HESUS JOY CHRIST / Matthew's Three Fold Discussion -- Verse 12

click this link to view the HESUS JOY CHRIST / Matthew's Three Fold animation

Continuing on to discuss verse 12 of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Three, and the animation Matthew's Three Fold . I might miss next week as I will be camping.

Verse 12 Gospel Text New International Version

¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Verse 12 HESUS JOY CHRIST / Matthew's Three Fold animation text

. . . ¹² his spirit will test you, and gather you in, and there will be no one left out.”

Verse 12 Discussion

What's a winnowing fork ? What's a threshing floor ? John is using the metaphor of threshing to illustrate what God is doing with the people of the time.

Once the wheat had been harvested the grain had to be separated from the straw and chaff before it could be ground into flour. This was done outdoors on a threshing floor with a winnowing fork. The wheat would be trampled to make the grains fall off of the stalk or straw. Then the winnowing fork was used to throw the mix into the air where the wind would blow away the chaff, which is anything other than the grain, and the grain, being heavier would fall straight down and not be carried away with the wind. One would be left with a large broad pile of chaff and a smaller separate pile of grain. The grain would be collected and the chaff would be discarded and possibly burned as waste.

So the good people are the grain who pass the test and the bad people are the chaff who will be wasted. The winnowing tests the mix or people and then each group, either grain, good people, or chaff, bad people, are dealt with appropriately.

Once again, John does not see a merciful God, and in his illustration, the chaff, or bad people, are burned up with unquenchable fire. But once again, if God created everything and saw that it is good, then where do bad people come from ? Joan on the other hand, in her Church of One, says something different.

In the animation text, the whole testing metaphor of threshing and winnowing is summed up in the phrase “. . . his spirit will test you, and gather you in, and there will be no one left out.” This is different from what John is saying in that there is not any waste. If God created an entirely good world, than all is good and there is nothing left over to waste. The trick is to see the good in everything, rather than limiting what is judged as being good to a portion of what exists.

Nevertheless there will still be testing and failure. A marriage relationship is full of testing and failure, and how does one deal with failure ? Forgiveness. The testing is more to learn about what is possible. Just because the hammer misses the nail doesn't mean it will always miss the nail. Practice teaches what is necessary and possible with whatever means one has at their disposal. A hammer that misses the nail likely still hits the board nearby. There is a certain level of success that encourages one to try again. When a spouse fails as a spouse, the other spouse still tries again to get the intended result. They may change their approach, and the failing spouse may try again in the light of the last mistake, with a new approach. Most mistakes are not fatal, and therefore the opportunity to try again is usually there. This is the nature of infinite forgiveness. This is necessary. This is common today. Joan is acknowledging this.

“His spirit” is the masculine form of the relationship between the spouses. This spirit is like Christ and ministers to the spouses as Christ ministered to the world. The relationship will test the spouses and they will fail but go on to forgive and be forgiven. One may have no control over the other spouse, so this forgiveness from that spouse is a gift from God, or the infinite. This makes the marriage relationship a gift from God or the infinite.

There has been discussion of relationships that identifies different types of relationships in terms of the participants being parents, adults, or children. All three roles exist in a marriage relationship. Sometimes a spouse acts like a child and the other spouse responds as a child. Other times a spouse acts like a child and the other spouse responds as a parent. Again, sometimes a spouse acts like a child and the other spouse responds like an adult. We are to approach God, or the infinite, as a child, with an open and loving mind, ready to hear the wonderful truth of existence and accept it with Joy. We are to approach God, or the infinite, as a parent, full of love for what could be, and gently encouraging and guiding the manifestations to fruition. We are to approach God, or the infinite, as an adult, aware of what is, what could be, and what has been, seeking companionship.

A marriage relationship does not exist in a vacuum – it is affected by the world around it and has an affect on the world around it. One marriage can lead to many more, and One marriage is all it takes. The only ones who can witness to this One relationship are the participants themselves.

Placing marriage as an asset to society, and supporting the spouses in their roles is essential to maintain one and all marriages. When one fails, others may follow. A society of infinite good supports all marriages in their many forms, as they are essential to such a society and every member of such a society knows this. The strains on a marriage are further testing and when failure comes, forgiveness is how to deal with it. Marriage is too important to abandon, even though the darkest places in the world could easily be found in a marriage.

Christ, Jesus, went to hell and overcame the demons, and this is what is necessary in marriage. There will definitely be as many challenges in marriage as Christ had to face, and when failure comes, one's awareness must die in the failure or else die in the world, overcome and be reborn to a new life and awareness. Jesus had to die in his awareness that society was not going to embrace his understanding officially. Judas had other ideas. Judas may have felt that Jesus could overcome the official understanding of the time if he was forced to face it head on. Jesus knew in his heart that such an embrace was not coming. Judas had to see it for himself, and did not die to his awareness that Jesus teaching should be embraced officially, and so died to the world, separating himself from God in the process.

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Monday, May 23^rd, 2011

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