The Wheat and the Chaff
Filtering and Faithfulness in our Christian Witness
Jesus is described as one who will “separate the wheat from the chaff” (see Matthew 3:12 and Luke 3:17). Sometimes these texts are viewed as “judgement passages.” In other words, they are seen as ways in which Jesus will do away with those who don’t follow the ways of God (the “chaff”, which is material left over after the wheat is harvested) and will welcome those who do (the “wheat”).
While there may be some truth to this, the immediate idea in the Gospel texts seem to be that Jesus will sort out what is essential, good, and true, while pushing aside and getting rid of those things which are not. This application makes sense in our current Christian context. It is so easy to add our own spin on what comprises our basic witness to the Christian faith. We tend to identify the ethnic groups, political parties, and even religious gatherings with which we are comfortable as “wheat” (essential to the faith) and the ways of others as “chaff” (expendable or even worthy of destruction).
It is important to remember that Jesus never called followers to “the bare minimum,” even though this is a common message in American Christianity. We tend to ask, just as the rich young ruler in the Gospels did, something like, “What is the bare minimum I can do to be saved?”
In Mark 10:17-31, Jesus allows the young man to check things off the list that he had learned about following God. Then Jesus shocks him and the crowd: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”
Jesus was not trying to trick the young man. Nor was he trying to embarrass him (Jesus “loved him”). Instead, Jesus was demonstrating that being a Christian means putting the ways of God as expressed in the person and work of Jesus above all else. The ways of Jesus become the defining priority and the guiding standard of our lives. Nothing else - not our politics, our other relationships, or our wealth — are to be placed above the ways of Jesus.
So, when we hear things like this:
You can’t be a Christian if you vote ____________ (fill in the blank).
You have to be a member of ______________ church/denomination to be a real Christian.
You must believe like I do on this (non-essential) doctrine in order to be a Christian.
We should be skeptical. These phrases can imply that there are things that are equal to or even more important than following Jesus and his ways. This also doesn’t mean that commitments to certain ethical and theological issues are unimportant. However, we can’t recklessly or blindly make such pronouncements without an eye toward making the priorities of Jesus our own.
There are Christians who seek the “wheat” of the message of God in all political parties. There are Christians in a variety of denominations and non-denominational circles. There are Christians who disagree on MANY non-essential issues. Until we acknowledge this, we risk falling into error ourselves — valuing the chaff over the wheat.
To be fair, there is a lot of chaff in all three of the categories mentioned above, and so consistently coming back to the ways of Jesus highlighted in the Gospels and in the rest of the Bible, keeps us from unfairly excluding others, while also keeping us from mistaking the unimportant for the essential.
No question that Charles and I seem always to be on the same page. I like that. Part of that, I suspect, is that as pastors we open our hearts and minds to what Jesus is telling us to do. As his hands and feet, our actions must reflect who our Lord is and what our Lord would do -- the "what would Jesus do" test. I'm confident it works 100 percent of the time.