Sorting
(based on
Luke 3:15-17,21-22)
How do you handle mail that comes each day? Some people stand directly over the trash can
and sweep all of their fourth-class junk mail into it, leaving only the
first-class mail and bills to sort through.
But, perhaps you are bit more like me; I prefer to carefully sort
through each piece, making sure that I haven’t won the Reader’s Digest
Sweepstakes or that I haven’t been especially selected for a five-star resort
lodging for 4 nights in the Cayman Islands, all expenses paid until I turn over
the flashy invitation and notice that it was simply address to Dear Occupant.
Or what about
the latest algorithm quizzes used on Facebook.
What does your name say about you?
What have you inherited from your mother? What special message is just for you this new
year? Or what color are you and what
does that color say about your personality?
Click here.
I don’t want to burst anyone’s
bubble, but just like the Star Words we hand out each year; they haven’t been
especially chosen just for you – they are random and completely arbitrary. They are simply a tool for you to make
something out of, to do something with, to make meaning out of it, if you
choose.
But how do we sort
through the wheat from the chaff and know when we have truly received something
special and just for us when it comes to spiritual messages? In our gospel reading this morning, we learn
just a little bit about John, but we’ve read more about him in other
years. We know that John and Jesus were
at least, 2nd cousins – (There might have been some once removed or
something in there, as well.) But, we
know that Jesus’s mother, Mary, was cousins with John’s mother, Elizabeth. Whether the two of them were first cousins or
not, we don’t know. But that family
relationship would make Jesus and John second cousins. And we know from other passages and gospel
accounts that John was a rather odd character.
He wore camel skins, ate locusts and honey, and was a rather wild man,
proclaiming repentance and coercing people to ritually wash themselves of their
sins by getting Baptized down at the river Jordan.
He didn’t sound
unlike a man that I observed many years ago who used to stand in Market Square
in downtown Pittsburgh during the summer and shout to all who would listen that
Jesus was coming and that we needed to turn from our sins and “get right with
God.” He wore the most outrageous
clothing – checkered pants rolled up to the knee with plaid socks, a striped
shirt under a hound’s tooth coat. He
definitely got people’s attention.
From our passage this morning,
John must have been the kind of man that people were expecting the Messiah to
be, because there was a great deal of debate concerning John with everyone
wondering if he might be the Messiah. God
had been silent in the land of Israel for nearly 400 years. No prophet had come forward speaking on
behalf of God to the people in all that time.
It was believed that prophecy would rise again when the Messiah was
about to come. So, all Israel was
waiting for one who might be that authentic prophet. John was such a prophet, and throngs came out
to hear him and wondered if he might be the messenger long awaited for. But the people also wondered if they’d
perhaps missed something and that this prophet might actually be the Messiah.
John had harsh words for his
hearers. He demanded something –
repentance, change, belief, and works.
Such demands honor those who would follow because the demands assume
that the person can accomplish them.
Peter Drucker, an expert on leadership says this, “Leadership is not
magnetic personality. That can just as
well be a glib tongue. It is not making
friends and influencing people; that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to
higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the
building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”
I think Drucker was describing
John the Baptist’s kind of leadership.
John’s essential message to the people that had been long silenced over
those 400 years was simply this; that we be what we seem to be. If we want to seem godly, then we are to be
godly, with no sham or spin on it. And
he spelled out exactly what he meant. He
addressed the people gathered around, he told the soldiers, don’t intimidate
and coerce; tax collectors, collect no more than what is due; to the general
population, share with those in need.
And that these actions ought to be a way of life. None of this was new. The rabbis and chief priests had been telling
the people this same message for centuries, but people had stopped listening.
It took an eccentric guy like
John saying the message again to get people to listen. He was telling the people, “God has already
told you what to do and how to be. So, go
do it. It’s time for you to be about
that in your life.” He minced no
words. In fact, if you were there to
only listen and not actually put your faith into action, he called you out for
it. “You brood of vipers!” he would say.
And this raised another
concern of the day, which was also raised during the time of the reformation,
and I dare say is an issue once again.
And that is the idea of faith versus works. Our faith is rooted in the mighty acts of
God: the incarnation (how God became human), atonement (how God restores us to
a relationship with Him), resurrection (that in Christ we will go to heaven
after death) and finally the ongoing presence of God in Christ through the Holy
Spirit here with us now. Our faith is
rooted in those essential beliefs. But
if those roots are genuine they will bear fruits of goodness, generosity,
compassion, and justice.
John was calling for a faith
rooted in repentance and belief which would bear fruit in the conduct of
everyday living. He was asking his
hearers to return to their lives, to where they had been planted, and to begin
to bear fruit.
We have an ongoing gap between
the roots and the fruits people. It’s
one of those push-me, pull-me issues that never seems to, for once, get
solved. The roots people emphasize the
Bible, commitment, Jesus, prayer. They
often forget about the social concerns of the world, the pain of poverty and injustice. The other camp of fruit people has little use
of doctrine and piety when there is hunger and homelessness, racial and social
injustice. John’s message, and in my opinion
– the eternal message, is that we should not have the luxury of choosing between
them.
What’s the sense of a plant
that only has roots, what use is it?
There is nothing to show for all your underground work, spreading and
strengthening. The effort becomes
pointless. And likewise, what’s the
sense of a plant that only has flowers or fruit? When the heat is on and you get tested in
your faith, you have no grounding. There
is nothing there to support you. You
will wilt and wither.
I’m not sure why we polarize
over time and become one or the other types of people, but the strength of a
plant is having strong, spreading roots and glorious, delicious fruits. There may be seasons and times when we need
to work on one or the other, but we are best when both our faith and doctrine
and our commitments and works are working together.
The crux of John’s message
comes in verse 17 however, when John says that it is time for God to take His
winnowing fork and start removing the wheat from the chaff. To understand this, we need to know the way
in which wheat was separated from the shell. After wheat was cut and gathered into bundles,
the stalks were removed and thrown into a pile on a flat surface on the top or
side of a hill. This was necessary to
make use of a breeze. The stalks were
cracked open and crushed by a sledge, a heavy wooden platform with wooden or
metal teeth designed to do the job effectively. The sledge was normally pulled by an animal. After the hulls were broken, he would use a winnowing
fork, a slender pitchfork with five or six wooden tines. The grain was tossed into the air over and
over again so that the heavier wheat kernels would fall to the ground and the
useless chaff would blow off into a pile downwind. After this, the kernels were placed onto a
large round disk and tossed about so that the last of the unwanted sticks,
leaves and dust could be removed. After
this sorting was done, the chaff was burned.
What kind of sorting do you need to do in your
life to get you back on track? What
useless things can you toss out and throw away?
What grounding in scripture, acts of compassion, or kernels of
commitment do you need to work on, keep and save?
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