Winnow

Matthew 3:4-12 (NRSV)

⁵⁶

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 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. Even now the axe 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. ⁸⁹¹⁰

11 ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. 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 will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’¹²

Winnowing fork?

Threshing floor?

Granary? Chaff?

Unquenchable fire?

There are a lot of terms in this sermon from John the Baptist that we either don't understand in our modern non-agricultural world...or the ones that we do understand are just plain scary.

Well, a trip through the dictionary tells us that "winnow" just means to "separate or distinguish valuable from non-valuable parts."

That might seem a little scary, but it's absolutely necessary in our lives. Our deepest prayer should be that God would winnow-away at us our whole lives long.

There's so much that we can do with our time, talents and energies that aren't all that valuable. There are so many distractions and potential wastes of all that God has given us.

Sometimes, we just need a good "threshing"to give us focus and concentrate the "good stuff."

God does this kind of work in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, the process is painful. However, the more open we become to the work that God seeks to do within us, the more possible it becomes for us to embrace change...and to see that God is bringing us to a greater state of purity and preparation.

So our prayer becomes...winnow Lord, winnow-away in our lives...

Prayer: We pray for clean hands and pure hearts. Cleanse the chaff within us by the power of your winnowing fork and gather us as wheat into your barn.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, Amen.

Tomorrow's Scripture (No Blog): Isaiah 11:6-10