the meaning of the parable

May 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Last week I posted this parable.

The question that remains is, “so what does the parable mean?”

Besides the obvious, you assigning meaning as it fits your experience and context, here’s what I have to add:

Up to the very end of its lifecycle, grain and chaff are one and the same thing. The wheat is the inside and the chaff is the outside. In order to separate the useful from the useless, a winnower has to give the grain time to dry, separating the wheat from its sheath, scoop the grain up and toss it high into the air. The wind that blows through the threshing floor, the place chosen to toss wheat because of the wind, blows the dry chaff from the grain into an area where it can be collected. The grain, however, falls back down to the ground where it will be gathered for use.

In Matthew 3, John the Baptist introduces Jesus as the winnower and draws the comparison between the people and the wheat.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; 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 clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Matthew 3:11-12

So many times, I’ve read this as a statement of judgment, like Jesus was some cosmic boogie man separating the bad people from the good people; like a predestination assembly line. But that’s not what’s going on here. This isn’t the sheep and goats (MT 25:31-46), this is a prophetic statement about the way that Jesus is going to transform people who believe in him. This is a commentary about a singular we.

It’s not unheard of for humanity to conform to an agricultural metaphor in Scripture. Look at how Paul describes us in 1 Corinthians:

“For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building [3:9].” God’s field will be harvested and Jesus will have a heavy hand in the work. But this transformative winnowing process is character shaping. This is what Paul refers to saying, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! [2 Cor 5:17]”

This parable begins with the understanding that the chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The divine intent of being is to join our lives to mission of Christ on the earth. So, the grain has a choice. For instance:

The moldy grain grew in the field (Ps 24:1), but didn’t know about the field or the farmer, and in turn didn’t want anymore than to stay put never knowing anything beyond the limits of its experience.

The high flying grain knew about the farmer and could see the winnower, but wanted to live life free from the farmer, afraid of the hand of the winnower. This grain was impulsive and lacked wisdom.

The burrowing grain went so far and no more. It bought into the program, but when the time came for transformation, to be gathered by the fork of the winnower, it laid low and thought no one would notice.

The grain that went all the way to the gathering was transformed into something useful. It fulfilled its purpose this side of the reaping and harvesting. Despite the discomfort of change, the grain gave itself over to the winnower and bread maker.

This grain, too, got to the point of transformation, but disagreed on the end result. In the spirit of the first rebellion, this one chose to redefine its being and purpose on its own. It ended up in the pile that could not be used.

To be in the hands of Jesus is to be transformed. It’s not comfortable. It’s not entirely what we have in mind for ourselves, in some cases, but (to borrows a sentiment from Mrs. Beaver) it is good.

Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, discipleship, jesus and the kog, matthew Tagged With: , , ,

Winnowing of the Wheat: a parable

April 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There once was a field.

In the field there was a glorious abundance of wheat stalks nearly ready for harvest. Among the wheat, their was a grain so comfortable in its covering that it refused to dry out for harvest. Holding onto its moisture, it quickly became moldy and viscous, dripping to the ground. There was another grain who saw the winnowers at work and feared the coming harvest. It forced its sheath to open, caught the wind and flew free, high above the field, only to be snatched out the sky by a young crow.

When harvest time came, one grain, after falling to the ground, burrowed deep beneath the crop and was left unharvested. That night, it was gleaned by the poor who followed behind the workers and eaten on the spot.

After the grain was left to dry, it was brought to the threshing floor and the workers began to winnow. As they tossed the harvest into the air, many grains flew free of their chaff, were sold, ground up and became the bread of Princes, Kings, prisoners and paupers. But other grains would not let go of the old dry chaff. They clung to it even as they were thrown into the fire.

Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, discipleship, jesus and the kog, matthew Tagged With: , ,

Cell Phones, McDonalds and the Bread of Life

April 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been meditating on the Bread of Life verses from John 6, specifically verse 35: “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

As Jesus continues this first “I AM” statement, you can’t help but to picture the relational importance of the common meal. The Bread of Life is a call to relationship, not food. Jesus is reconstituting the Passover meal around himself. His is the bread that sustained the Jews while the angel passed over. He is the manna that was sent from heaven to sustain the people of God and he is the Bread of life that sustains the world in God’s grace.

In Arizona, where it gets to be two hundred degrees in the Summer…that’s a little overstatement, but what’s the difference?…I remember, we used to take our kids to McDonalds because they had the boss play place. When we started to go there, our children were 2 and…well, unborn.

