All Things Work Together for Good - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, we continue this weekend the reading from the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, this marvelous chapter dedicated to the parables of Jesus. And I know we might be tempted to look at the parables and say, well, aren't they nice, charming stories with a little moral? That's to be very condescending toward them because they do very serious and important work, these parables. Often the deepest theology and spirituality is being conveyed by them. The one today I want to focus on that I think is really, really theologically rich and has been thought-provoking for me for many years, this one about the traditionally called the wheat and the tares. We'd say the wheat and the weeds, right? The story you know well, a man sows good seed in his field, but while he's asleep, an enemy sows weeds among the wheat. And so when the crop grows up, both appear together.

0:56 And the assistants to the man say, look, look, let's go out there and we'll pull up the weeds. And he goes, no, no, no. If you do that, you'll compromise the weed. Let both of them grow, and then at the harvest, we'll sort them out. And you say, okay, well, that's an interesting little comparison. What does it mean? Well, it's actually getting onto something very deep, it seems to me. Who's the one who sows? Well, that's the good God, the creator. who does nothing but good?

1:24 Who's the one that sows the weeds? Well, Jesus himself says, well, that's the enemy. That's the devil. Now, we see something of great importance here. We look out at our world. What do we see? Lots of good, of course. Whatever God made is good. The whole ensemble is very good. But if our eyes are open at all, we see along with the good lots of evil, lots of wickedness, lots of compromise, lots of disease and struggle and difficulty. We see wheat, but a lot of weeds wrapped around them. Well, here's the first important theological point, I think, and I've got C.S. Lewis in mind here. Lewis said, it's a bit of a puzzle. If you think, okay, God made all things. God is perfectly good. God is morally perfect.

2:17 God makes the world not out of need, not of any desire to manipulate, but out of sheer generous love. Okay, if that's true, why should there be any evil at all? The all-good God, out of radical love, makes the world in its entirety. Why isn't the world simply wheat? Why are there these weeds? And so this answer now becomes a very provocative one. It's not the sower of the wheat. He's not the one responsible. There's an enemy.

2:51 Now, what does Lewis conclude from this? That old story might strike us as fantastic, mythological. The old story of the war of the angels. Are there spiritual creatures of God who are good? Yeah, just as there are human beings who are good. We call them saints. Are there also spiritual creatures of God who are wicked, who have fallen, listen, the same way that we spiritual creatures fall, precisely through an abuse of freedom? Yeah, says our great tradition. The fallen angels. Here's Lewis's insight. You can't say the wickedness in the world, disease and death itself and everything else, comes from the all-good God. You can't say that. So where does it come from? Well, you can't just say, well, it's matter. Matter is bad. No, we don't think matter is bad. Whatever God makes is good. So where does it come from?

3:46 It comes, Lewis says, from the abuse of freedom. Yeah, we can see it in the case of the abuse of our own freedom has produced mayhem in many ways, sure. But use that now as an analogy. Use that, extrapolate from that to the abuse of a spiritual freedom that's had repercussions throughout all of creation? Is some of the evil that we see in the world the result, indeed, of a kind of spiritual battle that we're only vaguely aware of? Now, see, what does this do? It enables us to see something of enormous importance, that God is the Lord of the world. The devil is a creature. Say what you want about the devil. in all of his wickedness and power. The devil remains a creature, therefore under the aegis of God. An enemy has given rise to the negativity and evil in the world. Yeah, but that means a spiritual creature finally under the control of God, doing things only with the permission of God.

5:01 Now, what this holds off, everybody, is this very ancient heretical view. I would associate it with ancient Zoroastrianism. I'd associate it with ancient Gnosticism. I'd associate it with the Manichaeism that once beguiled the mind of the young St. Augustine. I would associate it with the Star Wars mentality, that what you see in the world is this constant battle of co-equal powers, good and evil, light and darkness, dark side of the force, light side of the force. And that's just the way the world is. This conflict between good and evil is just baked into reality. And we don't know who's going to carry the day. That's not biblical, everybody. That's Zoroastrian and Gnostic and Manichaean and Star Wars. Yeah, but it's not the Bible. The Bible does not hold the world as just this place of never-ending and unresolvable conflict between co-equal forces.

6:06 No, no, no. God is God and remains the Lord of the universe. And whatever mayhem we see is the work ultimately of the abused freedom of certain creatures, spiritual creatures and ourselves. you know. The good news is this remains a divine comedy, that we have a confidence in what God is about. See, and therefore, let's keep following the logic of this parable. We can see something of great importance. When the master says, no, no, don't tear up the weeds, because in doing so, you could tear up the weed along with them. To some degree, acknowledging the work of this fallen spiritual power, we can say perhaps God, who remains the Lord of all things, is using even this dysfunction, even the weeds, in some way to cultivate the wheat.

