This is a pretty serious gospel.  John the Baptist is a pretty serious guy and his message isn’t easy.  It’s meant to get our attention, to startle us, to wake us up.  “I am baptizing you with water for repentance,” he says.  “But the one who is coming after me…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  John the Baptist was already doing something remarkable in the baptism that he provided: this was a powerful symbol of purification and repentance and cleansing.  But what Christ will do is different, and John the Baptist admits this: Christ’s baptism will not just be about purification, about taking something away.  The baptism that Christ will bring will also give something.   “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” John says.  John’s baptism is a baptism of water alone.  Christ’s is a baptism of water and of fire.  And that’s why this is serious business.  Fire is a dangerous thing.  But it’s also necessary for life.  Fire can bring enormous destruction, but it can also purify and even save life.  It’s not for nothing that the sun is a big ball of fire.  It’s not for nothing that fire keeps us alive in the winter.  It’s not for nothing that fire is involved in the production of most of our food.  “He will gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  If you separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff: fire does something different to each of them.  Fire turns wheat into bread, but chaff into ash.  So we shouldn’t be afraid of the fire of Christ: not really.  Because if we are wheat, his fire will transform our hearts into true bread.  

Now we might be tempted to view this wheat and chaff business in too black-and-white a way.  Some people are wheat; some people are chaff.  Be careful with that: that’s wrong, and that way of thinking would leave us either horribly arrogant or in deep despair, or bouncing back and forth between the two.  The truth is: as a great man once said, “the line dividing good and evil cuts right through the heart of every human being.”  We’re all fundamentally good, because we’re made by God out of love, in his image and likeness.  But we’re all subject to sin as well; we all have darkness within us.  There’s wheat and chaff in every one of our hearts, now.  “He will gather the wheat into his barn, and the chaff he will burn.”  There’s a fundamental humility that we have to have: there is chaff in my heart, and I need to give it to him to be burned.  There’s also a fundamental confidence and a serenity that we also must have: chaff surrounds wheat.  If I let him burn away the chaff, in the very same fire, he will bake the wheat into bread.  

The Pharisees and Sadducees don’t like this idea of purification and of transformation: they think they’re fine just as they are; they’re convinced of their own righteousness.  But they’re wrong.  Because they’re not 100% right about everything; they’re not 100% pure in every way.  And neither are we.  But the fire of God’s love: (and his fire is the fire of love) can burn the chaff and bake the wheat.  If we let him.  That’s what this season is about.  That’s what it means to spend a few weeks getting ready for Christmas.  His love, which breaks into the world at Christmas, is a cleansing and purifying fire.  And we want to be ready to take as full advantage of that as we possibly can.  We want to offer him our chaff, this season: by going to confession, by praying more, by offering little acts of self-denial, by doing good for our loved ones and for those in need.  And by a deep trust.  A trust that, even when it hurts, the fire of Our Lord’s love is good for us: it will render our souls more perfect, pure, and beautiful; and fruitful with wheat for the kingdom.  Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!