The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field.
A gold medal. An Olympic gold medal. I have always been interested in sports and, when young, loved to watch the Olympics. As a boy, I remember Bob Beamon destroy the world record in Long Jump in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. I remember Mark Spitz take seven golds in the pool in München in 1972 and, like many young lads, had this vague wish that, one day, I would win gold. But it was a vague wish for, even then, I knew that taking the gold was something only very special people could do. A lot of it has to do with genetics, a lot of it with a particular body build conducive to a given sport, but more than these, a lot of it has to do with mental strength and commitment, perhaps even obsession – setting one’s sights on that gold and doing everything one can to train and mould oneself into the very best of the best.
I saw something of that commitment grow in my daughter from ages 10-18 as I watched her move up the ranks of Ontario amateur swimming. I loved the pool and had taken swimming up for exercise in my 30s. I would go four or five times a week for midday lane swims and always felt good because, among other things, I could leave most of the other lane swimmers in the dust (the fact that the others were mostly over 70 while I was in my 30s didn’t matter to me, I felt good). Then there was my daughter. She had been through all the Red Cross badges when her last teacher said to me, you should put her in the Kingfish – the competitive program. Not knowing what I was getting into, I registered her for the Kingfish and then the Markham Club when we moved there. Sometimes we would go to the pool together and when she was 10, I could still beat the water enough that I’d win. When she was 11, I could keep up. But when she was 12, she left me in the starting blocks and then it got worse and worse. Her practices went from twice a week to five times, then to seven, and then to 11 times a week. Between 15 and 18, she was logging 10 – 14 km in the pool per day. She was swimming all over Canada and the US in the same meets as Michael Phelps a few months before his first Olympics. My daughter didn’t quite make Olympic qualifying times but for a while she had a gold medal as her goal and was within a split second of Commonwealth times. She was on a heavy training scheme, a nutritional regime, she was up six days a week at 4:30 a.m. and in the pool again in the early evening. She and a few friends pushed themselves and their Russian, double Olympic silver, coach pushed them even harder. Beyond anything else, these girls wanted to win the gold at whatever Meet they were at.
That sort of desire for a great prize is the subject of one of Jesus’ many parables. The word parable comes from the Greek, παραβολή. It is a story that serves as a comparison, an illustration, or an analogy. It uses the familiar to point beyond to a greater truth. Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel gathers a number of parables together in an attempt to describe the Kingdom of Heaven. One of those read this morning states, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field.”
The picture that Jesus draws would have been very familiar to his listeners. In Jesus’ day, there were no banks (and thankfully, no sub-prime mortgage problems), no safety deposit boxes, in which one could lodge one’s cash or treasures. If a person had valuables, was saving for old age, or putting something away for a rainy day, there was not much he or she could do with it other than stick it in the ground when no one was looking. It was common practice and it would also have been a fact of life that occasionally someone working in a field would dig down and find a buried treasure from a former generation. Jewish law had a “finders-keepers” element to it, but the finder would first have to ascertain if the treasure had been buried for a long time, or if it were something the owner of the field had hidden. Chances were that it would not have been the owner’s treasure, otherwise he would not have been having someone dig in that area in the first place. But the finder would have to be sure and to gain the treasure and test the waters, he would re-bury the treasure, sell everything that he had, and buy the field. In owning the field, the treasure would surely be his, the current owner would have no claim.
People would dream of finding treasure like that. Today, it would be like winning the lottery. I’m sure you have seen on television the ads that try to get everyone to go out and buy a lottery ticket. They point us to the amazing things one can do with lots of money. They show a person winning, the surprise, the joy they have in those first moments and say, “this could be you, if you buy a ticket.” When Jesus told the story, he was likewise pointing to a great find, a great windfall, a magnificent treasure; “the kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like the greatest treasure ever found, one you would give your all to gain.”
That means that it is costly and the costly nature of the treasure is marvellously illustrated in a modern drama I read this week about the parable in the next two verses of Matthew’s Gospel, the parable comparing the kingdom of heaven to a pearl of great price. The drama goes as follows:
Shop Owner: How may I help you?
Pearl Seeker: This pearl — I’ve seen pearls the world over and this is one-of-a-kind. I would SO love to have it! Would you- would you ever consider selling it?
S: Oh, it is certainly for sale.
P: How can that be? I mean it is one-of-a-kind. How could you sell it?
S: You are right. Still, it is for sale.
P: So how much is it?
S: It costs everything you have.
P: Everything? I don't understand.
S: Whatever you have, that is what the pearl costs. If you have ten million dollars, or if you have two cents, that is what it costs. Everything.
P: That sounds like a terrific deal. Let me see if I've heard you correctly. If I give you everything I have, then I can have the pearl?
S: That's right.
P: Then we have a deal! I’ll buy it.
S: You have made an excellent decision. Now give me all that you have.
P: Let's see, I have $2,500 in my cheque account and $4,000 in my savings account.
S: Good, I'll take it. What else do you have?
P: That's all I have.
S: Do you have any money in your pocket?
