IN LUKE 1, as we’ve seen, Zechariah the priest had been chosen to be part of the team to enter the holy place of the Jerusalem temple and offer incense. There, to his amazement and fear, he encountered the angel Gabriel, who gave him the good news that he and his wife Elizabeth would at long last have a son. It doesn’t take Luke long to tell the story of the encounter, which literally left Zechariah speechless. But who knows how long the entire encounter actually lasted? Did Zechariah have to take some time to catch his breath and recover his wits after Gabriel left?

What Luke does tell us, however, is that the people were waiting for Zechariah to come back outside, where the priests would traditionally give a blessing to them after the incense offering. They began to wonder among themselves what was taking so long. You know the feeling. Something is supposed to happen, now; you expect it, like waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop.

The verb Luke uses suggests someone who is watching and waiting. He uses the word several times in his gospel and in the book of Acts. In Acts 3:5, for example, the word describes the disabled man sitting at the temple gate, looking up expectantly at Peter and hoping for alms.

And Luke uses the word in chapter 3 of his gospel to describe the people’s expectation of a Messiah. This isn’t a passive or casual expectation, a mere intellectual acknowledgment that a particular thing will happen someday. It’s looking forward to something with eager expectation, as embodied in the psalmist’s repeated words: “How long, O Lord?”

John’s bold preaching and ministry of baptism had reignited people’s hopes for the coming of the prophesied Messiah. They began to wonder: Could he be the one? Luke writes:

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:15-17, NIV)

You can hardly blame the crowds for wondering. Again, according to the gospel of John, some Jewish leaders had been sent from Jerusalem to quiz John the Baptist on his right to do what he was doing. The Pharisees specifically asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” (John 1:25). The unstated subtext to the question is, Why are you baptizing Jews? Just who do you think you are? To baptize Jews as one might baptize Gentile converts was unheard of, and offensive to the religious elite. They might let it slide if John claimed to be the Messiah. But that’s no guarantee, of course, that they would believe him even if he did.

For his part, Luke doesn’t say if anyone asked John outright whether he was the Messiah. But John answers their question nonetheless, by pointing away from himself to an unnamed someone who is greater, more powerful, more worthy. Compared to him, John is less than the most menial of servants, not even worthy to untie the Messiah’s sandals. John baptizes with water as a public symbol of repentance and cleansing, but the one to come will baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

In writing these words, Luke no doubt envisions the day of Pentecost, the story of which he will later narrate in the book of Acts. On that day, the Holy Spirit will come upon the disciples in tongues of fire, empowering them to carry on the work of the kingdom that Jesus had already begun.

But fire has another meaning as well. John has already spoken of the day of judgment, in which trees that don’t produce good fruit will be “cut down and thrown into the fire” (3:9). Here, he switches to the image of winnowing, in which the valuable kernels of wheat are separated from the useless chaff. In the end, the wheat will be gathered into a storehouse, but the chaff will be burned “with unquenchable fire.”

Both meanings of fire can be possible at the same time, due to what Bible scholars call “prophetic foreshortening” or “prophetic telescoping.” Think of it this way. I live in Southern California, which is separated from the rest of the state by a series of mountain ranges running east and west. When I drive east on the freeway to get to church, I can see the peaks of Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio sixty miles away. But they seem almost as near as the mountains to the north of me, just a few miles away.

So it is with many visions and descriptions of the future. Both the near and the distant future can be present to prophets in a single vision. When they describe what they’ve seen, they use images that can be interpreted in different ways, and give no concrete timeline. Similarly, John’s language may point both to the day of Pentecost and to a more distant day of judgment.

One possible implication of John’s words is that the “winnowing” is already happening through his ministry. Those who hear his message and submit to his baptism of repentance—Gentiles and Jews—are the wheat. Those who do not are the chaff.

And after John comes Jesus, the Messiah. Following his crucifixion and resurrection, before being taken up into heaven, Jesus will tell his disciples to stay in Jerusalem to receive the gift he promised: “For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). In the power of that Spirit, the disciples—now called “apostles”—will continue the mission they’ve inherited.

Then, one day, the Messiah will return. The threshing floor will be cleared; the wheat and chaff will be separated for all eternity; the chaff will be burned with fire. Does that sound severe? It is. But the good news only becomes bad news when we refuse the opportunity to repent.