This morning’s lectionary begins by noting that the people were filled with expectation . . . and it’s clear what they’re expecting. They’re expecting a Messiah, and they’re wondering if John the Baptist is it. And in those days, that was an extremely good question. With the Roman boot-heel planted firmly upon their throats, with the face of the desolating sacrilege—none other than the Roman emperor, according to that otherJohn, John the Revelator—with the face of the desolating sacrilege on their coins, and his banners in their Temple, the very home of God, Messianic expectations are running high. They expected that the Messiah was going to kick out the occupiers and re-establish Israel to its rightful place. He was going to restore the House of David which was sadly defunct, even though God had established as a surehouse.
And in these troubled times, in these unstable years, would be Messiahs are coming out of the woodwork at a fearsomerate, gathering followers, preaching the restoration of Davidic rule, the ousting of the hated colonialists, and this John looks promising. After all, he’s saying the right sayings and doing the right . . . doings. He’s running around the Jordan, baptizing whomever comes to him, and preaching exactly what they want to hear: God’s axe is at the baseof the tree, it’s poisedto chop down the unfruitful ones, poisedto purify them with fire. Those who collaborate with the Romans, those who govern in their place—like you-know-who, name begins with an ‘H’ and ends with a “Herod”—are going to be chopped down and burned in the fire of his judgment. And the message was playing in Peoria, let me tell you, and even unto the ends of the wilderness. Even taxcollectors were being baptized, and everyone knowswhat they are. . . they’re the arch-collaborators, collecting exorbitant taxes for the Romans and getting fat off the misery of their fellow Jews.
And so the people are filled with expectation—John seems like the perfect Messiah, the one come to kick a little Roman behind, and restore the house of David—after all, isn’t he one of David’s distant cousins? So John—smelly hair shirts and all—is a perfectly plausible Messiah, certainly a better prospect than a lot of them, but even as they’re wondering, John is denying: “I baptize you with water,” he says, “but one is coming who is more powerful than I. I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals, and he’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Wow. More powerful than John? Baptism with the Holy Spiritand fire? Sounds Messianic to me. A guy who could baptize with fire and command the Holy Spirit ought to be able to handle a few crummy Romans.
He’s got that ole winnowing fork in his hand, and he’s heading for that threshing room floor. And what’s he gonna do when he gets there? Why he’s gonna takethat winnowing fork and separate the wheat from the chaff. And what’s he gonna do with the wheat? Why, he’s gonna put it into hisgranary. And what’s he gonna do with the chaff? He’s gonna burnit with unquenchable fire.
And though I hate to admit it—I ama man of peace, after all—though I hate to admit it, it sounds like good news to me. John’s preaching validates everything I know, everything I was taught as a Christian: God came to earth in human form to save some, to put them in that heavenly granary in the sky, and to punish others, to send them screaming into the fiery depths. Brothers and sisters, he’s got the winnowing fork in his hand, and he sure knows how to use it . . . he’s gonna separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad . . . and I don’t know about y’all, but I certainly know which I am, and it isn’tthe chaff.
But by the same token, I know who the chaff are, I see them every day, pass them on the roads and streets . . . the chaff is anyone who isn’t like me, who isn’t living that American dream. The chaff are those who don’t work hard, who are living in government housing, who are getting minimum wage to bag my groceries—after all, that’s all that job is worth—and earning three bucks and change to bus my tables. The chaff is anybody who doesn’t believe like I do politically, who doesn’t worship like I do—and Muslims and Ay-rabs are at the top of my list, let me tell you, but so are Republicans and Libertarians and members of the Green Party . . . the chaff is anyone who isn’t like me, who isn’t middle class, anybody who’s living off the government largesse instead of working for a living. The chaff is drug dealers, pot smokers and motorcycle gang members. It’s unwed mothers who have babiesjust to collect more welfare money, it’s a documented fact, I read it in Good Housekeeping, for Pete’s sake, I heard it on the morning news . . .
The chaff is anyone who choosesa suspectlife-style, something I don’t hold with, like those alphabet-soup GLBTQ’s—and what’s that ‘Q’ stand for, anyway? Quiet? I certainly don’t choose to be quiet, and no good Christian does either, it’s our God-givenright to speak up, to tell it like it is, we got free speech in the house, brothers and sisters, and we can denounce the chaff at the top of our lungs, repent, you chaff, for the kingdom of Godis at hand.
The chaff is anyone who doesn’t believelike me, who doesn’t worship like me—ok, we’ll let the Baptists in . . . the chaff is anyone who prefers socialism to capitalism, rule by a king over rule of the people, monarchy over democracy . . . God—coincidentally, I’m sure, just like me—helps those who help themselves, who use their God-given talents to further pull themselves up by their boot-straps—hide it under a bushel, no way! And God—again just like me—can’t understand why anyonewouldn’t like to live ina free-market capitalist society, and God wants us to spread democracy and capitalism lo unto the ends of the earth, and you know what? The chaff is anyone who didn’t vote like me in the last election.
