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. 

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.  None of us is all chaff either, by the way.  No matter how weak we feel, the fire of God’s love is perfect at burning the chaff but baking the wheat.  If we let him.  

That’s what this season is about.  And that’s also what life is about.  One of the things that weak people do, is avoid people who will challenge them.  Strong people aren’t afraid of a little cleansing fire, knowing that the same fire that burns the chaff away will bake the wheat into bread.  Strong people aren’t afraid to surround themselves with people who will challenge them. That’s always true inside of good families, and it’s a characteristic of good marriages.  “Happy families are all alike”: the opening line of a famous novel.  One of the characteristics of every good family and every good marriage is a humility and an openness to being challenged.  Having enough interior strength to let yourself be challenged and stretched and even purified: being willing to learn: to learn from your spouse, to learn from your parents no matter how old you are, to learn from your children no matter how young they are.  In other words, to throw yourself into the fire of everyday life: to trust the people you share your life with to challenge you, to help you burn away the chaff.  It can be painful, but it’s worth it.  And if someone trusts you that much, if someone entrusts their heart to the fire of your love, take care that your fire is like Christ’s: don’t get reckless and start burning the bread along with the husks.  We pray for the courage to throw ourselves into the fire of everyday life, to throw ourselves into the fire of God’s love, that we may be purified in the ways that we need to be, and that we may receive the joy of salvation with hearts aflame with God’s love.