Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52
July 24, 2011
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
When my wife Margaret had graduated college, and her younger sister Cynthia was still in college, they joined a couple of friends and travelled in Italy together for the summer. Margaret and her friend Michelle split off from Cynthia and Allison and they travelled separately, agreeing to meet in Venice in Piazza San Marcos at a set time. Meanwhile, Allison had to return home, leaving Cynthia on her own, and Cynthia got lost. Margaret didn’t know this. She arrived at Piazza San Marcos at the appointed time, and Cynthia wasn’t there. Now this was in the days before cell phones and internet. There was no way they could find each other.
Margaret was concerned. She looked at all the youth hostels and at various tourist sites. But she was with a friend and she had some confidence in Cynthia. She and her sister were both reasonably experienced Europe hands. Margaret knew Cynthia was in Venice somewhere and believed that, given time, they would find each other.
Cynthia was not quite so copacetic. She was resourceful but she was also alone and desperate to find her Big Sister.
Every day, both women would go to Piazza San Marcos hoping to find each other, and after a few days, they did. They saw one another across a crowd and ran to one another’s arms. Michelle had a camera, and took a picture of their flush-faced, tearful reunion that is now a family icon. Like all sisters they had their issues, and occasionally still have them today, but that photo reminds them that no matter how far lost they feel from one another, they are immensely happy when they find one another again.
Jesus’ parables today are parables of discovering hidden things. Two in particular are striking. In one, a man finds a treasure hidden in a field, completely by accident. He buries it, then sells all he has and buys the field. The treasure, Jesus says, is the Kingdom of Heaven.
But in the next one, the Kingdom of Heaven is a merchant, who is searching for a valuable pearl, and just by chance stumbles upon a pearl of great price, and sells all he has to buy this one pearl.
The two parables together present a tension. In one, we humans stumble upon the Kingdom of Heaven, realize its value, and give up everything to find it. The implication is that we humans aren’t consciously or intentionally looking for God’s Kingdom or God’s love. In fact, there’s no real reason to think it’s there. There’s not a lot of evidence of it in the world around us sometimes. But then, there’s this guy, going about his business. Maybe he’s a utility worker who is supposed to check on a buried power line and he just stumbles upon this treasure. And when he realizes its value, he sells all he has and buys the field where the treasure is buried. That’s us, not looking for the Kingdom of Heaven at work in the world, but blown away when we find it, willing to give up everything for it.
But in the other parable a merchant is consciously seeking valuable pearls, and she finds the Pearl of Great Price. The dynamic is different. The Kingdom of Heaven is THE MERCHANT. It is God’s presence in the world. And while we may not be always consciously seeking God’s Kingdom, GOD IS ALWAYS CONSCIOUSLY, INTENTIONALLY, MAYBE EVEN DESPERATELY, SEEKING US. I always imagine this Divine Merchant perusing the displays at a flea market, sifting through old tools and toys and auto parts and fake jewelry only to discover this incredible jewel—us. God seeks us, and finding us gives up everything for us.
God the treasure; God the treasure hunter. Humanity the treasure; humanity the treasure finder. It’s a parallel worth noting, and that’s the reason I thought of that picture of Margaret and Cynthia in Venice. Margaret was looking for her sister, but not desperately; Cynthia was desperate, looking for Margaret. Then they found one another. The real treasure was their joy in finding one another, and that joy is part of the bedrock of what looks to me to be a great sisterly relationship.
What often amazes one about Jesus’ parables is how relentlessly optimistic they are. Yes, optimistic. Sure, a lot of them end with somebody being thrown into the furnace of fire, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but overall Jesus’ point of view—regarding the world, human nature, and especially God—is relentlessly positive, far more positive than that of many of his interpreters down through the centuries, and certainly compared to the prophets of his day. In other of Jesus’ sayings, He can be stern and morally indignant, but in the parables, which are the basis of his teachings, Jesus presents a world that despite its flaws is the very place where God’s Kingdom has chosen to dwell. It’s hidden, but it’s here. And it has a tendency to jump out and surprise us, to turn up in the most unexpected and unlikely ways, and to challenge us to give up everything to have it.
And as to human nature? Jesus certainly had no illusions about human sinfulness and self-indulgence, but in the parables quite often we humans are presented as people who, on discovering the hidden treasure of the Kingdom, have the good sense to know it for what it is, to value it, and to give up everything for it. Apparently, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in an entirely different context, the Kingdom of Heaven is hard to define but we know it when we see it. Something in human nature recognizes it intuitively.
And, of course, the parables are relentlessly optimistic about God. We often feel abandoned to our own devices, forgotten and unloved, but it turns out quite the opposite is true. God is out there, seeking us where we may be found, calling to us when we might be near, and when God finds us, God will give up everything for us. We are that much of a treasure to God. We are that important to God.
Of course, ironically, to present God as desperately seeking us puts God in the awkward position of being the little sister lost in Venice hunting for a big sister who doesn’t seem very motivated to find her.
That’s part of the point of the parables: again and again God is presented in the most humbling ways. God is a shepherd seeking sheep. God is a farmer who throws seeds wastefully, disregarding good agricultural strategy. God is a woman who loses a coin and looks all night to find it. God is a lovesick father who lets his thankless son walk all over him by squandering his inheritance. The great God, the Sovereign, the Almighty who created the universe, who freed Israel from Egypt—this same God is willing to humiliate himself to the point of being like a teenager lost in Venice. Why do that for people who don’t even know they should be looking for you in the first place?
The reason is because the real treasure is the joy we have in finding one another.
And that’s another aspect of the optimism of Jesus’ parables. Jesus believes that when humans and God find one another, our joy is complete. God is happy, and so are we. God doesn’t get caught up in recriminations, like “where have you been hiding?” Human beings aren’t filled with resentment for feeling neglected or abandoned. When God and human find one another, we’re so happy to see each other, to hold one another in our arms at last, that everything else is forgotten. It doesn’t even matter. All that matters is the joy we have in finding one another, at last. The rift between heaven and earth, between God and mortal, is healed, and we and the world are complete.
And that, my friends, is the Kingdom of Heaven.