The Gospel reading for today is the third in a three week series
from the 13th chapter of Matthew,
a whole long chapter of the parables of Jesus about the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven –
and it is good to note here that these parables are not about the heaven
people often think of as where you go after you die if you’ve been good.
No, this is the Kingdom of Heaven at hand,
obviously then not a political kingdom or system of government,
and not the pearly gates,
but something else that seems intangible or cloaked or undiscerned.
So Jesus tells these stories, these parables
that those with spiritual perception will pick up on,
parables not entirely apparent on the surface reading,
but loaded with depth of insight and meaning.
In today’s selection we have five short parables.
Let’s look at one of them.
“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 that field.”
Notice that there is the field, and there is the treasure hidden in the field –
two different things.
The field could be good acreage for planting a crop
or full of boulders and weeds
or covered by trees and flowers.
There could have been an old barn in the field
or a lovely building of good architectural design and functionality.
But it wasn’t any of this that made the field so valuable
that someone would go and sell all that he has
in order to buy that field.
One might observe that the treasure that this someone found and hid again
was worth more than what he could raise even by selling all that he had,
and worth far more than the field in itself.
In this parable the kingdom of heaven is not like the field,
but like the hidden treasure.
The field has a value of its own, but it can’t compare with the treasure.
Now I am thinking that the Church can be described in terms of this parable.
The Church in general.
The Church is the field, an expanse of a piece of property
possibly with grass and trees and flowers
and a building on the land of particular design and functionality.
It has its value, but this is not the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven is hidden within it, hidden – oddly enough,
too often obscured from sight, a treasure waiting to be discovered,
a treasure of such value that those who find it
are willing to sell all in order to have it.
How perplexing and disturbing it has been for me
through all my years of ministry
in so many different local congregations,
that so many come to church and don’t see past the field to the treasure.
After all, it is not the field – that is, the church building and its grounds –
that will save you.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…”
So what exactly is the kingdom of heaven?
if we are not talking about heaven when you die,
or a kingdom like a political system of government.
The answer, like the treasure in the field, is hidden in plain sight.
Look at Jesus.
Look at the one who was saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Everything he said and did exhibited what the kingdom of heaven is like,
the values and qualities, the potency and effectiveness,
the actuality and the truth of the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, healing all who came to him,
liberating those who were oppressed and bound by demonic forces,
transforming awareness and teaching truth,
teaching reality breaking through self-deception,
Jesus expressing the Love of God
and Jesus confronting,
confronting hypocrisy, closed-handedness, hard heartedness, and lack of faith,
O ye of little faith,
all the ways in which we contract away from the generosity of life
endowed upon us by our Creator
and respond with a miserly littleness of attitude and action.
Look at Jesus, everything he did and everything he said,
and especially at the incredibly generous and selfless way
he poured out his whole life.
Look at the Cross and look at the Resurrection
and look at the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Were it not for this universal and eternal saving action of Christ
holding all that is together right now,
the whole world would burn itself up in the insanity of all the violence.
Look, look! The world, the people in it, are totally crazy,
drunk with violence and greed and contention
and tight-fisted, self-centered, hardness of heart
in relationship of one to another,
whether we are talking about nations or individuals.
The treasure is here, present among us,
veiled in bread and wine,
expressed in words and actions that flow out of that love which is real,
that love which God is.
The treasure is here, present with us,
hidden in the words of the Epistle lesson for today
until we read them and see them and get it.
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness; [Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome]
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Those who regularly practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation
know what this means.
What a treasure! God the Holy Spirit praying within us!
“…interced(ing) for the saints according to the will of God.”
Open your Bibles and read these words from the 8th chapter of Romans.
And look, all of us who are of little faith, look at these words:
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose.”
and
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Where IS our faith?
In the temporal things of this world that we can see?
Or in the treasure hidden in the field?
Want an example of what I mean by temporal?
although I know that we all can name examples.
Consider the Old Testament story today
in this summer-long series of readings
from the stories about the patriarchs in Genesis.
Jacob, the trickster, Jacob, whose name means trickster, gets tricked.
Well, what goes around, comes around.
Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing.
Now Laban does a bait and switch trick on Jacob
to get another seven years of service out of him. Shrewd.
It’s definitely the way of the world –
temporal actions for temporal value for temporal results,
and tricks of deception motivated by greed and hardness of heart.
Yet stay tuned for next week’s installment:
God will work with Jacob until he has his trickiness wrestled out of him.
Then Jacob will be more useful in his destined role as a patriarch of faith.
Ah, that which is eternal, not temporal – the treasure, not the field.
There, that is an example of temporal.
Now an example of that which is not temporal but eternal.
I quote from the diocesan news magazine, Episcopal Voice,
that just came out, page 9, from an article by our own Hunt Priest:
“I live and work in one of the ‘good neighborhoods,’
which means I have to be very intentional to remember,
make real and live out solidarity with the poor,
whether in my own life or in the life of the congregation I serve
as priest and pastor.
Our prayers, our work and our political influence for ‘the least of these’ –
the poor, the hungry, the elderly, children, immigrants –
must be central to our identity as Christians.
Otherwise, we no longer identify with those Jesus cared most about.”
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that someone took and sowed in his field;
it is the smallest of all the seeds,
but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
"The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of flour [not just one, but THREE measures]
until all of it was leavened."
The Kingdom of Heaven is about absurd abundance
from what initially appeared so small,
not the closed handedness of a scarcity mentality exhibiting little faith.
One is real and the other is not.
One is eternal and the other is business as usual on the temporal plane.
And let us remember these words from the collect for today:
may we so pass through the things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal.
Amen.
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