Fire and turmoil

 This week's verses are Matthew 3:11-12:

“I baptize you with water, for repentance, but the one coming after me is more powerful than I am—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 clean out his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire!”

 These verses are John the Baptist speaking about Jesus. John had a ministry whose purpose was to walk people through repenting for their sin and baptizing them in water when they were ready to make a clean break from their past actions. It was a hugely popular thing, and some people like the Pharisees were even showing up just to be fashionable.

But then he mentions how much better Jesus is. The striking thing here is that John doesn't puff himself up here. He doesn't mention that he's Jesus' hype man, or that he started the ball rolling, or that he was telling people to repent back before it was cool, or anything else that might get a piece of that glory for himself. No. He says "I am not worthy to carry his sandals." In other words, he doesn't even have enough seniority to take even the most filthy and low-prestige role in Jesus' ministry. He's not even on the radar when it comes to the glory that Jesus has.

Imagine being baptized in fire. I don't mean metaphorically, but actual fire. You're suspended over a burning cauldron and then you're dipped and held in the flames and lifted out. Do you want that? Do churches advertise "immolation at the hands of a supernatural being" as one of their outreaches? Even knowing you'll survive it, do you really want that? It's already terrifying, and more so when you get what John is implying, that an experience like that is even more necessary for our health than water baptism.

And the Holy Spirit. This supernatural being that is doing the immolating is going to invade you and take possession of you and occupy you like seized territory. Again, is this something you'd happily yield to?

John also mentions that Jesus is holding the winnowing fork in his hand. We don't even know what a winnowing fork is. Luckily, the Internet tells us it's a farm implement that was used to beat and toss grain until it's finally separated from the bits of straw that it grew on. So basically he's promising violent turmoil. Do we look forward to violent turmoil? Being tossed around and subjected to violent forces until what he wants is separated from what he doesn't?

The only good news is that his wheat (the stuff he wants) will be gathered into the storehouse before the chaff (the stuff he doesn't) is thrown into an inextinguishable fire. Not a baptism this time but pure unrelenting burning forever.

Yikes. Do they teach this stuff in Sunday School? How are people not made uncomfortable?

We have probably all heard these verses countless times, but we never really stop to think about what they mean for the Christian life. We're so bombarded by modern church "propaganda," like advertising copy for a kind of "moral justification as a service," that we miss the fact that Christianity is supposed to be a bit of an ordeal. On one side, we have the modern message of "come to church every week and you can finally relax and consider yourself to be a good person, or at least better than your neighbors who stay home." Yet on the other we have the sobering news that our best path forward, under the best guidance, involves fire, turmoil, and the surrender of our sovereignty to supernatural invasion.

Which path will you choose? The easy path to comfortable damnation, or the hard trial of obedience that becomes our healing prescription?