When Wickedness Is Burned Away Like Stubble

Thirty-Third Sunday Integral 2025

Every November we who use the common lectionary are reminded that what we have in this life, this earth, is only temporary. We sinners are forced into an examination of our life and aspirations and face our end. Recall that the word “end” can have several meanings, but they all collide every November. As we feel the climate getting cooler, promising even lower temperatures until Spring we—especially the senior citizens—may also feel our bodies getting less energetic. All of us have the same temporal end, death. The second “end” is our destiny, our goal after this life. We shall either look toward union with God, for He made union with Himself to be “Plan A” after temporal life, or what we might call “Plan Destruction,” which is the eternal death that was not part of God’s plan. Most of us may need some cleaning up as we move toward Plan A, because nothing impure can be in the presence of the Blessed Trinity. But however we phrase it, the end is approaching, one day at a time.

There are some other “ends” we see in Scripture. One spoken of by Jesus in today’s Gospel is the end of the Jewish state when the Romans react to its rebellion by destroying Jerusalem and its Temple. Another, still in the future, is the transformation of our whole world in fire at the return of Jesus, which we call “the end of the world.” But it will really be the beginning of the New World.

In our Introit verse today, Jeremiah takes us by surprise. Most of us, hearing the name “Jeremiah,” think of his writings as doom and gloom. Yet even in this prophet, who fussed at the people of Israel about their apostasy before and during the first destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, we hear the loving voice of God calling us all to repentance. All of God’s plan for them and for us is for our welfare. His thoughts are all of peace, not of affliction, so that when we call upon Him, He answers and brings us together, now in His assembly, His Church.

Malachi, who prophesied during the time of the Second Temple, about four centuries before Christ, predicts the “Day of the Lord” as a time when wickedness will be burned away like stubble. The Hebrew sounds very harsh: ahsah reesha haya kahsh.

In the next verse, our translation, envisioning for the God-fearing a rising of the sun of justice, poetically speaks of its “healing rays.” But that's the wrong English word. We should be literal here and translate it “But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” We know from our perspective that the true sun of righteousness is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. In Luke chapter 12 we see Him standing opposite Jerusalem, lamenting: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” We’ll hear the same thing at Christmas when we sing the great hymn “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” with its verse: “Hail, the Sun of Righteousness Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His Wings.”

Our Lord does not have videos of kittens or chicks in mind when telling us about the end. He said, as Luke records, “before [the signs of the end] occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify.” Christ promises His Holy Spirit will give us the words of our testimony.

It’s like the scene before the evil king Antiochus IV in the 2nd Book of Maccabees, when seven brothers, one after another, comes for trial and is coaxed to eat unclean food and worship pagan gods. Each one refuses and is horribly tortured. Finally, the mother is tried, and the Spirit helps her to stay true to Adonai, the true God. She had emboldened her six oldest sons: “she encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors: “I do not know how you came to being in my womb. It was not I who endowed you with breath and life, nor did I set in order the elements that established the composition of your being. Therefore, the Creator of the universe who authored the beginning of human life and devised the origin of all things will, in his mercy, restore breath and life to you, since you have placed his law above concern for your own desires.” With the seventh son, she grew even bolder: “I beg you, my child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see everything that is in them. Reflect on the fact that God did not create them from things that already existed and that the human race came into being in the same way. Have no fear of this butcher. Prove yourself worthy of your brothers by accepting death, so that through the mercy of God I shall receive you back again along with them.” The doctrine of the Resurrection of the just gave them courage.