The parable of the wheat and the weeds, which we heard this evening, was intended to make people feel uncomfortable, and it still does. Those of us who believe, as I do, that an inexhaustible spring of tender compassion and absolute love lies at the very heart of the nature of God, find it very difficult to reconcile our understanding of God with this picture of a Son of Man who sends his angels to throw all evildoers into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For once we are more comfortable with our Old Testament story, about an angel who appears in the burning fiery furnace to protect and rescue the three faithful young men. Of course, neither of these stories was intended to be understood as a factual statement. The book of Daniel was not written to give us a historically reliable account of what happened to the exiled Jews who remained loyal to their faith at the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. Nor were Jesus’ parables intended to explain precisely what will happen at the day of judgment. That day is beyond the reach of human imagining. But that does not allow us to escape the challenge of the underlying point which Jesus was making. Every Sunday, as we recite the Creed, we proclaim our belief that one day Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. What do we mean when we say that? What did Jesus mean when he pointed to a day of judgment, using language which warned his listeners to take him seriously? How should we prepare for that day?
There are three things I want to say – first a word about the target audience for these terrible warnings, then a word about patience, and finally a word about the nature of the judgment we face.
First then, the target audience. Many of the judgment stories which end with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth are directed at God’s own chosen people, the ones invited to the wedding feast, the ones who were too busy with their own affairs to accept the invitation, too casual to bother about getting properly dressed (Matt 22), too secure in their own bossy authority to exercise it responsibly and generously (Matt 24), or too complacent and self-absorbed to respond to the needs of others (Matt 25). In Jesus’ own time it was the Jews, the heirs of the kingdom, who most needed to be shocked into awareness that they were at risk of missing out on the destiny that had been prepared for them from time immemorial. To-day I would suggest it is we, we who have been brought up as heirs to the promises within the Christian faith, who are the privileged insiders, the ones who perhaps most need to take these warnings to heart. Judgment is mine, says the Lord. It’s none of our business to second guess his judgment of others. But these parables are for us. We do, all of us, need to take seriously the judgment that we ourselves will face.
Second, a word of patience. The weeds in tonight’s parable are sometimes called darnel. Most translations simply say weeds because darnel doesn’t mean anything to us, but the point about darnel, so I’m told, is that as it grows it is almost indistinguishable from wheat. As a result, it can’t really be weeded out. Once it has grown big enough to be identified, it’s too late, you can’t pull it up without pulling the wheat up with it. So the farmer has to wait till the harvest is ready before sorting the crop from the weeds. By that time the darnel is so woody that it makes a good bonfire. The point of all this is of course that there are always going to be good plants and bad plants, good people and evildoers, in the world. That’s how it is. We can’t necessarily tell which is which, and we are warned against any attempt to anticipate the day of judgment by weeding out those whom we might judge to be evildoers. We are enjoined to be patient, and to leave the weeding to God.
But the third point is the most difficult and the most important. What is going to happen when the lord of the harvest does finally send in his combines? All this talk of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth has given rise over the centuries to some wonderfully vigorous works of art, showing exactly how the evildoers are to be consigned to a most imaginative range of perpetual tortures, even as they are licked but never consumed by the flames of hell. The Grand Inquisitor would presumably have been comfortable with such scenes, but I cannot believe that they are anything like a fair representation of the judgment of Christ in glory. Yes, there will be judgment. We shall all be judged. But if Christ is our Judge, it will not be an old-fashioned forensic judgment of right and wrong, still less a judgment of wrathful vengeance and payback time. Truth will be revealed. Justice will be done. But if Christ is our Judge, then the judgment we shall face can only be the judgment of love. Not that the judgment of love is a soft option. Most of us would have to admit that our most painful moments have occurred, not when we have provoked anger, but when our selfishness or thoughtlessness has disappointed someone who really loves us, someone who has given us so much for love’s sake, and then we have failed them. That’s the moment when we wish the earth would open and swallow us up. Raise that experience to the nth degree and we may get some idea of what it could be like to stand before Christ in judgment, and answer for what we may have done or not done in response to the love which he has shown to us.
We only have to begin to imagine what that might be like to realise how hopeless our situation would be, were it not for the fact that the Judge is also our Advocate, standing beside us in the dock, and ready to speak on our behalf. We have his assurance that if we believe in him, we shall not perish but have everlasting life. What we believe shapes what we are, and what we are finds expression in what we do. If we believe in Christ who died for us, if we accept him into our hearts, then his spirit comes to dwell within us, and his grace has the power to shape us gradually into his likeness. As we begin to see things through his eyes, we shall be moved by the same spirit of compassion that moves him, we shall want to do the things that he would want to do. Of course we are still far too easily persuaded to go our own way. The devil has not given up sowing weeds in our field. But the wheat will grow too, by God’s grace, so that there will be a heavenly harvest.
When King Nebuchadnezzar looked into his fiery furnace, he saw there not just the three men who had been tied up and thrown in, but four men, unbound, walking in the fire. They were not hurt, and the fourth had the appearance of a god. Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were saved from the burning fiery furnace because they put their trust in God. Their faith was unshakeable. Whatever the outcome, they were not going to worship the golden statue that the king had set up. They could not know whether God would deliver them, though they believed he had the power to do so. They had the courage to do what they believed to be right, in accordance with God’s law, and they would leave the consequences in his hands. What an example to us all, whatever the challenges we face – perhaps at work as we decide whether to resist some aspect of company policy, or at home as we face the constant pressure to worship the golden statues of wealth, popularity, ambition and success; or perhaps as we confront a life-threatening illness. Like Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego, we cannot know what the outcome will be as we go into the fire, but we can put our trust in God, as they did. In the Christian era we have more reason than they to know that our God will go with us through whatever test we face in this world. And when at last we face the final judgment at the feet of Christ in glory, even then, if we have learnt to trust him now, the Love of God will shield us from the flames that will destroy all that is evil. In St Paul’s words, ‘I am convinced that neither death nor life … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Rom 8.39)