advent
is a time when we commit ourselves again to the ongoing work of God—the refiner’s
fire, the fullers’ soap. Advent is the season in which we recognize the
suffering in our world—and we take comfort in knowing God knows this suffering
too, after all, God took on flesh—and we remind ourselves, it doesn’t have to
be this way.
The world is a
bar of soap, our lives are blocks of marbles—God sees a hidden gem, a work of
art.
It is time we
see it too.
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