On Pearls

Written By Julia D. Hejduk

September 2024 Devotional

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Mt 13:45-46, KJV)


The point of this little parable seems simple enough: God and his Kingdom are better than everything else put together. While as a Christian it’s hard for me to disagree with this, somehow it never really spoke to me. To be honest, it made me feel like a spiritual wimp. Sure, the giants of our faith were, and are, willing to give up everything for God, but there is no way my puny, selfish, comfort-seeking heart could do so! 

Recently, though, I had an experience that caused me to see the pearl in a new light. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are grounded in lectio divina, where you read a biblical text out loud and then sit with it in silence, asking God to show you what he wants you to know. Then do the same thing again, and again, and again. The text our campus minister chose for our small group was—you guessed it—Matthew 13:44-46. By the third time through, I was starting to get a little annoyed that we were focusing on a passage that didn’t really have anything more to say to me.

Then God showed me what he wants me to know. The pearl is me. 

God, who possessed the whole world, chose to sell everything because he was madly in love with me, and with you. Jesus poured out on the Cross and pours out still in the Eucharist his entire self, body and blood, soul and divinity, for us. This shocking knowledge, should we choose (by God’s grace) to accept it, is the seed in our hearts that grows the pearl of Love. 

Pearls are also in line with God’s sense of humor. Who would have guessed that he would choose oysters, famously characterized by Dave Barry as “members of the phlegm family,” to produce priceless gems? Or the goopy interior of a woman’s body, that quintessentially unclean environment, to be his first home on earth? Or a gay man, an abomination in the eyes of good religious people, to remind us that “Jesus will cost you everything, and he’ll be worth so much more than that”?

When my then sixteen-year-old son came out to me six years ago, all I knew how to do was grieve, feel guilty, and try to pray the gay away. Revoice had just been born; I didn’t know you existed. But for the past two years—ever since Eve Tushnet’s book Tenderness introduced me to you—your loving hospitality and joyful, prophetic witness have been transforming my life. 

You are the merchant of the parable. And you are the pearl, destined to adorn the Bride when the King in his beauty comes to take her home.

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Julia D. Hejduk

Julia D. Hejduk is the Reverend Jacob Beverly Stiteler Professor of Classics at Baylor University. She has written numerous articles and books on ancient Latin poetry, and essays on faith and society for journals such as Public Discourse, Church Life Journal, Christian Scholar’s Review, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and Evangelization and Culture. Her most exciting project right now is the book she is co-authoring with Greg Coles on sexuality and the nuptial mystery of Christ.

"When my then sixteen-year-old son came out to me six years ago, I assured him I loved him unconditionally but had no idea what to do or say. For four years, the ex-gay narrative was the only one I encountered. Everything changed when I read Eve Tushnet's book Tenderness and met the Side B community. I believe God placed me in the center of Christian academia, giving me friends, colleagues, and a platform to help open people's eyes to the beautiful witness of Revoice. Writing is my comfort zone and the primary way I reach people outside of my immediate neighborhood.

There are many parents like me who want to love their queer children well but struggle within an orthodox Christian framework. And there are many queer people wounded by individual Christians and the Church as a whole. I want to share a message of hope and joy: sexual minority Christians who uphold the traditional sexual ethic have a unique, prophetic vocation that could reunite and revitalize the Church. God says no to prayer only when He has something better to give us.

I believe the modern Church's idolatry of marriage has caused her to misinterpret queerness as a spiritual defect, when it is an eschatological sign. Side B-ers are rediscovering crucial truths about God's upside-down Kingdom, where celibacy is a higher vocation than marriage, spiritual family is more important than biological family, and Jesus is the Bridegroom of all people, male as well as female. I also want to explore the connections between queer people and marginalized groups in the biblical narrative, especially eunuchs and Samaritans, who are portrayed much more positively than the 'good religious people.'" — Julia

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