Reading Luke 3: 15-22
Those of you who were here in December might be thinking didn’t we just hear this passage, didn’t we just reflect on John the Baptist?
Well yes and no.
In Dec Su Sze reflected on the passage that preceded this one. The church always reflects on John the Baptist in Advent and his role to prepare the way for Jesus. So we did this. It does not make sense chronologically but rather thematically.
In that part of the passage, John baptises the people and tells them to repent, to change the way they live. The crowds are told to give away their extra coats and food. Tax collectors and soldiers are told to be honest, to have integrity, to stop ripping people off.
For John this is how to prepare the way of the Lord. Because Advent and particularly John inclusion in it, is not just about preparing for Christmas. That is part of it of course but Advent is also supposed to point us to the fact, that we, the church, are always waiting and preparing for Jesus who has come, who is here and who will come again.
The BoU of the UCA puts it this way, “the Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which He will bring, she is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here she does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come.”
And like John told his listeners we seek that city by living honest and integrous lives, by giving, by not being willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, to not just care for ourselves and our own but seek the wellbeing of all.
And now in Epiphany, the lectionary returns to John the Baptist . However, in this season we reflect on John’s role in revealing Jesus to us as the light of the world and the long-expected Saviour.
The passage begins with the people questioning whether John is the Messiah. John is clear with them he is not. John it seems has no Saviour complex. I wonder how different the church would look, if we all were as clear as John that we were not the Messiah. Debie Thomas says,
“One of the costliest mistakes the historic Church has made is to claim identities, powers, and privileges that don’t actually belong to us. When we adopt messianic ambitions, we hurt ourselves, we hurt others, and we hurt the cause of Christ. When we make promises we can’t keep — promises of prosperity, of immunity, of consumer-based “peace” and “blessing” — we become stumbling blocks to those who seek consolation in Jesus.
In contrast, John begins his ministry from a place of humility. He doesn’t allow his calling to go to his head. He doesn’t claim any identity that doesn’t belong to him. He makes his listeners no promises of ease and comfort; he simply asks them to prepare themselves for the One who is greater than himself.”
John tells the people he baptises them with water, but the Messiah, the one who is more powerful than him will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat in his granary; but the chaff he will burn with an unquenchable fire.”
For many of us, this is pretty intense, a bit scary even. Perhaps you have heard sermons that have interpreted Johns words as describing Jesus coming at the end of time to separate the saved and the unsaved. The saved (the wheat) will go to heaven but the unsaved (the chaff) Jesus will throw into the fires of hell.
I do not think this is how John’s listener would have interpreted it. They would have known what I didn’t that in wheat, the grain kernel grows inside an inedible hull. To be able to eat the wheat that kernel needs to be separated from this hull This requires threshing (to loosen the hull) and winnowing (to get rid of the hull). The hull (chaff) is then blown away in the wind or it is burned.
For John’s listeners, many who would have been very familiar with this process it would have been an ordinary metaphor emphasising what John had been saying about bearing good fruit. They would have known that the primary aim was not the burning of the chaff, like in this picture, but the saving of the wheat in this picture.
Now this is not to say that there is not judgement happening here. There is. And I am aware that judgement is one of those loaded words that make some of us squirm with discomfort. Perhaps this is because we equate it with condemnation. Recently, Mikaila pointed out that even I did just that in a sermon.
But judgement does not actually mean condemnation. Google tells me judgement is “the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. Synonyms include discernment, wisdom and prudence.
It’s a new year. A chance perhaps to think about the chaff in our lives that is holding us back from the wheat, to ask Jesus to help us discern the things that get in the way of us being the person we want to be, the sin that is stopping us from bearing good fruit.
It is also chance to look at the world and ask the same thing, what sin is dividing us, devastating us, stopping us from creating the world we want to live in. Today we are taking the opportunity to do that in regards to our relationship with first nations people but there are lot of issues in the world. We cannot solve all of them but are there small things we might yet do? In prayer might we invite Jesus to come and (dare I say) burn up that which is evil. Fire can be destructive (as those in LA certainly know), but also cleansing, purifying, and strengthening. It can promote biodiversity, new growth and maintain the health of certain ecosystems. It can also limit the severity of out of control fires.
