What Invitation Was Missed?

We look for you and did not find you,
We cried out to you and you did not hear.
You sent messages when we asked for the Messenger,
Cool water when we prayed for fire.

Your watchers looked but did not see me,
Because they looked for a Lamb and I came as a Lion,
A child but I came as an Everlasting Father,
A sower but I came as a Reaper.

Behold there he is!
Twice a cedar, walking in the hills,
Skin bronze, face flint, eyes fire!
Crowned with seven horns of eyes,
The winnowing fork in his hand!

This was a vision I perceived while praying at the event. The back wall of the auditorium of Petra church was gone. I saw a gigantic version of Jesus, similar to the imagery of the Second Coming, walking in the hills behind the church.

winnowing fork to me holds important ideas about God’s judgement revealed in the basic physics of this grain processing method.

Did you gird yourself as a man?
No you melted like a woman.*
Because you fear the fork.
How else will seed be made for planting?
Do you think only of bread for eating?
You turned away because of your shameful chaff,
but see, son, you could be rid of it.

gird yourself as a man is a reference to a frequent idiom in the Bible of preparation for seriousness and action (Job 38:3, 40:7, Isaiah 8:9; Jeremiah 1:17; Luke 12:35-47, 1 Peter 1:13). This particular phrase is closest to Job 38:3 where God wants to press Job with deep questions that will reveal the heart of his struggle and God’s identity. The picture here, some would say, comes from a culture of robes, tunics, and loose-fitting clothing where the first step in running or entering a fight is to “gird-up” one’s clothes to allow total mobility (see 1 Kings 18:46). This imagery is important for the recovery of a true masculinity. If God commands us to gird ourselves for the serious task at hand, it is an acknowledgement of our capacity which he invested in us. Notice the command at God’s confrontation is not to grovel, but to prepare and stand. Our identity, somehow, is respected and preserved, but neither as the unquestioned authority who avoids confrontation, nor the doubtful simp who collapses under it, but as one who should be ready to stand in judgement before God, knowing that doing so will refine him for righteous action.

melted like a woman I really struggled when this came up in the prayer because it does not seem accurate or honoring of women. This is not a Biblical or correct picture of a woman: someone who lacks substance or strength. I thought about changing the line several times. The reason I kept it was because the misogyny of such a statement captures a stereotype of a “prefect woman” that corresponds to a toxic masculinity. When men cannot gird themselves for real confrontation and action before God to the benefit of others, they enter a fantasy construct of uncontested male power: “the main character” which meets the corresponding needy and overly-receptive waifu or damsel in distress. This has entered the dynamics of the church as it has lost its orientation as a missional community — an community of action — the girded man. When the church gathers primarily to feel something and sets this — rather than true, difficult, grinding, loving action — as the ultimate object of our worship, we are the “melting Bride” rather than the virtuous Wife (Prov 31). This problematic ultra-receptive and overly-effeminate stereotype in misogynistic culture corresponds to a spiritual posture in the church that emphasizes emotion and familiar spirits in subjection to systems of control over the freedom of identity in covenant by principle, reason, and obedience.

How else will seed be made for planting? Do you think only of bread for eating? Two things result in the winnowing process: seed stock for the next planting and grain to be used as food. In the confrontation of God winnowing the man girded for action, Jesus separates out the overly-complex and inaccurate chaff from the true Gospel seed. One way of thinking of seed as (1) identity (embryo), (2) fuel to start growth (endosperm), and (3) a means of protection and delivery or transport (seed coat).

Therefore winnowing refines first the identity of Jesus (and our identity) which is the heart of the Gospel seed. Is this Jesus? Second, it refines the fuel to start growth. Is this his Life and Truth? Third, it frees natural and effective delivery. Is this his Way? We should note that as our human sophistication in ministry has grown, the organic multiplication of those ministries has not. This is not because sophistication and multiplication have a inverse relationship, as a fundamentalist spirit would claim. Rather, it is because sophistication without winnowing becomes inefficient, non-distributive, and non-participatory. The drive behind sophistication — when not based on ambition — is a desire to serve better, which is not wrong. But when this doesn’t acknowledge God’s first purpose making seed — the propagation of the life-giving crop — too many resources are consumed as bread simply maintaining our sedentary system.