The Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

Scripture — Malachi 3:1-4 (NRSV)

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But 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 washers’ soap; he 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. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years.

Devotion

I have shared in Life for Leaders devotionals about my experience in college singing Messiah every year. When you’ve spent every Monday night for a whole fall semester rehearsing an oratorio, every year for four years, encountering Bible verses used in that oratorio’s libretto automatically triggers the music in your mind. The recitative and particularly the aria in Messiah drawn from Malachi 3:1-4 (as you’ll hear if you go listen to the YouTube link below) fits the expectant, almost frightened picture we get from these verses. While, like all prophecies, they had relevance in their own day, they have historically been understood by Christians as prophecies of the coming of Christ. The recitative and aria setting these words occur in Part I of the oratorio, which deals with Christ’s promised coming and his birth, and the music is first anguished and then quick and almost jagged.

The Jesus that is coming, these verses warn, will not come at all in the way that we are expecting; none of us are going to be able to stand up when he arrives, and his purification will feel like everything just got either burned down or washed with lye soap. Which is why it is very interesting that we’re reading these verses this week, when the De Pree leadership team has chosen to focus all our Advent reflections around the theme of peace. Trust me, if you sit down and listen to Handel’s music here—or even just contemplate the words on the Biblical page—peace is not going to be the first thing you think of.

I think there are two ways to look at peace in Advent, and one of them isn’t necessarily going to be very helpful. That is the superficial sort of peace we may feel that we ought to be feeling; creating happiness and holiday memories; baking cookies and smiling piously; being sweetly sentimental; staying away from confronting the things that are wrong in our lives, or dark and frightening, or sad.

The second kind of peace is the peace in this passage: the kind of peace that can hurt so awfully much getting to. Famous 19th-century author and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes St. supposedly once said “For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.” I had an English literature professor in college who put it more simply; he said that in many great works of literature, as well as very often in life, we pass through a trajectory from innocence to experience to higher innocence. In other words, often, through the refiner’s fire.

Christ offers us a deep, true, and lasting peace; a higher innocence; a simplicity on the other side of complexity; but we have to be willing to pass through the refiner’s fire and the washer’s soap to get there. Advent is here—this year and every year—to help us do that.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Both Sin and Hope Remain Present in Work (Malachi 1:1-4:6).