Sifted

"Sifted"
Luke 3:15-17

I don’t know about you, but when I’m baking, I always sift the flour.  I know the bags of flour these days says “Pre-sifted”.  But, come on, they are just words.  If Nick Squires got a load of oak lumber and it said, “pre-sanded” do you think he’s going to leave it at that.  No way.

The reason I sift the flour is not just because the flour gets all packed down during shipment.  Sifting is important for that reason, and you can measure your ingredients by weight, rather than by the cup.  The reason I sift is because there are usually clumps of who knows what in the flour.  I sift to get these clumps of surprise ingredients out of my mixture.  I never investigate what those clumps are.  I just immediately toss them in the trash.  Separate the good from the bad.

Continuing the flour metaphor, but in its raw form of wheat, I think that’s the same thoughts people have when they read that Jesus is going to separate the wheat from the chaff.  There’s a good part of the wheat, and there’s a bad part of the wheat, and you want to make sure you only keep the good part.  The bad part gets burned.

So this is a one sentence parable and it’s all about judgment, right?  Separating the good people from the bad people.  Holding on to the good people.  Burning the bad people up in an unquenchable fire.  Salvation or damnation.  Rising or roasting.  Either, or.  That’s what Jesus is getting at, right?

Well, let’s call in an expert.  A real wheat farmer, who knows everything there is to know about wheat.  Farmer Brad Pagenkopf.  (Get him a mic.)  I want you to tell us everything you know about wheat in five minutes or less.  Actually, tell us just about the husk.  What is the purpose of the husk in the growth process of the wheat?

(Talk back and forth with Brad about this.)

So what you’re saying is, the husk isn’t bad.  It’s absolutely necessary up to a certain point in the wheat’s development.  If there was no husk, the “berry” of wheat would not be protected from the elements, nor would it develop.  The wheat would be worthless, if each kernel were not protected by the husk.

But then, in the use of the kernels of wheat, the husk is no longer needed.  It has to be discarded back into the soil so the wheat berries can be ground into flour, or used for whatever.  No husk, no grains of wheat, no flour made out of those grains.

At least for human consumption, the husk is useless.  We can’t digest the husk.  It just passes through.  But the wheat is extremely useful in so many products that we eat.  But like I keep saying, we wouldn’t have the multi-useful grain unless the husk protected that grain while it was developing.

So, let’s look at this verse again, this statement by John the baptizer made about Jesus:  “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clean out his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.”

The process went this way.  A large cloth would be laid on the threshing room floor.  Or the floor would be made out of hard-packed clay.  The bundles of wheat stalks would be brought in and thrown on the threshing floor to a certain height.  Those stalks would be pounded with a shovel until the wheat grains had been loosened from the husks.  Then, with a forked shovel, the whole mess would be thrown in the air.  The wind would blow the lighter chaff (stalks and husks) away, but the heavier seeds of wheat would fall back down on the threshing floor.  After doing this several times, only the wheat was left.  It would be shoveled into clay containers and stored in the barn.  This process was called sifting.

So let’s take what we learned from farmer Brad and combine it with this ancient way of sifting out the wheat.

The hull or husk, at one time, was vitally important to the wheat.  But at the time of the harvest and sifting, it isn’t important any more.  It’s pretty well useless other than for burning, using for cattle fodder, or plowing back into the ground.  So, it’s not a matter of the husk being bad and the wheat being good.  The analogy doesn’t hold.  This statement isn’t about judgement.

This is a statement about having something useful, something important, at one point in your life.  And then, at another point, it’s just not useful anymore.  It’s not needed anymore.  It served it’s purpose.  But now it’s time to let it go.  Even throw it in the fire if need be.  That’s the sifting process.

Maybe we should call it the life-sifting process.  And here comes the hard part.  If this were merely about judgement, it would be easy.  Christians and non-Christians do it all the time.  Who’s in and who’s out?  Who’s good and who’s bad?  Who should burn in hell and who gets to go to heaven?  We try to make those distinctions and divisions and judgements all the time, and for my part, I’m sick of it.

So let’s make this harder than that.  If the statement is about the sifting process, taking that which was at one time strategic, but then isn’t important anymore, then John’s statement is about taking a hard look at our own life and beliefs.  It’s about doing a fearless personal inventory of our lives and beliefs and identifying that which might have been important at one time, but is useless now.  If it is useless, we have to get rid of it.  Burn it.  Expunge it once and for all.  Not let it be a part of our lives anymore.

Now that’s harder.  Now we’ll have to deal with all kinds of self-created hooey as we try to justify why we’re holding on to husks—stuff that has no life value.  Could be as big as a job that isn’t enhancing your life in the least.  Could be a relationship that you keep trying to find some kind of value there, when there’s none.  It could be a belief, even a so-called "Christian" belief, that doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus at all.

It could be some form of self-punishment for something you’re not proud of out of your past.  Something that, whenever it crosses your mind, all you feel is guilt and shame.  It’s a handful of husk you think you have to hold on to so you can be reminded about how bad you are.  And you won’t let God blow it all away.  Blow it into the fire so God can fill your hand with grace and embrace you, and you can embrace God back.  But you can't do that if your hands and heart are full of husks.

Now I’m going to make this harder yet.  You don’t get to decide what is husk and what is wheat.  Nor do you for someone else.  Nor someone else about you.  Only  Jesus can do that.  That’s what John says:   “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clean out his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.”  This sifting task, of going through your life and deciding what is kept and what is tossed is up to Jesus.  You can bellyache and complain and try to talk Jesus out of discarding certain parts of your life and beliefs, but ultimately it is Jesus’ work, Jesus’ decision.

You know what that means, don’t you?  Get ready to be sifted.  Get ready to lose.  Get ready to watch some things you valued as strategic to who you are get thrown on the burn pile.

I like how The Message Bible has two of the Beatitudes in the Sermon of the Mount.  These are the first two:

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.  (Or we could say, with less husks there's more room for God and Gods grace.)

“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.  (In other words, some of that which we hold so dear is not worth holding on to anymore.  And only Jesus can let us know what those things are.)

The sifting process is about making more space for God, “the One most dear to you.”  That’s the wheat that needs to be kept.  The only way to do that is to get rid of hokey beliefs, values, and ways of being that have long served their purpose.  It’s time to let them go.  Make room for God.  Sift them out.

But only Jesus can do that, because only Jesus knows what is worth keeping and what is worthless.  You have to let him do it.  You have to let him sift you.