The Ax at the Root

The gospels recount a poignant meeting between John the Baptist and Jesus that invites us to look toward Lent as it creeps over the near horizon.

The meeting is mediated by two of John's followers. John sends them to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?" (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:19). Why John asks is anybody's guess. Some think he knew the answer but wanted his disciples to hear it for themselves. Some think he himself was genuinely puzzled: this Messiah was not the figure he had expected. That might be true. In Matthew 3:11, John threatens the Pharisees and Sadducees with a violent end: "Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire" (cf. also Luke 3:9). The locus of the fire is pretty clear: "He (the one who will come after John) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Well, maybe there's hope, if this "brood of vipers" (Matthew 3:7) is to find its way into the baptismal waters under the Messiah's ministration. But if they don't, this fearsome figure will sort them out accordingly: "His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:13).

(A small aside: two of our city-born postulants recently confessed that they had no idea what a winnowing fan, a threshing floor or chaff were. If you're reading this from a stone-walled urban world, threshing is that moment during the harvesting of grain-bearing crops such as wheat and rice when the grain is separated from the rest of the plant. Farmers in Jesus' day would throw the cut stalks onto a flat, hard-packed floor and toss them into the air with a large rake to shake the grain loose. The empty husks left over after threshing were the chaff, which was good for nothing but burning.)

Back to our story. Along comes Jesus. No winnowing fan, no threshing floor, no fire-breathing prophet wearing a sign that says: "Your end has come." Instead, Jesus proclaims the good news of a kingdom governed by God's unwavering love and then gives a hint of what it will look like by making all sorts of broken human beings whole. We might well imagine that John would question whether this preacher and wonder-worker could indeed be the one he had promised would come after him.

Jesus' answer does not deny John's prophecy. It deepens it. Jesus tells the messengers, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them." He adds, "And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me" (Matthew 11:4-6). We can almost see Jesus looking over the heads of the messengers to the faithful prophet lying in his prison cell, wondering if he had wasted his breath and his life on a prediction that had failed to come true. We can almost hear Jesus saying to this greatest of those born of women (Matthew 11:11): "Don't worry, John. You had it right--you just didn't have the full picture. The ax does lie at the roots of the trees, but the trees are not Pharisees and Sadducees. The trees are that twisted, tormented growth born of a lie believed in a garden. The trees are all the harm wrought by sin and death among the beloved children of God. The ax--and I wield it-- is already at work cutting down that growth at its roots. Ultimately, it will destroy the poisoned seed that has robbed my sisters and brothers of their ability to see reality as it is, to walk freely and without fear through the reign of God, to live together without biases or barriers, to discover that poverty need not be poverty nor wealth wealth. What you hear and see me doing is only a sign, real enough for now, of what I am really doing. I will destroy evil. I will destroy sin. I will destroy death. Oh yes, the ax is at work, and only the trees that bear good fruit will survive it. Don't be shocked that it is taking time. The roots are old and tough and deeply buried. And meanwhile, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the bereaved, and the poor need what little I can do for them now so that they and all sufferers who come after them will believe the promise." One hopes John heard and understood the answer, and died satisfied in work well done.

That was then. Now we have seen what the ax was truly intended to accomplish. Now we have known the fire Jesus came to cast on the earth (Luke 12:49)--the fire that is God's living presence among us (cf. Exodus 13:21). However, the work is not finished. The ax and the fire are still laboring to remove the ancient undergrowth and leave the crop of righteousness and peace free to grow to harvest time (cf. Zechariah 8:12; 2 Corinthians 9:10, etc.) Lent hovers before us as a season for pruning away all that hinders that growth. Lent invites us to throw all the chaff, all those possessions, habits, thoughts and activities that are empty and feed no one, into the consuming fire of God's forgiving love.

It would be a pity if it were we, and not Jesus, who left John's ardent hope disappointed after all.

©2008, Abbey of St. Walburga