Advent 2 A
Transcribed from a
sermon given on
December 8, 2013
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
This past week, on Wednesday, I
completed my duty as a citizen of serving on a jury. As we were on the jury and
I was looking at the readings for this Sunday I saw something similar between
the idea of separating the wheat from the chaff and what we as members of the
jury were told to do. The judge had told the members of the jury to listen with
an open mind. Don’t make any final decisions until all the evidence has bee presented,
but weigh the evidence. Weigh what people say. Discern what is said that is
useful, and what is not useful. What appears to be truthful, and what is not
truthful We were to discern the difference between that which was the wheat,
the information, the evidence, that we need to make a decision and the chaff,
the stuff that for one reason or another needed to be ignored. It was a
discernment that we were to make.
We were also told that we were
absolutely not to talk about the trial to anyone, including each other, during
the time the trial was going on. And that each one of us individually was to
make this discernment. To me it all seemed kind of clear about half way through
the trial. It was like I’m done; I think I know what is going on. And it seemed
real clear to me who was telling the truth and who I didn’t think was telling
the truth. You are sitting there very close to the person, you can see their
eyes, you can see their hands, you can hear their voice and you can really get
a pretty good sense of who they are. But I was wondering what was going on in
the heads of the other jurors.
We had quite a variety of people. We
had all ages from someone who was in college to people who were retired. We had
men and women and people of all races and ethnicities. There were different
education levels and different occupations. We had a real cross section of the
people of San Luis Obispo county. So I was curious how other people were
experiencing the trial.
When we got into the jury room we
are supposed to not tell each other right away what our decision is but rather
to talk about the evidence. So we started going around talking about the evidence.
And it was amazing to me, maybe not amazing, but I felt good about the fact
that everyone there saw the same things as being chaff and the same things as
being reasonable. The people who testified that I went “I don’t know about
this.” The rest of the people went “I don’t know about those people.” And the
ones that I thought yeah, I really like what this one had to say. It was really
useful and right on and clear, and it was the same thing with the rest of the
jury. It was reinforcement to me that everyone can tell the difference between
the wheat and the chaff. We are all able to make that discernment if we pay
attention, and we take the time and we are open minded about it. It doesn’t
matter how much education we have, it doesn't matter how much experience we
have, we all have that ability. We can know what is useful and true and what is
not useful and probably not true. We all have that ability.
Here John the Baptist is talking
about Christ coming to do something like that. Let’s talk for a moment about wheat
and chaff. When John the Baptist was talking he was talking to an agrarian people.
People who had all seen farmers going about with their fork, lifting up the
harvest and having the breeze take the chaff away and the grain fall down to
the ground. They knew what that was about. But most of us have not had that
experience.
Just a reminder here that as the
wheat is grown and as the grain begins to form the chaff comes around that
grain to protect it. It is hard and keeps out the bugs, and keeps out the wind
and makes that grain of wheat safe as the grain develops. But once the grain
has fully matured, now the chaff is a problem because you can’t put the grain
of wheat in the ground with the chaff still on it. It can’t sprout and grow and
become a plant. And you can’t eat the wheat with the chaff still on it because
the chaff is indigestible and it would make us sick if we didn’t get most of it
off. So it is necessary once the wheat has matured, once the grain has matured,
to separate that grain. To separate that which will grow into something
meaningful, which can nurture and strengthen people, from the chaff that grew
up around it as it was developing.
It is not saying that there is
something wrong with chaff. Chaff is necessary. The grain would not have been
able to come to maturity without the chaff around it. But once the grain is
mature, that chaff isn’t needed any more.
So the image of separating the wheat
from the chaff it is not about some people are chaff and some people are wheat,
it is that all of us, every single one of us, is a grain of wheat, a grain of
something that can nurture other people, that can grow into something more, to that
which God intends for us to be. And we all have chaff. We all have stuff that
is left over.
You see none of us got out of
childhood without some scars. Absolutely none of us were raised by perfect
parents. They might have been good enough parents or they might have been
excellent parents, or they might have been really been bad parents, or some
combination thereof. But none of us had a perfect childhood. None of us always
felt safe, secure, loved and appreciated. Even if we had an ideal family at
home we might have been bullied at school. Or had a neighbor that picked on us,
or something. A little child is a very fragile thing. Sometimes we can’t handle
as children the stuff that happens to us. And so we develop what Freud called
defense mechanisms. Freud was the first one to talk about this, but other people
have elaborated on it and refined it. This idea is that we have mechanism by
which we protect ourselves because some of the stuff that happens to us as
children is more than we can deal with.
So we develop habit patterns to
help us feel safe. Perhaps we forget things that traumatized us. Or perhaps we
became the comedian in the family and we always had to be telling a joke
because we couldn’t stand the pain. Or maybe we become shy and withdrawn
because we are afraid of getting hurt. Whatever it is that we did, that we took
on, that we carry with us as a way in which we survived.
Those defense mechanisms are absolutely
essential because sometimes what is happening to us is more that we can deal
with at that moment. So we hide away, we put this protection on, but that protection,
that which protected us as a child, as a seed which was maturing, that which
protected us is now in the way. It keeps us from being able to grow into the
person God wants us to be. It keeps us from being able to nurture and love
others with the purity that God wants us. So at some point we’ve to to let go
of the chaff.
(The recording ended here.)
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