Chaff

Let's discuss the nature of wheat and chaff.

This should be incredibly straightforward to everyone, but we are so divorced from the natural world from which we draw all our nutrients, that we have largely forgotten where our food truly originates.  Allow me to bring it to mind.  There was, or possibly is, a show that was on TV a while ago called 'alone.'  And that show has contestants living by themselves in hostile environments until all but one quits.  While you watch the show, you become painfully aware of something, which is that even when someone is doing their absolute level best to forage for food really efficiently, they will find that they can't eat the vast majority of what they see.

This woman is foraging a lot of food, and appears to be doing it very efficiently, getting the absolute maximum out of the world into which she has been placed.  But there's something that should drive you up the wall watching that, which is that she is surrounded by greenery, surrounded by plant life that is everywhere, but there is very very little of it that she can actually consume.  Some berries, fireweed root, mushrooms, that sort of thing, but all the trees, the grass, the moss, all of that is functionally worthless to her, because her body absolutely can't process it into nutrients. So for the berries that she picks, the berry itself is only one tiny part of the plant.  The rest of the plant is no use to her.

I bring this up, because I would like you to look at this image of wheat.

That's wheat, as you would know if you were from God's country of Saskatchewan, the breadbasket of Canada, etc. And wheat, or some kind of grain, is vital for civilization to exist, moving us beyond being hunter / gatherers and moving us in to being stable, and civilized.  Having grain and grain stored between harvests, allows you to specialize labor, not think beyond just your next meal, and to let you have a society in which people can have a bigger picture, and a better perspective.  It was grain storage that the Israelites were compelled to build in order that the Egyptians could have Pharaohs, armies, magicians, and so that every single role was not just one of subsistence gathering.

But look at that wheat, and you will realize something, which is that although things like grains are absolutely required, mandatory, and civilization is real hard to get without it, the majority of the biomass of that wheat is not useful for you as a human being.  The wheat grain is all that really matters for you, the rest of the plant is not useful at all.  You can't harvest your wheat by bringing an entire plant into the elevator, they'll throw you out for doing it.  All that the elevator wants, all that the market wants, is the grain, the part that you eat.  The rest is what we will call chaff.  And most of the plant, for human beings, is chaff.

I bring all this up because of John the Baptist standing on the banks of the Jordan river, calling out to everyone, compelling them to be baptized.  And as he does so, he brings stark warnings to the people who come to see him to be baptized.  The  axe is at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hands, and he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

This is all stuff you know, of course, being wise and educated Christians.  But hold on a minute, because I would like to point out that if you are winnowing your grain, then you are separating out the majority, which is chaff, from the minority, which is the wheat grain itself.  Most of the wheat plant is straw, it is chaff, it is not usable for human consumption.  The majority of this plant, and almost every plant, is not usable for us.  If you have rhubarb, you're only eating the stalks.  If you have raspberries, you're only eating the fruit.  If you have potatoes, you're only eating the tubers.  There are very few plants that you are going to eat all of.

I'm bringing all this up because when it comes time to assess the life of the Christian, I'm not asking you to think too much about the sheep from the goats here.  Instead, I'm talking about separating people from their sins.  This is tougher than we think it is, primarily because we are living under the impression that people want their sins to be forgiven.  We tend to think about people as understanding that they are sinful, and that they would very much like those sins to be taken away, but the opposite is, in fact, true.  People in general have no desire for their sins to be forgiven, and in fact would very much like to hold onto them and cling to them forever.  Part of this is born out of an idea that you are good, and what you do is good per se, but another part of it is an inability to perceive that what you do is not who you are.  Those are different things.  An awful lot of people, perhaps including yourself, may think of their sins as being unforgivable, not because Christ is incapable of forgiving sins, but rather because they do not approach their sins as something to be forgiven.  They will approach their sins as something that make them who they are.  And if that is the case, people can and will ask the big question, which is that if all these things are sins, if what I have done is sinful, and so much of what I have done has been sinful, then if I were to be forgiven, what would be left?

That's a question that people ask themselves as they grow up, as they grow older, and as they start to take stock of their lives in general.  As a child, you are disciplined by society, by your parents, by your school, and you are expected to repent, and to repent pretty sharpish.  But when you grow, you end up thinking about yourself as being generally pretty good, and as your decisions as forming you into who you are.  And thinking about your decisions that have made you who you are, that have formed and fashioned you into the person that you are today, thinking about those decisions as things you should repent of is a hurtful thing . For if you repent of those, cast them off, repent and are forgiven of them, then what will be left once that threshing is done, and the chaff has been burned?  

Well, the answer is you.  You're left.  You are what continues to exist after all this has been divided from you.  It may seem like there would be nothing left at all, but look at the wheat, and marvel at how little of that plant is kept vs how much is discarded.  The grain is very small.  There is a lot of chaff.

When it comes time to divide the wheat from the chaff, to separate out sin from saved, that's work that involves purging away an awful lot of what you have fooled yourself into thinking is you.  But it is not.  These sins are not you, these bad decisions are not you, and you don't have to be captive to them.  Rather, you can be forgiven, and can begin to understand who you actually are.  Not the layers that you have cased yourself beneath, not the dross surrounding the silver, not the stains on the cloth, not the chaff that is all around the wheat.  

No, you are the part that is worth saving.  Not your sins, not your misdeeds, but you.  When John the Baptist, after calling out all these things as problems to be addressed, continues by pointing out Jesus the Lord, and saying with a loud, clear voice, what the Christmas season is all about:  

'Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.'