So, sometimes it's kinda hard to like people when they are prophets. Let's admit it. Sometimes prophets can kinda be jerks. Loud. Pushy. Getting in your face. Typing in all caps. And with John the Baptist, I have this special problem. You see, as a kid, I managed to see “Planet of the Apes” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told” at about the same time. So, I got a double dose of Charlton Heston, all grimy, dressed in rags, out in the wilderness. And as hard as I try, I can't quite separate hearing Heston as Taylor, yelling, “Get your stinking paws off me, you dirty apes,” from Heston as John the Baptist, yelling, “Repent! You brood of vipers!” Say what you want about the man, Charlton Heston had a voice. And boy could he yell.
So, when I read the Gospel, it was all I could do not to shout the whole thing. “Repent,” I would yell. “You brood of vipers,” I would yell. I would yell about winnowing forks. And I would yell about unquenchable fire. I would look you in the eye and yell that someone's coming that will separate the wheat from the chaff, and leave it for you to decide where you fall.
And that would be fun, because believe it or not, every Episcopal clergy person has just a little bit of street preacher struggling to get out.
But I'm pretty sure that yelling is not what Advent is all about. So, I reread John the Baptist's lines, aloud again, but this time in a whisper. As if he's telling me something important, but there's a sleeping baby nearby, and he doesn't want to disturb him. And with the baby in mind, tells me about the winnowing fork and the wheat and the chaff. Quietly.
And it was only then that I realized that all my life Charlton Heston had colored my understanding of separating the wheat from the chaff. When you yell about it, it sounds like separating the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad. So, here, the good people are the wheat, and the bad people are the chaff. And Judge Jesus is going to come in and start tossing the bad people into the fires of hell.
But when we stop yelling about it all, when we take what John says quietly, and start thinking about what's really going on, winnowing is actually a wonderful, frequently communal, often joyous event. For it is in separating the wheat from the chaff, removing the inedible layer, that the wheat becomes useful, becomes food. Food for our bodies, and in this case, food for our souls. And in farming communities, bringing in the harvest was often done by the entire village. And after the threshing was completed and the chaff was loosened, women in the community would take those winnowing forks, toss the grain in the air, and let the breeze carry the lighter chaff away, while the grain fell to the ground, accompanied by the sound of women and children singing to pass the time.
In reality, the chaff is important at a certain period in the life-cycle of grain. It protects the seed itself from the elements and from the animals. It's hard and rough and water-resistant and doesn't taste very good to birds, so this gives the grain time to develop and survive.
We are the same way with our chaff. It's all those barriers that we put up to protect ourselves in this world. It's the untruths we tell ourselves. It's the fears we become comfortable with. It's the mask we wear as we go through our daily lives. But God is not interested in our chaff, but with what makes us us. And what makes us God's.
And Advent is all about approaching God in a radical, way, so we take the time this season provides us to begin the process of separating our wheat from our chaff.
This chaff is not necessarily sin. Not just the wrongs we do to each other. It's all that “stuff” that is weighing us down, making us feel unworthy of what is about to happen here during Advent. It's all that “stuff” that covers over our souls and keeps the light of Christ from entering in.
It's all that “stuff” that we bring to God because we have nothing left to do and no one left to turn to.
There is a word for this: purgation. A cleansing. Not as in punishing Purgatory, but as in spending time identifying those thing that are clinging to our souls and weighing us down. As in letting that unquenchable fire burn that chaff all up, so that it's no longer there, but is now only ashes, being blown away, leaving behind little green shoots of new life, and new hope.
Sometimes it's actually hard to let the chaff get burned off. We are more likely to fear that our life without our chaff will be a barren landscape. We are afraid that there will be nothing left in our lives, but stumps where once was a beautiful forest where we could hide. But in reality, when the forest is gone and burned, and the rains water the charred remains, tiny miracles occur – almost immediately. Little sprigs and sprouts grow out of the ruins. And we realize that it wasn't ruinous after all, but an opportunity to begin again, fresh, cleansed. And in reality, when the chaff is gone we can marvel at what we can do.
A man who will finally take the chance to open himself up to a loving relationship again.
A woman who, after suffering the broken heart of the loss of a spouse, can begin making a new life for herself.
Someone who has been hiding in the shadows of substance abuse, finally peeking out from the shadows, searching for help.
An elderly couple who saved up for a nice retirement, realizing that things simply have changed, and that having to downsize is not a sign of failure, but a new way to live out a faithful walk with God.
Lives of fear and desperation that suddenly turn joyous when, irony of ironies, this little baby we are awaiting tosses US up in the air and the breeze blows all that chaff away, to be gathered and burned in that unquenchable fire. Not the fires of Hell, but the fire that we see here, burning from these Advent candles, the eternal, ever-growing, unquenchable light of God's love.
And we because we have allowed the chaff of our lives to be taken away, our hearts can grow in that light, like a branch of Jesse's tree, reaching out to God, knowing that, as we wait for this miracle birth, God is reaching back to us.