Fruit and Chaff
December 3, 2022 + Advent 2A + Seminarian Justin Carlson
He will gather his wheat, but the chaff he will burn.
Grain does not grow ready-to-eat from the stalk: like an orange or a banana, a clove of garlic or a walnut, the edible part - the seed - grows encased. To release it, you thresh: pound it and grind it. You pound and grind to loosen the husks, the awns, the bits of stem... They release the grain. You’re left with a mess of edible and inedible. You could sort through piece by piece, bit by bit, but it's much more efficient to winnow, to let gravity work for you. A winnowing fork is a like a large rake. All the remnants: grain, husk, awns, bits of stem, are scooped up and tossed into the air. The grain is dense and rains back onto the fork, but the chaff blows away in the slightest breeze.
One might easily read this and conclude that chaff is useless, nothing but tinder for a fire…
For us, the seeds are food. For a plant, the seed is its child. The husks protect the seed, seal in moisture as it develops, keep the DNA safe from the sun’s radiation so the next generation can grow. This alone might justify the chaff, but the seed won’t sprout unless it’s in the soil.
A wheatstalk has bristles all over it, bristles called Awns. In wild species of wheat, the awns do something wonderful. When the seed is ready to grow, to become the next generation of wheat, it drops through the air to the ground. The awns trail behind it like a kite’s tail, orienting the seed in the air so it lands point down. Then, the true magic happens.
You see, each day, as humidity increases and decreases, the awns bend inward and outward. Inward as they absorb moisture at night, outward as they dry during the day. The surface of the awns are covered with little silicate hairs, oriented to catch the soil and give the awns traction. As they move inward and outward, they ratchet the seed into the soil day by day.
There are miracles in the chaff.
We grow chaff as well – we build houses to keep us safe from the sun and rain, wear coats to keep out the snow and wind. We build churches to contain our communities, create rituals to connect with God. We set up fire departments and police forces and organize governments to protect our freedoms and provide for our well-being. We establish and fund schools so our children can learn and grow and, in time, take our place, and we create organizations of shelter and care for the vulnerable.
The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
You brood of vipers! Gennēmata Echidnon. More literally translated: you, children of venomous snakes.
The English word, viper, comes from viviparous – meaning live birth. Giving birth to live young is an especially common trait among venomous snakes, many of whom care for their young until their first moult. John the Baptist, who lives in the wilderness, knows this!
John knows the wilderness. John lives in the wilderness, on locusts and wild honey. It’s not easy to get honey: bees have stings, after all. To live off wild honey, John would need to understand and respect bees. John may be friends with vipers. Regardless of whether or not the recorder of Matthew’s gospel knew this, John likely did.
Like the seed in its husk, the children of vipers are cared for in dens.
Isaiah provides a vision of what the world will be like when dominion comes:
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
To a viper, asp, or adder, a large mammal in front of your hole is a threat, a threat that must be protected against. A viper carrying her young within her or caring for them until their first moult, a viper has no way to know whether the being looming over her den is an innocently playing child or a predator planning to eat her young.
A viper strike is an act of protection. An attempt to preserve life.
And yet – too often, the viper feels threatened enough to do more than deliver a dry bite. She uses her precious venom, the venom she produces to hunt with, the venom she needs to feed herself and her children. She will use it to defend them, and in so doing she may harm a child.
This is not the viper’s fault. The viper is justified.
John reminds the pharisees and the sadducees that they have been cared for, protected, defended, but in the same breath he reminds them: Though the viper may be justified, we humans are not.
Who warns you of the coming storm? Who? Those protected, or those harmed?
We have the capacity to imagine the world through others’ eyes. We were given that capacity. We can know when as individuals we’ve harmed someone. When institutions intended to protect us or safeguard our lives and learning – universities, insurance agencies, churches, governments, police forces – when those institutions cause harm, we can repent.
Consider the different fates of the pharisaic and sadducaic traditions: the pharisees were itinerant teachers, working with small communities of followers, much like Jesus. The sadducees cared for the temple in Jerusalem. The temple, where rituals were carried out with precision; the temple, which housed a garrison of Roman soldiers; the temple, which was destroyed by the Roman Empire 70 years after the birth of Christ, before Matthew’s gospel was recorded. The pharisaic tradition survived, evolved, and became Rabbinic Judaism; a tradition that grew and changed and bore fruit that continues to grow and change and bear fruit despite thousands of years of persecution. A tradition that today holds Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, as its guiding light.
Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
On Mondays and Tuesdays I work at the Field Museum, just over there, an institution founded to protect and preserve natural history and cultures of the world, an institution intended to promote scientific understanding.
When the museum was founded, collection, preservation, and exhibition practices were informed by an idea of race then common but now repudiated, an idea that nonEuropeans did not share common ancestry with Europeans, that they were primitive and subhuman. Sacred objects and human remains were treated like beehives and snakeskins.
The Field Museum recently installed a new exhibit in the hall formerly called “Native North America.” The new exhibition, “Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories” includes on one of its walls the following statement:
“Museum collecting and exhibition practices have deeply harmed Native communities. This exhibition marks a new beginning.”
A new beginning. The museum – and all of us – are called to continually respond to the harms we inherited from those who came before us, those who protected us and tried their best to provide for our well-being.
Here in Chicago, on lands previously cared for by the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, as well as the ancient peoples that preceded them, we are called to ensure that our grain, our young, the people and places and ideas that we care for, are worthy of our repentance. We must ensure they are capable of responding to and healing the harm we leave behind.
Repent, for the dominion of heaven has come near – during advent, we imagine the boundaries between heaven and earth thinning. In this time of hope and expectation, we wonder what it will be like when heaven finally breaks through that veil to dwell here and there among us, when all our protective shells and defense mechanisms can burn away and leave behind life-giving grain.
Yes, there are miracles in our chaff. May the fruit we protect be worthy of repentance.
Isaiah provides a vision of when dominion comes:
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.