Every Christmas and Easter I look for a small moment of focus within the familiar stories. It helps me enter more fully into the holiness of these celebrations of Jesus in both his God-ness and his humanness.
This year, I was reading a plan on the Bible app when Luke 22:31-33 grabbed me in a new way:
Jesus says, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
Peter answers, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!”
Here’s what caught my attention: Peter did, indeed, go to both prison and to death for the sake of Christ, but he couldn’t have done so without the sifting that happened first. A sifting in which Jesus prayed for Peter—even as we are told He still intercedes for us. A prayer that was answered, for while Peter failed in that moment to acknowledge Christ, his overall faith did not fail or he wouldn’t have been able to accept the forgiveness Christ offered to him afterwards. Without experiencing his complete denial of Christ—and experiencing Christ’s complete forgiveness toward him—he would not have been ready for prison or death on behalf of his Savior and Lord. At some level we know this. We often think of it as “testing,” but I think “sifting” is a more interesting image.
While I don’t know anything about sifting wheat, I do understand what it means to sift flour. I don’t often sift while baking these days, but my mother did when I was little. I remember standing on a chair to reach the counter and sifting flour into cookie dough. The powdery flour was passed through a fine mesh that separated the particles until they fell like a shower of snow into the bowl. When the process was complete, the larger, more stubborn clumps remained in the sifter. Then there were two options—break up the lumps and keep sifting, or dump the lumps in the sink, leaving them out of the dough entirely.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to think about being sifted. The pressing down, the making “me” smaller in order to blended seamlessly into the kingdom of God and His work. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s frightening, because we see in the Bible examples of those who were sifted. Men like Peter and Job, who initially remained lumps in the sifter, ready to be discarded. Satan appeared to have won his victory in keeping them out of the dough.
But God—
God appeared to each of them. To Job from a whirlwind, to Peter as the resurrected Lord. And to each He offered another chance to choose Him, an opportunity to accept their weakness and failure, but to also accept God’s power and forgiveness and love.
This Holy Week, so many of us are in the midst of being sifted. The process is stressful. It accentuates our weaknesses. It often ends with our failure in one way or another. But when we keep our hearts open toward God, He steps into that sifting place, picks up our lumpy selves and prepares us for the sifter again through an abundance of of HIs mercy and grace. When we choose to believe that He means what He says—that He loves us no matter what—we emerge from the sifting with a stronger, deeper faith and a greater trust in His love towards us. Armed with experiential knowledge of our own weakness and of Christ’s strength we can then endure a future we cannot now see.
As we celebrate Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection this weekend, what aspect of the story is foremost in your mind and heart? How has God been revealing Himself to you this week?
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Thank you for these hard but beautiful words.
Lovely, inspiring post, Anne! Thank you!
Powerful imagery – thank you for sharing.