The ax and the fan

Second Sunday of Advent
Gospel: Mt 3:1-12
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120725.cfm

John was preparing a way for the Lord by giving people an opportunity to repent. Repentance is more than just deciding to not do evil anymore. It’s recognizing that one’s actions have consequences and negative impacts on oneself, others, and the world to such an extent that they desire change and seek transformation. John was trying to awaken the people of his day to repentance. 

In his interaction with religious leaders, he shows how they’ve been corrupted by power with the justification that they were the people chosen by God. John even has the audacity to say to them that God can make anything chosen. John goes on to highlight the systematic impacts through the images of a brood of vipers and a tree awaiting to be cut down and thrown into a fire. The image of the brood of vipers is a symbol of the institutional power held by the religious authority and the tree showcases the generational sin. These institutional and generational systems, John preaches, will be destroyed with the coming of the Messiah.. 

For individuals, though, there is redemption. People are like plants meeting the harvester. The harvester with a winnowing fan separates the grain from the chaff. The harvester then clears out the chaff, stores the grain, and burns off the chaff. When John speaks of the people, he is including the religious leaders as well. They have the ability to be transformed like everyone else. While the systems they have benefited from and willingly contributed to lead to the downfall and struggles of many, they too are redeemable by God. The Messiah will take away ours and their worthless parts so that only our good fruit remains. 

We, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, give ourselves over to institutional and generational sin. We justify it because it’s just how it is or just how it’s always been. It’s hard to recognize our contribution when we all share in it. We also have systematic ways to keep ourselves asleep and numb from recognizing and seeing the impacts of these systems we created. That’s why we must awaken to it. 

Prophets like John were trying to shine a light into the overlooked darkness of their times. They were showing their communities that we have to accept accountability for our actions and let that accountability transform us. We need to critique the systems we take for granted and examine the impacts of the systems we’ve put in place so that we can transform them for the betterment of all. It’s not replacing one system for another, but truly transforming it into something different, something whole.

God is calling all of us to redemption and transformation, oppressors and oppressed alike.