Brief synopsis of the readings: In the Old Testament book of the prophet Malachi, God promises to send a messenger to prepare the way. “And suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek, And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.” He will refine and purify the sons of Levi that they will offer due sacrifice. In Luke’s Gospel Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to be purified and they performed that ritual. Simeon, a man in Jerusalem, had been promised that he would not die before meeting the Messiah. When he met Jesus in the temple he gave thanks to God and told Jesus’ parents that “this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel.” There was also a prophetess named Anna; she was an old woman and had been widowed for many years. She was always in the temple and on meeting Jesus “spoke about the child to all who awaited the redemption of Jerusalem.”

At first glance these readings almost appear to be part of a formula: Jesus and his family perform a ritual that is foreshadowed in the first reading and it’s a hint for us that Jesus is the Christ. But there are a few things that make these readings unique.

Our first reading comes from Malachi, one of the lesser known prophets. He’s the last prophet of the Old Testament and wrote about 500 years before Jesus. It’s a hard time for the Jews; crops were not doing well and they had become lax in their obedience to God. Unlike much of Isaiah we read, this is not a reading of consolation as much as a reading of warning. Malachi was warning the people that the only path to happiness and prosperity lies in renewed obedience to God. The imagery here is of a refining fire to get rid of the impurities; a fire that hot isn’t good for the impurities as they are burned away but it’s also no picnic for the precious metal either.

The Gospel also speaks of purifying, though not in a way that we easily recognize. We don’t perform many of the purifying rituals than they did at the time of Jesus. But even today orthodox Jews practice several purifications from that time, from hand washing before meals to mikveh baths. In this situation Mary was required to bathe 40 days after childbirth in addition to Jesus being presented at the Temple. But there is no way around the fact that purification removes impurities, gets rid of things that shouldn’t be there. Now obviously we believe that Mary was conceived without sin and Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and there’s nothing dirty or sinful that needs to be removed. But both Simeon and Anna spoke of a life that Jesus will find difficult and daunting. His path will be one of responsibility and this will drive much of his life, as we will read in the rest of the Gospels.

Oftentimes the things that need purifying in our lives come from outside us and requires us to show courage, or recognize the false prophets in our lives. And God knows we are not free of those obstacles today. But sometimes the obstacles come from within us. That makes the obstacles the impurities, and us the precious metals, but as I said, removing these impurities is no picnic. Almost without fail we can recognize patterns of our behavior that can lead us, slowly, slowly, away from our calling and call us to a sort of purification. Years ago I heard an excellent address from a baptist minister who rhetorically asked us when we would be ready to ask for forgiveness from our favorite sin.

I don’t want to push this point too far and have us think too harshly of ourselves. I’m certain everyone who reads this wishes to continue to grow in virtue and holiness. We are not bad people who need to become good, but good people who wish to get better. But we are all in need of purification. Sometimes that requires a large conversion and the saints we revere have much to tell us about those conversions. John Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace was a slave trader who recognized he could no longer live that life; when he wrote how God saved “a wretch like me” he meant it. St. Paul was a Pharisee who approved the martyrdom of St. Stephan; later he became a follower of Jesus and wrote letters that comprise much of what we now recognize as the New Testament.

Those events grab the headlines but for most of us, our purification comes in smaller doses, though no less important. We see a bitter and profane neighbor as someone who is now alone at the end of her life and can’t figure out where it all went wrong, and so we shovel the snow off her walk. This then makes her less bitter and she renews a correspondence with an estranged child. Her child then recognizes that she cannot change the past but begins to bring Eucharist to a local nursing home. And so on.

And finally, if we embrace ourselves as the precious metal in need of purification we also need to recognize that we can make that purification easier or more difficult. Our conversion isn’t a simple matter of chemistry, of melting points. It’s a tough challenge but we make our lives easier if we live with the recognition that we are constantly in need of purification. When we see something (or someone) that troubles us our first instinct may be to assign blame outside of ourselves. Again, I don’t wish us to see ourselves too harshly, but it’s never a bad idea to examine ourselves for possible impurities.

It’s what Malachi would have wanted.