At the time, my wife and I had just got our first personal cell phones. They were nokia flip phones and we didn’t know how to text. I swear, it took two years to figure our predictive text. Hence, our phones just rang, and since we were some of the only people who called each other, they didn’t ring when we were at such fine eateries. At the time, the Happy Meal was center of the common meal. We’d sit together and then watch our kid(s) scream around the kids’ area.

We were there from 2000-2010, the ten years where cell phones went from flip to hip, from push apart to really smart. I watched the evolution take place at McDonalds. It was more noticeable there. In the ten year transition, I watched parents with silly Nokias engage their children (unless called) and then that began to change. As phones changed, a wall got built between mother and child, father and familiy. By the time we left in 2010, it was common to see kids running around crazy like and parents caught in the “me coma” of the hypnotic iPhone screen.

Let’s try something…next time you take your kids anywhere, leave the phone at home. If you’re going to go to McDonalds, engage an opportunity to break bread (-like substances) and build relationships. Fellas, it’s much sexier when you talk to your woman than ignore her…totally free and effective advice.

We are supposed to be “Lovin It!” but without foursquare, would we know we were there?

The people who surrounded Jesus in John 6 wanted more fast food, they wanted their stomachs filled more than their hearts. Their eyes were filled with the desire for more and they missed Jesus who was more than enough.

Don’t miss the Bread of Life. You will never hunger again.

Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, discipleship, john, preaching, sermon media

Psalm 84: a pilgrimage free from distraction

April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is genius! The mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, in an effort to shine the spotlight on a new pedestrian danger, created a special lane for people who chronically walk and text. How splendid. Even though it was an April Fool’s joke, the city will leave the lane painted for the rest of the week. When I heard it on NPR yesterday, it didn’t register as a joke. Isn’t that pathetic? Texting and walking is as commonplace as…texting and walking. It’s a wonder we know where we’re going or how we get there when we do.

Making room for permanent distraction.

Lent has been a time where my distractions have been limited. Giving something up, sacrificing, has made room for the things of life that are usually crowded out by distraction.

I gave up wine.
Rebecca gave up television.

This Lent has been wild. Lots of time not spent enjoying the fruit of the vine trying to while TEVOing everything on the air. I know…we won’t get to watch a quarter of it, so we will have actually sacrificed something in the end. It’s about clearing space. Clearing space for distraction has created space to notice things in ways I haven’t in a long time. Take a look at the Hebrew songwriter. He has a bit to say about this topic.

The Psalmist writes, “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord of the Heavenly forces.” Psalm 84 is a Psalm of observation, it is free from distraction. Look at the detail in this first line, the psalmist has had his eyes open. The very sight of it, his focus, allows him to be affected in a notable way, “My very being longs for the Lord’s courtyard.”

His eyes take to the air, where he notices the sparrow. He follows its flight to its nest beside the altars. This may have required a bit of walking, following not just curiosity, but a bird – loveliness in flight. In such proximity to the altars, the psalmist becomes ensconced in the consuming presence of worship.

“Those who put their strength in you are truly happy; pilgrimage is in their hearts.” Placing your strength in the Lord is not just a passing prayer, a moment in the sanctuary. Joy comes from the pilgrimage of faith that is made daily, hour by hour, sacrifice by sacrifice. And this is not a pilgrimage of miles, it is journey of passion.

Distraction robs the heart of passion and robs faith of its pilgrimage.
And its reward.

“They go from strength to strength,” the psalmist writes. In other words, as they journey, they get even stronger. The work of faith, trust and love creates more of it. When we make the pilgrimage of the heart, we grow in proximity to the Lord, which again, creates room for even more faith, trust and love. The distance caused by distraction is destructive. I notice that the further I feel from Jesus, its not him I don’t believe in…it’s me.

The Psalm concludes in such an awesome way: “Better is a single day in your courtyards, than a thousand anywhere else! I would prefer to stand outside the entrance of my God’s house then live comfortable in the tents of the wicked.” This is a man who knows how to focus.

The end of verse eleven sums it up, “The Lord gives — doesn’t withhold! — good things to those who walk with integrity.” The Hebrew word, Tamim, means, “honesty, sincerity and integrity.” Those are practiced qualities that one strengthens with each use.

  • What distracts you?
  • What do you allow your distractions to distract you from?

    • Does your walk read more like, “The Lord gives — doesn’t withhold! — good things to those who walk with…cell phones?” I’m not sure it works out that way.

    This Holy Week, notice the sparrow. Follow it. Just notice.

    Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, discipleship, Lent, psalms

    Finding and Being Found

    January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

    In the passage, John 1:35-51, which I’m preparing to preach on Sunday, the greek word eurisko is used five times. The word means “I find.”