Ole John’s gets it right, doesn’t he? Jesus comes to separate the bad guys from the good guys, like a good Messiah should, and those to whom he is preaching eat it up, they just lap it up like a cat does warm milk—or in mycats’ case, anything they can get their grubby little paws on—they eat that up like good caviar, because it validates their world view, it reassures them of what they already knew: that they are the wheat, they are God’s beloved, and everybody else . . . isn’t. Despite all appearances—after all the Romans and their toadies like the Herods have all the money and power—against all appearances, the Jews awaiting the Messiah are the wheat, and everyone else, everyone not-them are the chaff.
And Jesus has come to finally put things aright, to finally validate what all those who are wheat know to be true: he’s gonna winnowthose Romans and Herods and welfare cheaters and Muslims and GLBTQ-ers right off of this planet, gonna send ‘em to Hell where, as everybody knows, they will burn in agony as they are consumed by the righteous fire, can I have an Amen?
And of course, that’s exactly what Jesus did,isn’t it? He showed up and winnowed out all those chaffy types, all those who weren’t like the good Jews to whom John preached, and sent them straight to you know where . . . well, except for those tax collectors like Zaccheus, whose house he went to for supper and, oh yes, those lepers, who good Jews couldn’t even come near, they were so unclean, whom he made clean, whom he included in the Kingdom of God, those whom the religious establishment of the day had excluded . . . and, now that you mention it, he seemed to preferoutsiders, chaff like the Samaritans—who werealiens, after all, though not illegal ones, though I bet they took good Jewish jobs . . . And he actually applaudedfeeding lazy, no-account beggars by the side of the road, and said the Kingdom of God is like a banquet where the King, far from keeping out the chaff, far from separating them out from the insiders and the wheat, actually went out into the highways and hedges and invited them in, for Pete’s sake. Talk about enabling lazy behavior . . . hadn’t he ever heard the old saying about teaching someone to fish?
And John was right, he was muchmore powerful than he himself who, Luke reminds us right here in this passage, was imprisoned and executed by the powers that be . . . Jesus was much more powerful than that . . .
Like a lot of what John says about Jesus, this is . . . inaccurate, to put it nicely. John speaks of a powerful man, who will execute God’s judgment on the bad, who will send those God doesn’t like into eternal damnation . . . but what happened in reality? Wasn’t Jesus crucified like a common criminal, wasn’t he crucified withcommon criminals, wasn’t he killed right along with the chaff? Far from separating the wheat from the chaff, Jesus seemed to stand withthe chaff . . .
And I think we have to realize that what John the Baptist was preaching wasn’t necessarily an accurate assessment of what Jesus was coming to do . . . and why should it be? John was like every other Jew at the time, he was expecting a Messiah who was going to validate their world view, who was going to separate the chaff from good, Jewish wheat and let it blow right out of the country on the wind. A Messiah who was going to re-instate the house of David at the point of a spear where it would rule in power and glory for ever and ever, amen.
John was of the old school, a traditional prophet who preached punishment and judgment . . . he prepared the way, all right, he made the rough places smooth and the mountains a plain, but he had no idea who it was he was preparing the way for. How could he? How could he know the radically inclusive ministry that was to come? How could he understand that as Paul put it, “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
But we who live on the other side of the resurrection are most certainly not of the old school, are we? We have seen the life of self-sacrifice, the life of Jesus as it actually turned out, we know what the Messiah was really like, that he came to standwith the chaff, to be withthose outside society’s pale. So why is it that modern Christianity has reduced Jesus’ message to one of winnowing, one of deciding who is in and who’s out? We interpret all of scripture through a sacrificial lens, through a hermeneutic of who God loves and who God doesn’t. Why do we, after seeing what Jesus was reallylike, persist in acting like he was a winnowing-fork Messiah, come to kick behind and take names? Why do we persist in using him to justify all manner of exclusion and hate?
It’s Baptism of the Lord Sunday, and it marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry . . . the heavens are opened, and the Spirit of God comes down upon Jesus not as a flame, not as a winnowing fork or a torch, but as a dove, a universal symbol of peace, not war, of humility, not arrogance . . . and a voice comes down from those heavens, saying “you are my son, the beloved . . . in you I am well pleased.” And with that, Jesus’ ministry is validated, it’s endorsed. God puts the stamp of approval on it, on all that he is, and all that he is to be, the life of inclusion, of sacrifice and love.
And the good news for us is notthat he took the winnowing fork in his hand, not that he separated the good from the bad, the “right” from the “wrong,” but that through our own baptisms, and in spite of all our own tendency for exclusion, in spite of all our own propensity to violence and war and all that jazz, he included usas well. Hallelujah, amen.
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