We rarely, I think, picture Jesus as primarily a judgement figure. When we close our eyes and imagine Jesus for us, visions of fire and brimstone are typically far from our minds. Personally, with a newborn living in my home, I lean on the picture of Jesus welcoming children instead of seeing him as someone wielding a winnowing fork while surrounded by unquenchable fire. Yet John the Baptist, in our reading from the gospel according to Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, imagined the Messiah to be someone who primarily judges. This Messiah would come into our world, a place where God's love, generosity, and justice already existed but was, currently, obscured. Work needed to be done to bring all the good stuff of God to fruition. The Messiah, then, would need to get his hands dirty and would be active in the world at large. John used an image of someone wielding a winnowing fork as an example of what the Messiah would do. A winnowing fork was a tool used to sort the good grains of wheat from the rest of the stalk. It was the good grains of wheat that produced good flour while the rest would be given to animals or tossed aside. The Messiah wasn't gentle in the way we think a Messiah to be. The Messiah was active, efficient, and would be harsh. And if we do think about the Messiah being harsh, we usually want him to act that way towards other people and not to us. 

Yet, the rest of Jesus' story after this point doesn't really match this vision. Throughout his 3 years of public ministry, from his baptism to his death on the cross, Jesus rarely is the one with a winnowing fork in his hands; instead, we are the ones acting as if we're the ones who can recognize the good from the bad. We imagine ourselves to be judges and we, like many people in Luke, have no problem casting a judgement on Jesus. Because Jesus has a habit of hanging out with the wrong kind of people in the wrong kind of places and for entirely the wrong reasons. He has meals with people he shouldn't, talks to people he should avoid, and keeps acting as if the gospel is real, honest-to-goodness, good news for the poor. Jesus' first judgement is to preach, teach, and act as if God will be God and that God will keep God's promises. God's promises are always rooted in a God who gives life because that's just what God does. We are thrilled when God gives us life, transforming us in ways we can't imagine. But we're less thrilled when we see God doing the same thing in others, especially in those we avoid. Throughout the gospel according to Luke, the text will show us how our judgements are not God's. The Messiah with the winnowing fork doesn't just separate people in the good and the bad. The Messiah also transforms us, pulling out the good grains of faith from the chaff inherent in our lives. And by encountering Jesus over and over again, through the confession of sins, the promise of forgiveness, and by meeting him in the bread and drink, we also discover what it's like to live as the baptized and Beloved ones we actually are.