Chaff Set Ablaze

Ohhhh boy! It is week 2 of Advent and all I have left to do before Christmas is find some kind of gift for my four siblings, parents, and grandparents, pick out a tree, trim it, give a sermon at my home congregation, get my apartment ready for me to travel back to Pennsylvania, drive 12 hours to Pennsylvania without falling asleep, navigate the interesting situation of new significant others of my siblings and, of course, enjoy the season of Advent!

All of this running around, all of this hyped up energy and anxiety of the big day - this isn’t really the Advent spirit. The culture around Advent isn’t really the culture of Advent at all. We have run right past it! Nonetheless the anxiety that is present before Christmas is real. Hurry up! Get the best deals! Wrap the presents! Trim the tree! Wait!!! We forgot to get the tree!

And that is not to mention all of the anxiety that our Gospel text produces this morning. Sheesh!

The firey prophet, John the Baptist is preaching what feels like a fire and brimstone sermon. I find myself anxiously searching for my chaff and the parts of me that bear no fruit out of fear that I am going to be thrown into the unquenchable fire.

But this anxious, fearful, even panicked self-searching isn’t really what Advent is about... right?

Advent: a time of hopeful anticipation. A time of reflection. A time of preparation.

Part of getting ready that is cultural as well as religious is to get a tree. Now most people these days use a chainsaw or a hand saw but have you ever cut down a tree with an ax? I grew up in the woods and let me tell you, it’s hard work! When chopping wood, you swing the ax so that it cuts against the grain - which is to say the blade of the ax is perpendicular to the way the wood grows. If you look down at the pew you’re sitting on, your legs are probably perpendicular to the grain right now.

Axes are heavy, trees are big, wood is dense. Chopping down trees is really hard work.

And in our text this morning, there are axes lying at the roots of trees waiting to be used to cut down the trees that don’t bear fruit. Trees without fruit are cut and burned in the fire.

My dear friends, we are the forest.

The parts of us that bear good fruit are gathered in. The parts of us that are not good fruit, the parts of us that are overly selfish, the parts of us that are exclusionary, the parts of us that are harsh, the parts of us that are cruel, those parts are thrown into the fire.

Being thrown into the fire sounds like a threat. It sounds like a punishment.

But it’s not.

Being cast into the fire is an invitation to reflection, growth, and persistence - both personal and communal.

Reflecting on our communal fruitfulness, it is necessary to acknowledge that this congregation has just begun a two-year anti-racism covenant with the Metro Chicago Synod. Every Sunday this congregation proclaims welcome to all by explicit invitation to the sacramental table. This congregation is also a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation which makes an explicit welcome and affirmation to LGBTQIA+ folx and professes the desire to be a safe place for people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

This congregation is growing and persisting in its growth. Yet we return to reflection on our individual and communal fruitlessness. Fruitlessness of continued racial biases, continued biases against LGBTQIA+ folx, ageist biases, stigmas and stereotypes around mental health and gender norms, and more.

This fire calls us out of our old ways of being, calls us to grow, and to persist in our growth. It is not easy. This fire hurts.

But this fire, this unquenchable fire is the relentless love of God.

Our flaws and biases and even our insecurities, depression, anxiety, negative self image, our demons - our “chaff” - is cast into a love that surpasses all things. Our fruitlessness and chaff is loved so deeply that it is set ablaze.

Our demons are loved into angels.

This love calls us out of our old ways of being. It calls us to reflect, to grow, to persist.

It requires a lot of us. Acknowledging our fruitlessness and chaff is hard work. So we seek support in our community, seek counseling, practice healthy coping mechanisms, and make the choice to practice loving our fruitfulness and our fruitlessness as we grow.

We do this hard work of reflection, growth, and we persist in the work because we are preparing ourselves and the world for something we are hopefully anticipating - the coming of Jesus of Nazareth.

So we continue our preparations by reflecting, changing, and growing. We look inward and seek the fruitfulness and the fruitlessness. The fruitfulness is gathered in and cherished while the fruitlessness is set ablaze in a love so deep that it cannot be quenched.

And so as the cultural and physical preparations are happening all around us, let us dive deeply inward to prepare ourselves and the world for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.