The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field . .
. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a
merchant in search of fine pearls
As
some of you may know, I occasionally teach banjo lessons and I am afraid I have
just lost my star banjo student; she moved back to California, poor girl, and
in fact she was my only banjo student. The truth is I never take on more than
one banjo student at a time. I get plenty of inquiries. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to play the
banjo? It is cheaper than a therapist and mpre effective. But it is my experience has taught me that more often than not teaching
banjo is waste of my time and a waste of the student’s time and money. Wanting
something is not same thing as working to get it. I do not have the time to teach a bunch of
folks; I have a day job, as you know, and I do not need the money. But I am
very interested in passing on what I have learned. So I interview prospect students
and if they have gone to the trouble of listening to banjo music – most of them
haven’t by the way – and will make a commitment to listen and to practice,
which basically means that they will agree to become obsessive compulsive about
the banjo, I might take them on. When they ask me what I charge I have learned to
say ‘pay what it is worth to you’ and I have never regretted saying that.
In
two of the parables in the Gospel this Sunday Jesus asks us ‘what is it worth to you?
What is the kingdom of heaven worth to you?’ In the first parable a man sells all
he has to build a field in which a treasure is hidden. In the second a
merchant, read: greedy capitalist some
would say, also sells all he has to invest in one pearl of great value. You do
not need me to tell you that kingdom of heaven is expensive and way beyond my
means or your means. Jesus says it costs
everything.
But
that is not all these parables tell us. Of course eternal life, to know God, to
love Him, to serve Him and to enjoy Him forever involves sacrifice and how
could it be any cheaper than everything we have? Note what Jesus says “in his joy he
goes and sells all that he has and buys that field”. Giving up the things that
we cannot imagine we can do without, detachment from the merely transitory,
freedom from the need to acquire more and more is not only the way to get to
heaven; it is the way to enjoy life right now, to be joyful, to be happy. The
life of every saint is the proof. A Saint is not someone who gave everything up
and then was miserable and made everyone else miserable. The Saints realized that
they were going to lose everything anyway; to bet on He Who Is, He who cannot
not be was a common sense wager. Saints who went without were full of joy
because they realized that they had nothing to lose and everything, quite
literally everything to gain, for that is what heaven is, that is what God is.
The
saints were shrewd men and women just the like man going after the treasure
hidden in the field. The parable does not spell it out but we can guess that
the man did not tell the owner of the field about the hidden treasure. Not exactly exemplary behavior but shrewd
nonetheless and in his own self-interest. Sacrifice is in our own interest. It
is in our self-interest to let go of all those resentments, jealousies, envy,
determination to control others, our discontents our love of things, our hatred
of people and all the rest. It is not that God will not let us in heaven, if we
don’t, it’s that we wouldn’t be happy there, we would not fit in. “What is
heaven worth?”
All
this is obviously the point of the second parable as well, the merchant in
search of fine pearls. But there is a bit different emphasis in this parable.
We are all looking for something, for something that will make us happy,
complete and at last satisfied. Fine pearls. But the merchant finds ‘one pearl
of great value’. We are running around as fast as we can chasing a million
dreams and fantasies, even though we know if we were to catch one, we would
drop it and chase yet another. But what if we were to find the one pearl, the
pearl that satisfies all our longing, fills all our emptiness and before which
we can at last rest. As St. Thomas Aquinas says “this all men cal God.” “What
is He worth to us?”
With
these parables Jesus loves us into his Kingdom. But there is another parable in
the Gospel this Sunday and a much less attractive one. “a net which was thrown
into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it
ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad”.
With this parable Jesus frightens us into his Kingdom. He is determined to make
us citizens of the Kingdom and sometimes all that will work his considering the
alternative.
“So
it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the
evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will
weep and gnash their teeth”.
If
it is really the trashcan of the universe that we prefer, the endless rat race,
endless movement that gets us nowhere, perpetual anger, resentments never
overcome, sins never forgiven, looking and never finding, there is a provision
for that as well. “What is it worth to you to avoid that?”
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field . .
. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a
merchant in search of fine pearls
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