7:09 And if you tear up the weeds, the wheat will be compromised in some way. Can we say with St. Paul that all things work together for the good for those who love the Lord, that we can see that even in the wickedness of the world, God is affecting his purpose. Now, let's think of some examples here. St. Paul himself, the Lord gave me a thorn in the flesh. Now, we don't know what that was. He never tells us. Was it a physical suffering of some kind? Maybe. You talk about Paul, maybe a speech impediment, maybe trouble with his vision, some other physical ailment. We don't know. Was it a psychological ailment? Was it anxiety? Was it depression?

8:01 Was it some darkness in his life? We don't know. But it was bad enough for Paul to call it a thorn in the flesh. Imagine a thorn or nail going into your flesh. It was something pretty annoying, pretty obnoxious. And then he says, three times I begged the Lord to take it from me. That means again and again and again I asked the Lord. Mind you, everybody listen to me. Everybody can name what that thorn in the flesh is in your life, right? There's something. And it's physical, it's spiritual, it's psychological. I don't know what it is. but you've begged the Lord three times. Take that away from me. In terms of this parable, rip up the weeds. Just get rid of them. No, no, no, no, says the Lord of the harvest. Let the wheat and the weeds grow together.

8:57 Because in God's providence, is he using even that thorn in your flesh to affect some good? you know maybe I've told this story before in this context but it always strikes me I've read a lot of biographies of Franklin Roosevelt you know arguably the greatest American president maybe second greatest after Lincoln Roosevelt as a young man I mean the guy he's had it all he was good looking he was well educated he was rich he was charming by all accounts he had a magical name too by the way so his his distant cousin Theodore had been the president, famous, popular president. So this young guy embarking on a political career, Harvard education, good looks, money, and a magical name. Everyone looking at him said, this guy, he's going to be president. This guy has got a great career. And that looked very promising. And then when this young, magical person is in his high 30s, he's stricken with polio. And it devastated him. You know, he couldn't walk. And he thought, my career's over.

10:11 My life's over, effectively. His mother famously said, oh, no, retire. Forget about it. You're not going to be governor or president or anything. Retire and be a gentleman collecting stamps or something. Well, FDR didn't retire, but rather he enters back into politics. And here's now what what every biographer points out. That golden child, that child of promise, that magical young person, also was kind of superficial, kind of self-absorbed. Yeah, he wanted to be president, but not to make anyone's life better, but kind of to enhance his own glory. But after the polio, he developed this very deep compassion for people who suffer. I mean, he wasn't that acquainted with the ordinary suffering people of the world. He was a high aristocrat.

11:07 But after the polio, he entered deeply into the pain and suffering of ordinary people. And it made him the great statesman he became. What if, now here's the point, what if early on, the minute he got that polio, someone said, rip that out of his life, get rid of that. No, the weeds, he would have come up with the weeds. Pulling the weeds would have done great damage to what God was actually trying to accomplish. Here's a second one. You know, these stories that emerged only in the last maybe 20 years when her diaries and letters became more available. That the great Mother Teresa, the greatest saint of the 20th century, arguably, you know, the saint of Calcutta, but struggled for about 50 years with what can only be called a profound depression, darkness, a sense of the absence of God, of the meaninglessness of things.

12:05 Mother Teresa, if you had told me that when I was a young man, I'd never believed it. What do you mean Mother Teresa? She's full of the Holy Spirit. Well, she was indeed full of the Holy Spirit, but she also had this thorn in the flesh. There was also weeds wrapped around the wheat. And do you ever wonder, did her compassion too, did her commitment to the poor come precisely from her own wrestling with darkness? See, God is the Lord of creation. We're not in a Star Wars universe. God's the Lord. An enemy has done this. Yes, but see, God, as Aquinas says, permits evil to bring about a greater good. That's the point of the parable. God permits evil to bring about a greater good. Therefore, don't automatically rip all the weeds out of your life. Watch the damage you can do.

12:59 I'll close with this. Everybody knows part of Reinhold Niebuhr's famous serenity prayer, right? Lord, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Beautiful. Everyone knows that part. But here's how the rest of it goes. See, grant me the serenity to accept maybe the thorn in the flesh that I can't change. Now listen, living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, listen, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. See, get rid of all these weeds. Get rid of them. Tear them up. No, no. Trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life.

13:59 There's such liberation, I think, in that line, everybody. Am I meant to be perfectly happy in this life? No. No. Reasonably happy. This life, wheat and tares. It's wheat and weeds. Don't just rip the weeds out. No, no, this world is kind of a mix. And supremely happy with you forever in the next. Yes, finish this parable. Will the time come when God in his justice and mercy will separate wheat and tares? Yes, yes, in God's time and God's way. In the meantime, let these two grow together. You never know what the thorn in the flesh is doing for you. You never know how the weeds are perhaps benefiting the wheat. And God bless you.