Reading Francis

It’s really easy to see the weeds and way too hard to buy the pearl.

So the schedule of readings for the last couple weeks, as well as this Sunday, are a string of parables from Matthew 13, and the themes that come up for me as I sit with them are ones I feel like I’ve written about a lot.

There is the parable of the wheat and the weeds (13:24-30), and the idea that God lets the bad grow with the good right now because to uproot the bad might take out some of the good, so He’s going to sort it out at the end. 

April is probably sick of me saying this to her, virtually every time we talk about whatever has gone wrong in the world this time: our central problem is that the way we build our culture is around the false belief that there are two types of people: good people and bad people. Wheat and weeds. 

And the reality is, the line of demarcation isn’t between people but within each of us. If Fr. Greg Boyle can work 30+ years with Los Angeles gang members and he’s never met a person who was evil, I think we’ve got to listen to him. And if we are brave enough to confront who we really are, it’s easy to see the weeds within our own hearts. I know the weeds in my life are growing as well as the weeds in my untended yard.*

There is the parable of the pearl of great price (13:46), about how God’s reign is like finding a pearl that is so valuable that we’re ready to sell all our stuff to buy it. Now, I’d like to console myself with the idea that maybe the finder/seller/buyer is God, and not us, that God giving up everything to be one with us is the deity’s way of selling power, glory and control for us, the pearl of great price.

I love that interpretation. It’s beautiful. But most importantly, it lets me off the hook. Because if the pearl of great price isn’t us, but God, and the person selling it all isn’t God, but me, well. I mean, I’ve got a retirement to prepare for in a decade or so. I need to build up that 401k, not empty it. I need this stuff.

In between these parables are some others, including one about how a little leaven goes a long way. And I’ve written before about how it feels like the world is falling apart, and the fact that we’ve made it as far as we have despite the calamity of this world is the best miracle we’re going to get.

The truth is, for whatever reason, today was one of those days when that little miracle – that there was any wheat at all, that we were still around at all, etc. – was just not enough for me. One of the questions I have queued up in my little weekly examen posts is “Where did you find hope this week?”, and I backed off using that one this week, because, honestly, I don’t know what answer I would have.

There’s a writer whose work I really admire named Jim McDermott, who mostly writes about pop culture and occasionally also about God. His weekly newsletter (about pop culture, less so God) ended with these two paragraphs:

“Real hope, existential hope, is when you have nothing to fall back on, nowhere good to go, so you run into the only option you have, because even if it is really, really bad it’s still something, and you just never know where something may lead.

“I guess there’s humility to hope, in a way. To hope is to acknowledge not only that I can’t figure it all out on my own, but that what I see in front of me, what I believe is all that there is, is not necessarily all that there is. Who’s to say there’s not a life-saving gap somewhere ahead, or someone waiting to catch you when you leap?”

Maybe it’s in that place that you sell whatever you have left for the pearl, that you trust the farmer not to pull up what might be weeds just yet. Maybe that’s the leaven you need.

*This interpretation is not Matthew’s by the way. Astute readers will see that Matthew understands these gospels as very much a “good guys vs bad guys” duality. I’m relying more on lived experience by underscoring the divisions within us, though I can call in Paul’s letter to the Romans as backup if need be.