P: Well sure, I have some change and a few dollars in folding money.
S: Don't count it, just hand it over. What else do you have?
P: I don’t have anything else.
S: Where do you live?
P: I have a house.
S: You have a house? I'll take the house.
P: You’ll take my house?
S: Yes.
P: I guess I'll have to live in my weekend cottage.
S: You have a weekend cottage?
P: Er..yes.
S: I'll take that too.
P: I will have nowhere to sleep except in my car.
S: So you have a car?
P: Yes….
S: I'll take the car.
P: Now I REALLY don't have anything. I've given you everything.
S: Are you married?
P: Yes.
S: I'll take your spouse.
P: My spouse?
S: Yes. And do you have children?
P: Yes, three lovely children.
S: I'll take them as well.
P: Now I—I have nothing left but myself.
S: I will take that too. Now the pearl is yours.
P: As I hold it, and now that I own it, it is even more beautiful than anything I ever imagined. But what a price to pay!
The person in our parable gave up all that he had to buy the field with the buried treasure. Jesus says that he was joyful. The kingdom of heaven is like something so great that it is worth giving one’s all to get it. Everything? Wow!
I sometimes wonder if the church of the last 50 years or so has forgotten this part of Jesus’ message. Perhaps it was in a rebellion against the Victorian pietism that ruled over church life in the early part of the 20th century. Some of us grew up in the last vestiges of that where the way of life and rules and teaching led, at times, to individuals struggling greatly with sin and guilt. Sometimes those struggles could be very real and deep and in order to get past that, the church had to re-learn a great aspect of the gospel called grace, and the church has in our time preached grace so that we all have an incredible insight into the love and grace of God for us.
But perhaps the pendulum of theology and preaching has swung too far. Perhaps we have such an overwhelming understanding God’s grace and love that we have forgotten the cost of the treasure, the cost of gaining the kingdom of heaven. O yes, in grace, God is most willing to forgive us but there is this other theme in Jesus’ teaching - the cost. If you ever read through the Gospels, gaining the kingdom of heaven may involve sacrifice, it may involve repentance, it may involve a willingness to change, to change how one lives. It may involve a life-long search, a journey of commitment to God. And these things are not just the theme of this particular parable, they’re the theme of the story of the rich young ruler who was asked to live for God and sell all that he had in order to gain eternal life and treasure in heaven. They’re hinted at when Jesus tells his followers to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness… and all these things will be yours as well.” And Paul, for all his talk of grace, also speaks of a cost, the cost of how important it is to live and walk with God. The Reformers made a great deal of Paul’s words in Romans 1:17, “The righteous will live by faith,” and Martin Luther said, “Sola fides, Faith alone.” But Paul speaks just a few verses later of God repaying each one according to his/her deeds and what they do (Romans 2:6). There’s a cost to gaining the kingdom of God, it takes everything you have. That is among the things that the parable of the hidden treasure, and the parable of the pearl of great price tell us and perhaps the church needs to find its way back to the centre where it can preach of God’s wonderful grace as well as the costliness of gaining “the kingdom of heaven,” as Matthew calls it, “the kingdom of God,” as Luke terms it, or “eternal life” as John and others call it.
As a race, we love life and don’t quite know what to make of death. Many are distraught by it. It tends to stop us in our tracks. We see something of that in how we have dealt with the deaths of well-known individuals. Later this year, for instance, we will mark the 50th anniversary the death of President John F. Kennedy. He was much loved by many and his death shocked a nation, if not the world. There was an outpouring of emotion about Kennedy’s death, it was seen to be so unjust and unfair. America came to a standstill. It grieved. It was moved to tears when it watched Kennedy’s young son, John John, salute his father’s casket in Arlington Cemetery on the day of his funeral. So much so that John John lived in people’s consciousness for years and when he himself died at far too young an age in a plane crash in 1999, there was a another huge outpouring of emotion from the public. It was greater yet with the death of Princess Diana (1997). We dislike death. We don’t understand it. We love life.
Individuals have been searching for life for as long as human beings have walked on this earth. Ancient myths describe death as entering the land of no return. One of the earliest writings in the world depicts, Gilgamesh seeking out a plant that would give him everlasting youth. In the Middle Ages, a similar myth grew up associated with the cup of Christ, the Holy Grail which would give everlasting life. We love life, we want more. Jesus points us towards it. He describes it in various ways in the word-pictures we call parables. A glimpse of it can lift a person’s heart in joy and longing. It is like a treasure so great that a person would give anything to gain it. Like an Olympic medal, it is something an athlete strives with every fibre of his/her being to attain. It costs us and there is something of that cost and commitment contained in the words of John Wesley when he wrote,
I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; till a few moments hence, I am not more seen! I drop into an unchangeable eternity! [Here] I want to know one thing, the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book! O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri. [a man of one book]
And so, I wonder, especially in this Lenten season, if that kind of desire for the kingdom of heaven is within you? Does that willingness to devote everything to finding it lie within your heart? As Wesley said, God has shown us the way.