But the chaff is not some separate entity from the wheat. They are one plant. So the image becomes one of a careful gentle God, peeling back the layers of chaff to reveal grain of immeasurable worth. 

Some people like being in the spotlight. They like the attention. Some live to receive the praise and accolades of adoring fans. Others would prefer to stay out of the spotlight. It is stressful to have too much attention on them.

Each gospel spotlights Jesus’s premiere in a different way—his entrance into public life. For John it will be Jesus’ first miracle at Cana, the text for next week. Two weeks from today, we will hear Luke’s version of Jesus’ first sermon in which he reads from a synagogue scroll and proclaims that the words are being fulfilled then and there. But all four gospels spotlight Jesus’ baptism as a defining event as Jesus begins his public ministry. Jesus comes on the scene as a complete unknown. With a divine voice from heaven, Jesus is proclaimed God’s beloved son and anointed for ministry.

What was left out? When I see a movie after reading the novel of the same story, I am often frustrated by what they left out. I get it. It’s hard to compress a novel-length story into a couple of hours of movie.

On the day after Christmas we went to see the movie Wicked. And loved it. Since the movie was two hours and forty minutes and part two is still to come out later this year, it made me wonder. If the Broadway musical is about three hours and the two movies together will be nearly six hours, what is being added? What was left out from the 1995 novel Wicked? Same with the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. What was left out?

We don’t have photographs from Jesus’ life, though wouldn’t it be cool if we did? But imagine if we could. We would have lots of pregnancy and baby photos, from the infancy stories in Matthew and Luke—ones we have heard the past week in church. There would be photos of Elizabeth and Mary together. Pictures of the birth in a stable. Pictures of shepherds and the Magi. Pictures of Simeon and Anna forty days after the birth. Then skip ahead a long way to Jesus’ last three years of his life. Gobs of photos. And even more of the last week of his life. There would be photos from only one event between his birth and his public ministry. One event in approximately thirty years: the gospel today, of the twelve-year Jesus being left behind in the temple. There would be a lot of lost years in the photo album we are imagining. That’s worth pondering.