So, here's the story.
I couldn't have been more than six years old. My mom and dad and I had gone camping with some friends. We had just arrived at the campsite where we would be spending the next week, and the men were pitching the tent. And my mom and her girlfriend had started the fire going. It had been a long drive for me and my buddies and we were eager to get out of the car and go explore down at the lake.
After a few hours, things settled in and the women and other kids went down to the little store on-site to get some supplies. I stayed behind.
The fire had died down by then, and the coals were white, no longer smoking. I kept inching closer to them, curious about them. My dad saw me and warned me to stay away. The coals may not be firing up, but they could still be hot. I was barefoot, having shed my flipflops hours before.
My dad went back to his fishing and beer with his friend. I immediately forgot what he had said. And I walked right through those white-hot coals.
As soon as I did I could hear the echo of his warning in my ear. And I was ashamed. And I was afraid, because my dad was not a particularly gentle and loving man. And somehow I stifled the cry which rose up in my throat. I never said a word, in spite of the pain.
Now I suppose, in hindsight, the burn could not have been that bad or I would not have been able to get through the week without someone noticing me limp. Instead it was something I hid away.
And I think of that story today when I hear John’s words about Jesus burning the chaff away.
John has made his way to the wilderness – the wildness. And his message is so unusual and so compelling that people are streaming out to the river to meet him and to be baptized. Because his message is one of repentance, of turning around. Something that seems so hard to do. And John agrees with that. It is hard. What John offers is no easy task, it is no cheap grace. It comes with a cost.
But...and here's the thing...John insists that it is doable, that one is coming who will fill the world with a spirit so powerful that we can change, truly change. Truly repent. Truly be set free.
And then John throws in a twist. The chaff will be separated from the grain and will be burned. And after centuries of hearing Gospel imagery, I think we have often let ourselves confuse this separation of wheat and chaff as separating one group from another. The people who get it right from the people who get it wrong. The sheep from the goats, the Jews from the Samaritans, what is Caesar's from what is God's.
And so often we hear John's words as ones of threat — and I suppose they are or at least they can be. But this time through I hear them differently. This time I think John is NOT trying to equate people with chaff to be burned. And it may not even be an allegory of burning away those sins we commit, at least not in the usual way we think of it. Maybe its not meant to be understood in the way I have long thought as an example where the burning somehow exposed that which was most human in me in the worst sense.
No, today I'm wondering if maybe what John is giving us is a promise to burn away those things that keep a six-year-old from crying out in pain because he's ashamed and afraid.
I'm wondering now if what needs to be burned away is the shame itself that leads to even children believing themselves as somehow unworthy of the love of God which loves no matter what.
I'm wondering today if the promise in John’s words is that Jesus will come and simply sweep away that which keeps us from resting in and living out our grace-given beloved-ness. All those long-ingrained messages which tell us that we have to be strong. Or always competent. And certainly, never vulnerable and, no, not ever broken by what life has handed us. Always ashamed of our imperfections, always presenting to others a version of ourselves that really doesn't exist when it's just us and God, alone.
Those things that keep us clinging to the past even though the past is just that, and we can never go back. But clinging keeps us from facing the future that always, always has God waiting on us, having gone ahead of us.
Y'all, we have spent lifetimes building up that ‘chaff’ which we thought would protect us. And to let go of it, to allow the chaff to be burned away, well, that can feel as though we are losing a part of ourselves, even an essential part.
At least I know this is so for me. So today I have finally seen this passage differently.
I think that when John speaks he is speaking of Jesus burning away that which is not needed, chaff which gets in the way, chaff that is just ‘waste’ anyway. All that chaff which does nothing to build up that which God wants built up in us and through us in the world.
Now as I listen to John pointing to Jesus, I think that maybe the fire that Jesus brings is not used to endanger or punish, but always to protect – to burn away all the stuff that sickens us and drags us down, making it possible for the stuff that remains to flourish.
And so, I think of these last couple of years, of all the changes and loss we've been made to endure, and I wonder if Jesus is somehow using even this time to burn away the chaff within us and around us. That maybe God is giving us this time to see what is really, REALLY important.
Each other. Here in community. And living in community with others living in community beside us, too. Each other, sharing burdens and fears and pains. But also sharing hopes and dreams and loves. Each other, rubbing against those rough edges, rubbing them smooth. But also bringing our gifts to share and build and endure. Welcoming change and freedom and new growth.
Each other. Standing together in the searing, burning light of God's love. For no other reason than we are loved.
Each of us, simply human. Simply imperfect human beings. Somewhere between broken and whole. And always, always loved no matter what.
So, come Lord Jesus and dwell among us. During this Advent season, let us walk forward into the growing light of your love.