2023-03-23 A Meditation on Winnowing

“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”” (Mt 3:10–12 ESV)

It was in fairer days that we first had the inkling of going into Christian service. It was in days when on the grand scheme of things, we had options and peace. We still, however, heard some inkling, some prophetic encouragement or word that revealed to us a difficult situation. We approached excitedly, quieted on some level but bold to assent verbally on another level.

For, we found it difficult to live, difficult to pass the quieter days in calmness and lack of worry; we worried, and we had a heart that was convicted, though by no handcuffs on our hands. But by the public service of an external Word spoken or an internal sense of conviction. It was in intangibles that we were convicted. It was our day to shine, choosing which path to take.

When “the ax is laid to the root of the tree” (Mt 3:10) we are dealing with the mystery. The mystery of how God interposes Himself, coming from somewhere outside of our own little world. The voice that convicts of sin, is doing us a service: to bring the heart to a place of willingness, is to know ourselves in a new light. We are creatures of seeking, who find the Word and go with it, allowing it to wreak havoc on our own self-chosen religiosity.

This is the Word that upsets the apple cart. It is for us to know ourselves in a revealed light, willing to hear and to revise and to self-adjust. More than that, it is the simple willingness to repent and seek the will of the Lord.

All of us, in the presence of good John-the-Baptists become willing. We become those who hear. We become heartened by the immediate restoration, that is, we were no covetous self-directed designers of what we believe, but already had the good portion given to us, by a God who made up religion around our own feeble hearts. He gave us the One to blame. He blamed Himself in His Son. He pleaded with us, not by coercion and handcuffs, but by a willing heart, to be reconciled to Him. And this day, the impossibility of the sin dynamo, has met its match in the words of a John the Baptist, unafraid to name things, to name sin whether petty or egregious, in our midst.

To point out the spiritual designs each of us have. To remind us we are self-directed automatons until Christ is submitted to; we submit, but do so with glad heart, confident of this, that He will make us into His image, so that in Imago Dei we journey forth and welcome once more the prophetic Word.

If it is a scary word, so be it: a plateau, new and important, has arrived before us. It is the prospect of a genuine reckoning, that today we become aware of. To be sure, God can make a reckoning any old time He chooses, but here He is doing it in community, in tandem with our fellows and with His servants the preachers, the punctilious friend, the simple dispenser, when sought, of a little Law to recreate our conscientiousness.

It is high time for this service, a community service that can be undertaken on any hour because it is always time to come to Jesus, yet today is undertaken by a spectacle in the wilderness: either we were there, or we were elsewhere. Either we heard the prophecies spoken over us, giving joyous sound at the invite to repent, or we were motoring about oblivious, elsewhere. Not unloved, but in danger because of the community-wide step into a new era, that, best intentions notwithstanding, we stand now at a distance away from that convicted communal spirit.

The “ax at the root of the tree” reminds the leader that she or he has a greater leader On High. It reminds the uniformed that God first of all keeps the law and order, the peace, in the community, not we ourselves. It reminds the irreligious that God is doing a thing intangible and High; spiritual and pleading, but not coercive. Not legislated “for our good”, but with respect for the decision-making individual. The individual hears, “There is no one to tell you a second time; you are the one who has to make this step…”. And it challenges everyone therefore to know deepest life events in things of their own agency, each of us a Prince or Author or Leader of our own meager hearts’ contributions.