Acts 2.1-21: Waiting for the Wind

Just last week several tornadoes went through the city where I live. There were more than a dozen throughout the state. No matter how close we are to Pentecost, no one was interested in having that wind blow through. We always get caught up with Pentecost's sound of wind and tongues of fire (Acts 2:1-4), but when we get that (through powerful tornadoes and downed, sparking power lines) it's more frightening than anything else. Which might be closer to the disciples' response to Pentecost than we'd like to think. 

Though it could have been, the wind of Pentecost was not the destructive whirling wind of a tornado or hurricane (we get those, too, where I live). It was a wind that did something - that blew the disciples' minds. That blew them out of the house where they had been hiding and into the street where they told the story of Jesus Christ. It was a wind that did something. It demonstrated God's power by empowering believers to be witnesses. 

What does wind do in our world? It turns turbines that create power. It cools off a sultry summer day. There was a time when it was wind, in combination with the sun, that dried clothes hung on the line. It was hard to find clean water for washing and almost impossible to find  a breeze that would dry the clothes inside the people-packed buildings. Clotheslines were stretched between buildings, clean laundry was clipped on, and then it was the wind - even as a small breeze - that, along with the sun, helped dry the laundry by moving the fabric to aid in evaporation. The wind had a purpose - it caused a change to the thing it touched.

Ernest Lawson. Harlem Flats (Back Lot Laundry). 1907.

 San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. 

Are we positioning ourselves so that the wind of Pentecost can move us to action, can change us, can help us witness to the story of Jesus Christ? 

Malachi3.1-4: Some Water...But Mostly Fire

Malachi 3:1-4 refers to two occupations to help people understand what it will be like when the Lord presence is in the temple. The references incorporate two of the four basic elements: fire and water. The work involving water is a launderer. God is like fuller's soap, Malachi says. For more on the symbolism and reality of laundry and fuller's soap, click here.

But in addition to the water-related laundering parallels, there are also metalsmithing parallels. God's arrival and presence, Malachi writes, will be like a refiner's fire. Metalsmiths use fire for several different tasks. The fire is used for melting metals so that the liquid metal can be poured into molds. But before the molding process, fire can be used to purify the metal. Silver and gold can both contain impurities. Sometimes the impurities add interest. For example, copper ore mixed in with gold ore creates what we call "rose gold." However, sometimes the desired outcome is pure gold or silver, and to get that, the impurities must be removed.

The two images here are of metalsmiths in their workspaces separated by several hundred years. The top image is a photograph taken by William J. Carpenter in 1915 of a Navajo silversmith by his fire. The bottom image is St. Eligius, patron saint of goldsmiths. Notice the similarities of the tools. The Navajo silversmith has a fire and St. Eligius has a very ornate furnace to refine the metals with which they are working. The tools in the later image are very similar to those in the earlier image: tongs, hammer, anvil, engraving burins, mallets, large scales, weights, ceramic furnace, blow pipes. Design has changed over time, of course, but the methods have remained the same - which offers contemporary hearers the opportunity to understand the text and to see it in action.

We may tend to think of fire more at Pentecost or in the new fire of the Easter vigil than we do in Advent. But the candles on the Advent wreath can remind us that God works to refine us in this season as well. 

Top image: William J. Carpenter. Navajo Silversmith. c. 1915. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.

Bottom image: Master of Balaam. St. Eligius in His Workshop. c. 1450. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rijksmuseum.

It's not a Christmas carol, but check Art&Faith Matters on Facebook to see when we sing about this refiner's fire image.

For thoughts on Luke's quotation of Isaiah (Luke 3:1-6), click here.

Matthew 17.1-9: Doing Laundry

According to Matthew's gospel (17:1-9, Transfiguration A), at the moment of transfiguration Jesus' clothes became "dazzling white" (NRSV). Luke uses the same language. Mark's version gives us a additional phrase. Mark 9:3 says: "...and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." The King James Version gives us further information by using the word fuller (And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.)

Using the word fuller may tell us more about the Britain of King James than turn-of-the-millennium Israel, but it is an interesting avenue into the Transfiguration text. It takes us to...laundry. Fuller comes from the Anglo-Saxon word fullian, "to whiten". And though the occupation of fuller is Anglo-Saxon, there is evidence of bleaching fabric at least as early as ancient Egypt. Specifically, white linen was bleached for the clothing of the upper classes. Wet cloth was rubbed with natron, a naturally occurring salt. The cloth was spread out, beaten with a wooden mallet and left to dry. The hot sun combined with the salt to bleach the fabric. The practice of spreading clothes and fabric out in the sun as part of the laundry process continued into contemporary times when a washer and dryer became common time-saving devices. The manuscript illustration below is part of a German manuscript from 1582. In the image women are working by a river. One of the women is washing clothes directly in the river while others wash in wooden basins. A fire burns under a pot, providing hot water. In the background, women hang the clothes (or maybe just cloth) on wooden racks and spread cloth in the fields to dry.

Splendor Solis. Harley 3469. British Library. 1582. Origin: Germany. 

Though this text (and the Transfiguration itself) does not seem to be so much about washing as cleansing, other texts draw a parallel - and in the KJV a word parallel - with the idea of washing and its role as a remedy for human sin. Malachi 3:2 (NRSV) says "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 fullers’ soap." The fire and soap are purifying elements and are the plan for how the Lord will deal with this world on the Day of the Lord.

The Greek word (which only appears in Mark's gospel is gnapheus (γναφεύς); its Hebrew counterpart is mekabbasim (מְכַבְּסִֽים). Both words are nouns (though the Greek is singular and the Hebrew is plural) describing people who wash or launder clothes. But no thing, no one, on earth could have made something as bright as Jesus' clothes on that mountain. Indeed.

A more literal translation of Matthew 17:2 is that Jesus' clothes became "white as the light". It's a different thing to be the white of light and the white of pigment. White light contains all colors of the spectrum. They come together to make the brightest light possible. In the world of pigments, white is the absence of all color. For fabric to be totally absent of all color, some kind of bleaching process is needed, because the fibers will have natural color of their own. For example, the "white" of sheep's wool isn't totally white. No matter how often the sheep's wool is bleached, the gospel writer tells us, the wool could never be as bright as Jesus' garment.

Perhaps what happened at the Transfiguration simply reminds us that all the earthly means of washing and bleaching can't make things as bright as Jesus. In that moment the real Jesus shone through: not a human whose sins are bleached away in a process, but the Son of God whose embrace of a spectrum of disparate colors causes a brightness brighter than anything we have ever seen before.

White as the light? Which pigment should you buy for that? Good question. Look at Art&Faith Matters Facebook page.

For additional thoughts on Transfiguration, click here, here, here, or here.