    In v.41, Jesus finds Andrew.
    Also in v.41, Andrew reports to Simon that he has found the Messiah.
    In v. 43, Jesus finds Philip.
    In v. 45, Philip finds Nathaniel.
    Also in v. 45, Philip reports that they have found “him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.”

    This implies that there was a profound amount of seeking. Johns disciples were seeking the Messiah, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, but the Messiah — the Light — was also seeking them. It reminds me of the last line of Psalm 23, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.”

    Eurisko implies a deep sense of seeking.

    When we seek in darkness, it’s hard to tell what we are looking for,
    but when we seek in the light, we find and are found.

    Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, john, NTGreek, preaching

    Jesus, Mr. Rogers and the Role of Neighbor

    January 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

    “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son.” Jn 1:14

    John, the evangelist, provides his reader with a deep sense of incarnational theology: Christ’s selfless abiding among his people. This was a radical worldview shifting idea, and still is. To this point, the deities sat removed from humanity, annoyed with humanity and only became god incarnate to meddle or get someone pregnant.

    This God on earth idea changed the way God’s relationship with humanity was represented from that point in history forward. God among us. God with us – Immanuel. God not meddling, not coercing, not abandoning.

    The Greek verb, skeinao, literally means “pitched a tabernacle tent.” The holy place got built next door. Eugene Peterson interpreted this passage, “The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.”

    A less subtle understanding is that God became our neighbor.
    Even less so, we became his.
    This reminds me of Fred Rogers, changing his shoes, switching his sweater, looking into the camera asking, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” That was a request, a question. The power in the relationship was yours.

    This should transform the way we understand Jesus – as he said to an expert in the law: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets [Mt 22:37-40].”

    How are these two commandments alike? They both share Jesus as their center.

    Jesus is the Lord that we love heart, soul and mind. He is also, our neighbor. Remember, he moved in next door? Recently I listened to a podcast and heard Peter Rollins describe MT 22 passage like this: “[sic] I’ve always thought about these two commandments like they were twins walking down the street. You can’t tell them apart. They are different, but we can’t tell the difference.”

    In the opening of John’s Gospel, the author locates Jesus not only in historical context, but also next door to you. The question of how to treat our neighbor is a dominant gospel theme. How we treat our neighbor (which the Greek renders ‘not you, but the other one’) has 50% share in the way our faith is lived. Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? That story was told in response the question, “Who is my neighbor?” One could look at the entire ministry of Jesus as a ministry to neighbor.

    When a new family moves into your neighborhood, how do you respond? Do you receive them? Ignore them? Wait for them to come to you? Remember that verse in Hebrews? “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it [13:2].”

  • Does this change how we view our neighbors?
  • Does love of neighbor (as though they were Jesus) make you feel uncomfortable?
  • Why?


    • Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, john, new testament, NTGreek

    darkness used to live here

    January 15, 2012 By 1 Comment

    The Gospel of John, 1:5, “…and darkness did not overcome it.”

    John does not implicitly say that light has overcome darkness. We can be sure, and find a divine sort of comfort and peace in the fact, that it has already overcome darkness, in a future sense.

    John is addressing the reality that in all of our lives, in all that we experience and can see, it often feels like darkness is darkness is on the march towards victory. As if twilight is soon to be fully eclipsed by the night. Here, as always, feeling

    But God has even set the moon and stars in their courses; who made the great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever, who made the sun to rule over the day, for his steadfast love endures forever, the moon and stars to rule over the night, for his steadfast love endures forever [Ps 136:7-9].”

    We have seen the Light of God’s glory in Jesus and that Light, that brilliant and dazzling glory, will not only put the electric company out of business and render the sun impotent, but that Light will take its rightful place as our one true source:

    And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb [Rev 21:23].”

    Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, john Tagged With: , , ,

    Where Christianity and Islam Collide

    January 5, 2012 By 3 Comments

    Last night I stumbled upon this interview with Eliza Griswold, author of a book called The Tenth Parallel. In the book, the author describes her journalistic adventure into an area where more than half of the world’s Muslims collide with nearly half of the world’s Christians in daily life, matters of faith and politics.

    When I looked up The Tenth Parallel on Google, I found an interview with Terri Gross and Eliza Gross linked here. Take a look at the following video interview, especially the last three sections. The last one includes the inspiring story Dr. Hawa, whom Griswold met while traveling. You don’t want to skip that one. Pastors, there’s a great sermon illustration.

