Preached on December 5, 2010, the second Sunday of Advent at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Listen to the sermon here.
Matthew 3:1-12
The season of Advent is a time of preparation that helps us to refocus our lives on what is good and essential, and to cast aside all that is harming us or distracting us.
In the summer of 2005, we were at a potato farm in eastern Missouri on a youth mission tour. We were harvesting potatoes for the local foodbank. A potato field that is ready for harvest looks like a carpet of green. The leaves of the potato plants spread out close to the ground, while the root system, with the potatoes, lies out of sight underground. Standing at the edge of the field, we watched the most amazing vehicle of farm machinery. It was monstrously sized, and as it drove across the field, it scooped up the top layer of soil and plants and swallowed everything into its body, which held a complex system of chutes and conveyor belts, and parts that moved and shook. I couldn’t figure out how it worked, so it seemed like a miracle of supernatural proportions to see how the machine got rid of its cargo. In the same way that it was constantly eating up the ground in front, the machine was also constantly throwing a heap of dirt and leaves and stalks and roots out the back, while a chute off to the side dropped a stream of potatoes onto the ground, or into a large cargo truck driving nearby. Somehow this machine could eat up dirt and plants, separate out just the potatoes, and throw the rest back onto the field, and all without ever stopping its forward march. It was an amazing machine for knowing what was good, and letting go of the rest.
Advent is a time when God helps us to get to what is good and nourishing in our own lives, and to let go of the rest.
John the Baptist is getting people ready for Jesus, and he describes Jesus using an old agricultural image that I had to look up before I could understand it. He says that Jesus will come with his winnowing fork in his hand, to clear the threshing floor, separating the wheat from the chaff in order to keep the wheat in the barn and burn off the chaff. I didn’t know what that meant. When I need wheat, I go to the store and buy a loaf of bread or some flour. Here’s what I learned about wheat and chaff: wheat is a grass, and back when wheat was harvested by hand, the wheat kernels were found attached at the long stalks, held in place by a sort of husk. The stalks would be broken off, and then the husks with the kernels would be battered in order to loosen the wheat kernel from the husky chaff. What you had then, was a lot of broken up wheat and chaff lying together on the floor. Rather than go through and pick out all the wheat by hand, they would take the winnowing fork, and just toss it all up in the air. You see, the chaff was very light, like flakes of straw, and would float away on the breeze, but the wheat was heavy, and would fall back to the threshing floor. It was a simple and effective method to separate what was good and nourishing from what you didn’t need or want. All it took was someone to come and stir up the whole pile, throwing everything up in the air.
Some people look at this image in the Gospel, and they say that what it means is that in the world there are good people and bad people, and Jesus is coming to separate the good people, the wheat, and take them into his barn, or heaven, while the bad people, the chaff, are being sent to the fire. Some people have said that, but I am not one of them. It is far to simplistic: no person on earth is either totally good or totally bad. All of us are some mixture of good and bad. In fact, I’m not sure that you can have one without the other.
For just a moment, let’s put aside Jesus and the threshing floor with the wheat and chaff, and go back to the beginning of Genesis, and Adam and Eve. You remember how Adam and Eve ate the fruit, right? They ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes we talk about them eating the fruit as the moment when everything went wrong. God told them not to eat the fruit, but they did, so it’s called the original sin, the fall of humanity from grace. But forget all of that for now, and think about this. The Rabbi Lawrence Kushner thinks that God actually meant for them to eat that fruit. God meant for humans to have knowledge of good and evil. Kushner wonders: if God really didn’t want them to eat the fruit, then why did God put it right in the middle of the garden and make such a big deal about it? It’s kind of like a parent saying to the kids “we’re going out for a bit, the house is yours, just don’t open the top drawer of my bedroom dresser.” Well, that’s the first thing they’re going to do, anyone knows that! Maybe the snake who told Adam and Eve to eat the fruit was working for God. Or do we suppose that God was outsmarted by the very people and creatures that God had just created?
I think that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden is the way that Genesis tells us what it means to be human. Every person is capable of both good and evil. We have the capacity for great good, for love and self-sacrifice and courage, but we also have the capacity for evil. If we can choose one, then we have to be able to choose the other. We have free will, which means that we can choose; we have both of them within us.
In this way, we are like the wheat and the husk that grow together: you can’t grow one without the other, so the time comes to separate them out. Jesus is not coming to separate good people from bad people. Jesus is coming to look into your lives and to call forth what is good within each of you.
At threshing time, the farmers take the winnowing forks and throw everything up in the air so that it can be sorted out. And sometimes our lives get thrown up in the air, in a way that helps us to sort out the good from the bad, but in a way we would never wish.
Several years ago, I shared with all of you the story of my car accident. Driving alone in a rain storm, my car spun off the highway and into a guardrail, and I was very fortunate to walk away unharmed from the wreck. But it could have been much different, and the experience of being so close to serious bodily harm and even death had a way of immediately focusing my attention on the few things that are really most important: my family, my friendships, the beauty of being alive, and the importance of giving love to the people who are important to me, and indeed, with everyone who crosses my path.
My life had been stirred up, and although I wish it hadn’t, I can’t deny that it helped me to separate what’s really valuable from what isn’t. Many of you shared with me stories of your own car accidents, and the same sense of how it reshaped your values and priorities. I know that the same thing can happen in other crises and tragedies of life: the onset of injury and illness, the loss of a job, a fire at home, or the death of a loved one. We would never wish for any these things, and we have the sense of our lives being thrown up in the air, the chaff blowing away, and the wheat gaining a renewed value.
Let’s not wait for some unexpected tragedy to shake up our lives. The season of Advent provides a safe, protected container to throw our lives into the air, and to remember, or rediscover what is good and valuable in our lives. This is a season to allow ourselves to be shaken up by the liturgy of worship, by the hymns and carols, by the scriptures full of hope and power, and by the presence of Christ, whose living presence today in our world we remember today in communion. What is most important in your life? What gifts have you been holding back? What things need to change, and it’s finally time to change them?
Jesus had a way of throwing our lives up in the air so that people began to see things differently. A dirty manger became a holy bed; a young, unmarried girl became the bearer of God’s son; some lowly fishermen became apostles; and the symbol of violent death became a symbol of love and hope.
Just as the farmers came to threshing time every year, we need to be shaken up on a regular basis. There is something about us, I believe, that resists having our lives resorted. Even when we know that our lives are off track, there is some comfort in the familiar. But we need to be shaken up. That is how God recovers the good that is within each person. And remember what John the Baptist said. The kingdom of heaven is near. When Jesus comes with his winnowing fork, and causes us to remember and recover what is good and most important, then we begin to live in the kingdom of heaven right here on earth.
