Jesus didn’t talk much about angels, but in his stories they’re anything but cuddly and comforting. They’re fierce and on a mission – and in the story he tells of the wheat and the weeds, that mission is executing God’s final judgment.
“…the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Our culture is big on angels (harmless, protective) and not so keen on the prospect of a final judgment. Many in the Church remove the judgment from our God story, emphasizing God's mercy and acceptance. I do. Yet mercy and acceptance are cheap commodities without judgment. And we’d have to excise a lot of what Jesus taught and lived if we’re going to take judgment out of the picture. Our claim as Christians, at least traditionally, is that we meet the standard of God's judgment as righteous, redeemed sinners because of what Jesus did for us. We are accepted because we are one with Christ, not only because we are creatures of a loving God.
This is only one of Jesus’ stories that include an Ultimate Sorting, with unrepentant, unredeemed evildoers meeting an unhappy fate – here a furnace of fire, "where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Why is there always teeth-gnashing in Jesus’ images of hell? Aural and dental torture to go along with the fire?) The ones doing the sorting in this tale are the angels, who serve as God’s messengers – in this image, we might even say henchmen.
Is fire the fate we would wish upon the weeds sown in the field? Shouldn’t the judgment be aimed at the enemy sower?
That is a matter for us to pray about. If we wonder if a terrible fate awaits those who despise God and seek to destroy the goodness of God’s creation and creatures, we might pray fervently for their souls and spirits, asking God to have mercy, and doing our best to share with them our own hope. Do you suppose that’s what Jesus meant by “pray for your enemies?”
Might we dare such a thing in our prayer time today? Think of the worst sort of “weeds” we can, and pray for mercy for their souls? And that somehow that mercy would become real to them, working its way into stony hearts to reawaken love and compassion and hope? Maybe you or I are called to show God's mercy to a particularly nasty sort of weed. Many a time in human history, mercy has been the beginning of conversion. Just think of it as lightening some fearsome angel’s work.
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