Luke said, that John’s message was good news. For when repentance and forgiveness are available, judgment is good news. It is good news for us all right now.
All that said, I think John is also pointing beyond the immediate. The Christian faith does speak of a time to come when creation will be made new. The Bible talks about a time when the nations will no longer train for war, when the wolf shall dwell with lamb and no one will harm or destroy. A time when all shall sit under their own vines and their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. A time when the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
And what I think John is pointing to is the fact that in this new creation those who seek war, violence and vengeance, those who seek to harm others and make them afraid, those who must be first will need to be separated from the peace makers, the merciful, the humble and who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Please do not hear me, nor John saying that God’s great love and grace cannot be extended to all. Absolutely it can. But if what someone wants is not love and grace and equality with all but power and violence and vengeance and control over others, and winning at all costs I do not think the Kingdom of God is where they will choose to be.
And here I go again on this theme, but when our leaders, and when almost everything in our culture is glorifying these things, those of us who seek a new creation, when pain and mourning and even death will be no more, need to be very intentional about our formation and the formation of our families. We need to watch, what we watch because everything is seeking to form our desires in another direction. And if we want to desire the things of God then that’s what we need to look at.
We know this is true, the more we eat good food, the more we like it, the more we exercise the easier it gets, the more we stare at screens the more want to stare at screens and the more disconnected we become etc etc.
John’s message about Jesus is personal, it’s political, it’s spiritual, it’s religious, it does not fit neatly into left and right categories, it brings hope but also offends and challenges everyone. And as we read it gets him thrown into jail by Herod.
But not before he baptises Jesus.
Now I know in Luke writes about Herod putting John in jail before the baptism of Jesus. This has led to some questions about if in Luke, Jesus is baptised by John. But most have concluded that Luke is presenting events thematically rather than strictly chronologically. In this case, Luke mentions John’s imprisonment to conclude the section about John’s ministry of preparation before moving on to Jesus’ baptism.
This story of Jesus baptism, like the stories of Jesus birth, is wild and enchanting. Luke says the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove. And there was a voice that said ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
At Christmas time I was reflecting on an article in Christianity Today titled, “Make Christianity Spooky Again” by Brad East (sorry for those who heard this but most people were not here).
This article is a reflection on a book called, “Living in Wonder; Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age” by Rod Dreher.
The book and the article argue in a quote that is on the screen, “the contemporary west is disenchanted, that is it has lost a sense of the supernatural within the world. A disenchanted society is materialistic, rationalistic, individualistic and hedonistic, closed off to the transcendent, the divine, the mysterious, the inexplicable.”
Dreher is certainly not the only person writing about this at the moment. There are many people reflecting on the fact that all this has not brought the general satisfaction we expected.
There seems to be a growing longing for, and a sense that, there is something more to the world than what is visible, rational and logical.
As always consumer culture has managed to coopt that longing. And as I said at Christmas the fact that most people have traded the story of the creator of the Universe coming to earth to dwell amongst us for a cheap Coca Cola gimmick in a red suit shows they are doing well.
But Dreher calls the church, in the midst of this, to return to a Christianity that places mystery, wonder and awe in the centre of its worship and spiritual disciplines.
As always this is complicated. For those who feel more familiar with God’s silence than His Voice (also in the Bible) this can be particularly hard. But as I wrestle with all that more and more I am coming to believe that the world is far more mysterious than a progressive Christian like me previously thought. And the voices of First Nations Christians have been part of that. Even much science is saying it too. I believe that God has indeed enchanted the world, that in the words of Dreher “everything is charged with the energy of God, that all things are connected and unified in the Logos, and that we can and must participate in the Logos.”
In his baptism, in some mysterious way, Jesus, the divine Logos, participates in our baptism of repentance. He didn’t have to but he chose to step into the waters of the Jordan with everyone else and be baptised by John. And in our baptisms, in some mysterious way, Jesus we participate in His. We are invited tp also hear the Voice of God say to us, “you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
