Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Matthew 3:1-12.
Let me start this morning by setting the scene. You may recall that John the Baptist is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was an old woman and childless, so her pregnancy was a miracle. Zechariah was a priest, so John could have been a priest as well. All priests in the Temple were of the lineage of Aaron, so since his father was in that lineage, John was as well and could have joined the Temple power structure. But he chose a different path.
John is described as wearing clothing of camel’s hair. You may have heard of a “hair shirt.” It’s a coarse garment made of hair that is intentionally irritating to the skin. The point of the hair shirt, or John’s camel’s hair clothing, is mortification of the flesh to help you repent. John’s leather belt would have ensured that his rough clothing was pressed against his skin. The outfit was a way for him to explicitly reject his inheritance, particularly his inherited sins. He verbalizes this rejection by saying, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” He is rejecting the notion that membership in God’s kingdom comes by birth, and is asserting instead that it comes from God’s will.
The Temple was a massive institution. Observant Jews, as well as Gentiles who acknowledged the supremacy of Yahweh, would come from all over the known world. They would bring animals for sacrifice, or if they were coming from too far away, they would bring money. It was a huge operation that enriched the high priests. Over the centuries, they developed a cozy relationship with whoever was in power. At the time of John’s preaching, the high priests were deeply enmeshed in Roman politics so that they could continue to worship God as they had been taught by their forefathers.
John rejected this institution and went to the wilderness. He called all people to join him in that rejection. He proclaimed that the time was at hand to overturn the existing power structures and enter God’s kingdom instead. His message resonated with the poor and marginalized inhabitants of Judea, who were suffering under Roman rule. His message wasn’t really intended for the Pharisees and Sadducees, though. The Sadducees were aristocrats and the quintessential insiders in the Temple hierarchy. They were beneficiaries of the Temple operations and had everything to lose if the Temple were destroyed. The Pharisees were men of the people, but were busy setting up an alternative institution in the synagogues. Perhaps they weren’t wealthy like the Sadducees, but they still supported a rule-based religious structure.
John the Baptist preached that it was time to shed all of those rules and instead turn towards God. The word “repent” is usually taken to mean “confess your sins and stop doing them.” It’s an English translation of the Greek word metanoia, which more literally means to change one’s mind. It’s a spiritual conversion, a transformative change of heart. John was encouraging people to change the way they thought about the world.
The metaphor he used was separating the wheat from the chaff. Now, many times, this is interpreted to mean that some people are wheat and some people are chaff. Conveniently, those who interpret John’s metaphor in this way see themselves as the wheat and other people as chaff. But anyone who heard John would know that wheat and chaff come from the same plant, the same grain on that plant. Wheat is a form of grass whose seeds are edible. While it grows, the seed, or kernel, is surrounded by thin membranes that are like little leaves. These leaves dry out and are inedible. After being harvested, the wheat must be threshed and winnowed to remove this chaff. Threshing basically involves beating the grains to loosen the chaff from the kernels. Now you have a mixture of kernels that you want and chaff that you don’t. Winnowing is where you toss the mixture in the air and let wind blow the chaff away. If there’s no wind, you need to make wind with a big fan. All of this would be well-known to John’s audience. They would know that the chaff was an essential part of the plant while it was growing, but couldn’t be eaten and so it was something to be discarded.
I am reminded of the Solzhenitsyn quote which I have shared many times with you. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, which is a history of the vast system of prisons and labor camps in the Soviet Union, he wrote, “If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Solzhenitsyn knew that there are no “good” people and no “evil” people, but that indeed we are all good and all evil. Rather than the easy work of separating the evil people out and disposing of them, we must do the hard work of separating the evil out of ourselves.
John’s message is first a call to personal repentance. What is the chaff in your own life? When wheat is growing, the chaff serves an important role. It protects the kernel so that it can grow and develop into something useful. The chaff is what you see when you look at a field of wheat. It hides the kernel from animals who might otherwise steal the food that farmers are trying to provide to society. What is the chaff in your life, and what is the wheat kernel?
I would say that the kernel is that part of you that is made in the image of God. It is the part that is all-loving, that seeks the good of all Creation. It is the part that is building God’s kingdom and transforming society. And yet, every one of us is surrounded by chaff, too. I just listened to an audiobook by Brian McLaren titled, Do I Stay Christian? He has an extended discussion of thirteen biases we have that prevent us from perceiving reality, and a prayer for God’s help to overcome them: confirmation bias, complexity bias, community, contact, and complementarity biases, competence, consciousness, comfort, and political biases, confidence, catastrophe, cash, and conspiracy biases. We are who we are, and we cannot really escape seeing reality through the lenses of these biases. Nor can anyone else, and so we present ourselves to the world in ways that will be acceptable to those who have these biases. We just had a holiday when extended families gather. Often, when families gather together, some people wear a shell that hides their true self and shows their family just what is expected of them. Maybe they hide their political opinions, or their understandings of God, or their financial or job status, or their relationship status, or even their true identities. Hiding our true selves is often necessary to get along in this broken world, but it prevents us from truly participating in God’s kingdom. It prevents us from truly experiencing God’s reconciling love, a love that is stronger than any human hatred, a love that transcends our limited understandings.
So John the Baptist said, Come get baptized. Come shed those things that are preventing you from experiencing God’s kingdom. Shine forth your true self, which is an image of God. Join in holy community that is united by the Holy Spirit that flows like a river through us all. Transform yourself, and in the process, transform the systems and institutions that surround you and have formed you.