    Griswold joined Franklin Graham on a trip to Khartoum, Sudan to meet with President Omar al-Bashir. From the Fresh Aire interview:

    “What President Bashir did was try to convince Graham to convert to Islam. The two men engaged in this faith-based one-upmanship where each tried to convert the other to his respective faith. … [Then] Franklin remembered that in his pocket he had a 2004 election pin for the re-election of George W. Bush. So he reached into his pocket and he wanted to give it to Bashir and he said, ‘Mr. President, you’ll be speaking to my president later on today and I think you should tell him you’re his first voter here in the Sudan.’ In one way, to read what that situation really meant, was Graham showing Bashir that he had the ear of the administration — that here’s where faith and foreign policy were really intermingled. Graham was not an emissary of the U.S. government in any way, yet the pin, which he’d taken from the desk of Karl Rove’s secretary, indicated that he had access to the uppermost echelons of power — and that’s what he was trying to tell Bashir. Bashir only met with Graham because he feared his country would be the next country, after Iraq and Afghanistan, to face U.S. invasion.”

    Here’s the Video Interview. Great (and very kind) perspective on the collision of Christianity and Islam.

    Sobering quotes from the Kindle site for her book:

    Due to the explosive growth of Christianity over the past fifty years, there are now 493 million Christians living south of the tenth parallel—nearly a fourth of the world’s Christian population of 2.5 billion. To the north live the majority of the continent’s 367 million Muslims; they represent nearly one quarter of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These figures are an effective reminder that four out of five Muslims live outside the Middle East.

    This is a good reminder for Americans. Islam and Christianity are taking root in the Global South. The continental US does not represent very much of the global demographic. To wit, Griswold notes, “Today’s typical Protestant is an African woman, not a white American man.”

    Read that again if you need to.

    Christianity is growing in the tenth parallel, “When it comes to gaining followers, Archbishop Akinola’s Anglican Church is more threatened by the rise of Pentecostalism than by Islam.”

    By way of another example, Griswold ends the Fresh Aire interview saying:

    Beyond the demonization of the other is really a fight [between the West and the individual] in terms of what peoples’ rights are. The real conflicts are not the religions, but inside the religions. Who gets to speak for God…the liberals or the conservatives?

    Thinking through these this material isn’t only about Christianity and Islam.
    It makes me ask the questions, “Where is my 10th Parallel?”
    Where does my faith collide with values in conflict with my own?
    Where am I trying to keep another culture separate from my own?
    What do I do about it?
    How do I respond to being in the majority?
    Does that align with the values of my faith?

    Interesting stuff. Look forward to reading the book. Just passing it on…

    Filed Under: books, contemporary hermeneutic, missionalism, reconciliation Tagged With: , , , , ,

    Trains Near The On Ramp

    December 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

    Last night my family and I spent some time with an incredible couple from our church. After we arrived, I quickly learned that one of them was an ardent and committed train enthusiast. I had never seen model trains and tracks, nor had I heard the whirls and whistles of rattling locomotion as it circles the room.

    To be honest…I need a train set now.

    Watching them was a transcendent experience. There’s something mesmerizing about trains. It’s not just the train, but the accomplishment of the engineering that built them and the precision that moves them.

    Even watching them on a small scale propels you into a world where the history of sounds, sights and dreams fill your imagination.


    During our conversation, our host remarked several times how complicated the world of trains had become. The engines are chips and software. The controls have sub-routines and you need to be an engineer to repair them. What started as a childhood hobby, was no longer for children. Things have become to complex.

    Towards the end of the night he mentioned how the hobbyist industry has realized their error: they have moved beyond their target. Children aren’t getting into trains, because they aren’t born with Ph.D.’s. What used to be fun is now only fun if you are sufficiently specialized.

    This got me thinking about the Church today. The Acts 2 church looks like it had “toy train” appeal. Thousands wanted it in their lives. They had to have it. They understood their need for it. There was space for everyone to play. But like in the toy train world, things have changed for the Church as well.

  • Has passion and commitment become a hobby that’s too complicated for too many?
  • Has the “Church” left its intended audience behind?

    • If we were a hobby company, how could we put the “trains” back into the hands of the “children”? How could we get beyond the 80/20 rule, where 20% of the people know how to drive and repair the church for the remaining 80% who watch it go around? How do we build a model that anyone can love? That anyone can share? That anyone will pass on to the next generation?

    I realize that there are no easy answers, but these are some important questions and if we can’t ask those questions, then we know where the tracks are headed…to the highway.

    There’s nothing wrong with trains, they’re just getting too close to the on ramp.

    Filed Under: contemporary hermeneutic, ecclesia, thinkingoutloud, writing on