Back in Advent, we heard the beginning of this passage: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” We heard about John preparing the way for Jesus and the refiner’s fire in Malachi, learning that as we go through difficult times, as we grow in Christ and experience the purifying of the refiner’s fire, we can know that God is with us every step of the way. And God isn’t just sitting in the background. Like one who purifies silver, God is actively with us every step of the way, never taking his eyes off of us, that we might bear God’s image and shine with God’s love.
We heard John talk about “the ax lying at the root of the trees” ready to chop down any tree that didn’t bear good fruit. When groups asked what they needed to do, we heard John give practical answers, telling them to do good, not to cheat or bully, to share with those who had nothing, and so forth. John told the people that they need to change their hearts and lives. Repenting involves a new way of seeing the world, and therefore a new way of acting. Repentance means “turning away from what keeps us from God.” And we heard John tell everyone that Jesus was coming.
What struck me this week, as we hear about Jesus being baptized, is the same thing that struck me 3 years ago. The wheat and the chaff. John paints the picture of the Christ coming and baptizing with fire and with spirit (which can also be translated as wind), holding a winnowing fork, which was similar to a pitchfork, tossing up the grain as the chaff is separated from the grain and then burned away.
"Wind and fire were symbols for the Holy Spirit, the powerful presence of God, but also of judgment. Farmers poured wheat from one container to another on a windy day, or tossed the wheat into the air with a fork or shovel so that the chaff would be blown away, leaving the grain clean. The chaff burned with explosive combustion.”
Now chaff is the dry scaly husk that is attached to the grain. The farmers would separate the chaff from the grain, then toss the grain into the air where there was a light breeze, so that the chaff would fly away as the wheat fell back to the ground. The chaff is the inedible husk around grain, but it is still part of it.
Just as we heard about the refiner’s fire in Malachi, so we hear about fire again here. As some of my favorite commentators mention on Pulpit Fiction, Jesus is "separating within us the chaff that needs to be burned away so that the wheat of our lives may remain.” Chaff is those actions and attitudes that are so far from what God desires for us, that “keep us from God.” John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, which means “[turning] away from [the chaff,] what keeps us from God and toward the fruit of the Spirit - forgiveness, generosity, kindness" and so forth.
Have you ever experienced the refiner’s fire? Walking through fire and flame as Isaiah talks about? On Wednesday, I’m going to introduce a book which will be our next study and last through Lent: Gifts of the Dark Wood by Eric Elnes. Rev. Elnes talks about the gifts of uncertainty, emptiness, and getting lost, just to name a few. These are areas where God can be at work: when we have no idea what to do or where to turn. As difficult as these times in our lives are, we often grow most in times of uncertainty. And God promises to be there: when the perspective everyone seemed to share is now labeled as intolerant. When everything seems to be falling apart so that you have to rely on others. Anything that burns away the chaff of disdain, of the fear of being taken advantage of, of failing to see the humanity of others.
Luckily, that chaff does not define you. In Isaiah, God essentially tells Israel “Your unfaithfulness that has led you to your exile, that does not define you. What defines you is that You are mine.” Isaiah shows us that we have a God who makes us in God’s own image, who forms us from the dust of the earth, who calls us by name and claims us as God’s own. This forgiveness we experience in baptism, that we experience every week as we confess our sins, that we experience time and again: it’s because we are already beloved children of God. You are loved even when you mess up.
See, baptism is a promise of presence. We or a guardian makes the decision to be baptized. But baptism is about more than dedicating our lives to God. As Rev. Dr. David Lose noted one year, “Baptism… is God’s work that we may have confidence that no matter how often we fall short or fail, nothing that we do, or fail to do, can remove the identity that God conveys as a gift. Our relationship with God… is the one relationship in life we can’t screw up precisely because we did not establish it.”
So know that as the Spirit came at Pentecost, so the Holy Spirit continues to reside with us, burning away the chaff of our lives that we might more fully live into our identity as beloved children of God. For, as I say every week: Listen to the sound of the waters and remember that in baptism you have been marked as a beloved child of God. As we walk through life’s waters and fires, we can trust that God is always with us, refining and renewing us through the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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