Because John was not simply calling individuals to repentance. He was also calling for institutional repentance. He was calling for the Temple hierarchy to be up-ended. He was calling for Judaism to shed the chaff that prevented them from truly experiencing God’s loving community.
Well, a few decades later, the Temple was destroyed and two religions sprouted from its rubble: rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Then both set about building up some chaff, and here we are 2000 years later with a lot of extra stuff hanging around. In a recent podcast about the Eastern Orthodox churches, a scholar pointed out that the Church preceded the Bible. Israel had been worshipping for centuries before anyone wrote down the scriptures that we know as the Old Testament, and the choice of books to include in the canon wasn’t settled until sometime after Jesus’s birth. The earliest books in the New Testament were written decades after Christ’s resurrection. So the Bible itself is a window into God’s reality, but only one window among many, and one that came a little bit late. Over the centuries since the Bible was written, our denomination and its predecessors piled up creeds and confessions on top of it. I would now like to read to you some selections from our Book of Confessions, which since 2016 has included 12 different confessional statements.
From the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.” Beautiful poetry, right? But what does it mean? We probably couldn’t all agree on what it means that Jesus Christ was begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
Now from the Scots Confession: “We abandon the teaching of the Roman Church and withdraw from its sacraments; firstly because their ministers are not true ministers of Christ Jesus (indeed they even allow women, whom the Holy Ghost will not permit to preach in the congregation to baptize) and, secondly, because they have so adulterated both the sacraments with their own additions that no part of Christ’s original act remains in its original simplicity.” So here we have both misogynist and anti-Catholic bias in one sentence. The Book of Confessions does have a footnote and discussion that at least partially rejects this section, but it remains in the book.
I’ll spare you the Second Helvetic Confession, but there is a long section where it first elevates Lactantius, Epiphanius, and Jerome, then rejects the Epicureans, Manichaeans, Marcionites, Pelagians, and other heresies. If anyone can explain to me what the Pelagian heresy was, let’s chat after worship!
For a while, the only official creed Presbyterians affirmed was the Westminster Confession. In fact, there are other Presbyterian denominations that still hold to that tradition. However, our Book of Confessions actually has two parallel versions, because two of our parent denominations had diverged in places.
Some would say that the Westminster Confession is what makes us Presbyterian. But what does that really mean? OK, I know the definition of Presbyterian and its Greek root word that means “elder.” But if you asked a random person on the street what a Presbyterian was, they wouldn’t really be able to explain it. It’s just a word. I was at an interfaith dialogue when someone said, “P-Presbyterian, is that like P-Pentecostal?” I explained that no, Presbyterians and Pentecostals are about as different as any two Christian sects could be. Even for us insiders, how would you explain the difference between Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, UCC, and so forth? We are in full communion with the Moravians and the Reformed Church in America, but I don’t really know what either of them are, let alone how they differ from Presbyterians.
This is all chaff. We are supposed to be the body of Christ. We are supposed to be image-bearers who exemplify the unity of God’s eternal kingdom. And yet, we keep finding ways to divide ourselves, to decide who is “in” and who is “out,” to decide which particular interpretations of scripture are correct, and so forth.
Indeed, we even divide ourselves over externalities that have nothing to do with God. I would say that the primary difference between the Episcopal church and PC(USA) is the form of worship. Along with the rest of the World Anglican Communion, they use the Book of Common Prayer, with all the historical liturgical trappings of high church. I would say that we’re not exactly “low church,” but certainly not as liturgical as the Episcopalians. If we look around the sanctuary today, we see a Christmas tree, an Advent wreath, and other indications that Christmas is coming. I would bet that you wouldn’t see any of that in a Baptist church or in a nondenominational church in the Christian Restoration movement, like Greentree or Ridgeview.
Now, I’m not arguing that we throw out the Book of Confessions or the Christmas tree. I’m as committed to the institution of the church as anyone. What I’m saying is that these are tools, and like any tools, they can be used as weapons. They can be used to bring us closer to God, to remind us that we are made in God’s image, to reveal to us the kernel of God’s divine spark within each of us, to create an institution that reveals God’s love for all humanity. OR, they can be used as weapons to divide us from one another, to hide our light from the world, to keep out those who we deem unworthy because they don’t believe or behave or look or act like we do.
That was John’s core message, and Jesus’s core message. Jesus said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He proclaimed that all of the trappings of religiosity would fall away, leaving only the Holy Spirit to guide us into his eternal kingdom. John said that Jesus would separate the wheat from the chaff and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. As long as we are living in this world, we need the chaff to protect us as we grow into the people God intends. But as much as possible, we should shed those things that are only serving to separate us from one another.
This Advent, we are hopeful that God will do a new thing among us. Last Sunday, we heard an inspiring message from Pastor Greg Emery who has been helping us through this transition period. He gave us encouragement to keep on going and keep on hoping. We pray each Sunday that the Pastor Nominating Committee will find a new spiritual leader who will bring about our rebirth. But God is already at work among us. God is already calling us to shed those things that feel comfortable but no longer serve God’s kingdom. God is already raising up children of Abraham. God is ready for us to let our light shine forth as we bear God’s image to our community and our world. Be ready: Even now, the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Those things we cling to that no longer bear fruit for God’s kingdom are passing away. Let go, and let God lead you, and lead us, into a glorious future where we bear fruit worthy of God’s love for the world. Amen.
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