A series of sermons on the parables of Jesus

The parable of the hidden treasure and the valuable pearl

Matthew 13:44-46

The stories

Imagine the labourer. Poor. Earning low wages; working in the heat of the day – day after day. Condemned to a hard and monotonous sort of life. His children will never go to college. He will never have his own plot of land. He just works – day in and day out – to bring some food on the table and make ends meet.

Suddenly the possibility of change!

It was not unusual to bury treasures. I did it myself. It was 1945. We lived at the edge of a small town and the Russian army was coming. My mother and I took all the treasures we had – silver spoons and ear rings and arm bands – put them in a box and buried them. Then the Russians came, kicked us out and took over the house. To the present day I do not know what happened to the treasures. And so in the ancient world, treasures which may have been buried to protect them from thieves, and in times of war from enemies, have been found on a number of occasions.

The labourer ploughed. And suddenly the plough hit something. A treasure! With the treasure he could buy his own farm; he could send his children to college.

Here is the possibility of change! Time becomes thickened. The moment assumes quality.

Can he say “no” to his discovery? Must he make a decision to get it? Of course not! The overwhelming worth of the find makes the decision and action of the finder a foregone conclusion – important, but not worth mentioning! – “… in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

(Now for those of us who have remained outside the story and looked at it with critical eyes, we may have detected a moral flaw. Should he not have reported the finding of the treasure before he bought the field? Yes, he should have! But that is not the point of the story! The point of the story is, to remind us that God comes and that when God comes the time becomes thickened, the moment assumes quality, because when God comes he brings joy, such joy, that everything else in life assumes secondary importance).

And then there was the pearl of great value. Such pearls are rare, but they do exist. According to Pliny the elder, Cleopatra had a pearl worth millions dollars; and in 1967 a Scottish pearl fisher, Bill Berneth, found a pearl of 1.27 cm width and 8.6 carat weight – priceless!

The anticipating joy, probably together with some rational calculation about the worth of the desired object, makes the merchant gladly sell all he has, in order to gain what to him was a dream of his life.

(Again, this story could also fare well in the board rooms of a capitalist corporation. But that is not its intention. Its intention is to tease into our hearts that God is either all or nothing. If we face the hour of knowing God, then all other hours lose in significance.)

Joy

The ways of God have not always been described in terms of joy.

Many of us are run by fear. And when our fears become too dominant in our thinking about God then many things can go wrong. Consider the difference between Jesus and John the Baptist. John the Baptist preached the imminent judgement of God and he announced that the only way to escape God’s judgment was to repent and be baptised. In contrast, Jesus speaks about the coming of God as the arrival of joy which one anticipates with open arms, rather than with a fearful heart. Not fear, but joy belongs to the ways of God.

Others of us are determined by tradition. We know that many religious people had trouble with Jesus. Their relation to God was shaped in terms of morality and rules and laws. For them, to honour God, meant the obeying of rules. But Jesus does not fit into any rule. For legalistic people Jesus was a disturber and a spoil sport. Do you remember the brother of whom we heard last Sunday, who did not want to join the celebration for the return of his brother because it did not fit the rules and traditions. Rules and traditions are important, as long as they do not block the coming of God and deprive us of God’s joy.

Today’s parables are important because they remind us that God does not want to frighten us. He wants to bring joy into our life.

Decision and sacrifice!?

Now some people have listened to our stories and then talked in terms of decision and sacrifice. The farmer had to decide, they say, to sell the field in order to get the treasure, and the merchant had to sacrifice all he had, they say, in order to buy the lovely pearl.

But think about it! Someone offers you a free trip on an ocean cruiser in the Caribic – and you always wanted to make such a trip! Someone offers you a new Ferrari Sports car – and you always wanted to have a Ferrari! Who makes a decision. Would it be a proper use of language to say that you decided to accept the trip or the car – which you always wanted? Of course not! The decision had been made for you! The greatness of the gift included the decision.

And is it really a sacrifice to sell all in order to acquire the one thing that counts? Of course it isn’t!

Please consider these two statements, coming from New Testament Christians:

The apostle Paul:

… through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:19f.)

And the evangelist Mark hears Jesus saying through the ages:

… what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? (Mark 8:36)

Different words, but the same message. It is of great importance who determines your conscience. Money, sex, status, reputation, possessions, family, national identity, racial identity – the “whole world”; all important, all significant, but if they take centre stage in our personality, then it all becomes distorted. Therefore Paul confesses that in his life centre stage is occupied by Christ: “Christ lives in me”!

My friends, the decision has been made for you!

“For God so loved the world – that includes us! – that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

and

“… in Christ God was reconciling the world – that includes us! – to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

All we have to do – but that is something we have to do! – is to accept God’s great gift and let God’s decision for us rule our life.

Of cheap and costly grace

One last thought – after we have realised that when God comes, he brings joy, and that God’s great gift includes our decision to accept it – and yet accept we must. When we tune into the decision that God has made for us, when we believe in Christ and are baptised into the reality of God, then our lives are de-centred and re-centred.

We don’t despise the world and its many offers, but we know where our conscience, the centre of our personality, belongs. With the apostle Paul we confess: “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

We have found the treasure and we now have the pearl of great value. Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, has taken his place in our life. We have welcomed him. Christ is saviour and Lord of our life! He determines the centre of our personality.

But who is he – Jesus Christ?

Now things become touchy. Recently an Australian church leader has written a book entitled “You need more money. God’s amazing plan for your life”. Echoing a word from Ecclesiastes which says “Feasts are made for laughter; wine gladdens life, and money meets every need” – note “every” (10:19), he wants to liberate Australian Christians from poverty thinking, just as some politicians want to deliver us from a so-called “black armband” view of history.

Invitation

My friends, it is good that Jesus, in whom God has come to us and has offered us a treasure and a pearl, was the Messiah of the poor, the comforter of the tortured, and the bringer of hope to the oppressed. That is not a “black armband” view of history. That is good news of divine reality. That is not “poverty thinking”, that is echoing the great Christian conviction about “the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich”, as the apostle Paul so fittingly says (2 Cor 8:9).

My friends in the hour of God, when we begin to realise that God is impinging on our life, it is not our bank accounts or our insurance policies or our degrees or our achievements, it is not our treasures on earth, but it is God’s grace that has touched our human poverty which makes all the difference. Not to miss that touch, not to ignore that touch, not to let that touch go, but to ever again welcome that touch of joy, for that it is worth to surrender all.

“… since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also
lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with
perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and
perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right
hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1f.)

Rev. Dr. Thorwald Lorenzen
http://www.canbap.org.au/parables.htm