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The Treasure, the Pearl & the Net

Matthew 13:44-52                                                                                       Pentecost 11 Year A

Buried Treasure:   A farmer is plowing a field, the sun is hot, and sweat is running down his back, he steers the plow with his callused hands when      All of sudden THUD! His plow strikes something, probably another rock that he has to pick up and throw away.  He bends down and parts the newly plowed soil, & what does he find?  A treasure!  What a strange place to find a treasure.  But maybe not so strange!  You see many a farmer had had the experience of plowing along & suddenly hitting something, only to discover a chest full of coins or jewels or some kind of precious metal.

           How would such a treasure end up in a farmer’s field of all places?  For centuries, the nation we know as Israel had been the battleground for the Egyptians & the Babylonians.  People who had to live through such foreign invasions soon learned that the earth was the only safe place to protect their possessions.  So they buried them.  By burying their valuables, it was harder for the invaders to get their hands on them. So when the word got out that some foreign army was approaching, the soil of Israel became pocketed with stashes of treasures.  Of course, the folk who took such precautions were often killed themselves, so their treasure remained in the earth, only to be discovered by somebody else, like the farmer in our story.

            Many of Jesus’ listeners would have had such an experience or known of someone who had discovered one of these buried treasures. “Jed Clampett shootin’ at some food & up through the ground came a bubbling crude. (Beverly Hillbillies TV Series).”  Jed like the farmer was just doing his job.  The farmer knew exactly what to do, he went & sold all that he had & bought that field.  Jed also knew what to do, he gathered up his family & “moved to Beverly, hills, that is, swimming pools, movie stars...”

          Antique Roadshow Titanic Story (painting worth nothing, original menu on the back worth $100,000.     “I have now in my possession just such a family treasure.  It consists of eight silver spoons that in and of themselves have very little value.  Like all family heirlooms, however, it is the story behind the spoons that makes them so significant to me.  Back in 1862, my maternal great-grandmother was living on a large plantation near Ripley, Mississippi.  The Civil War was in full swing.  The story is told that my forebear looked out of her upstairs window one day and in the distance saw the Union army approaching. She ran down to the dining room and filled her apron with as much silverware as she could carry.  Then she went out in the side yard, dug a shallow hole, and buried the silver ware.  She then turned an old wash pot over the place so the Yankees could not see the freshly dug earth.

        As it turned out, that silver ware was about the only thing that was saved after the invaders got through their plundering.  A part of the buried treasure came down to my grandmother, my mother, and then to me, and I shall always cherish these spoons.” (Excerpt from John Claypool’s Book: Stories Jesus Still Tells (pp 8-9).  There are all kinds of treasure, in today’s gospel; the treasure is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

 What makes the Kingdom of Heaven so price- less?

                                                1. Death is conquered (eternity with God)

                                                2. Lives are changed (K. Murphy)

                                                3. Friends are made (family of God)

                                                4. Victories are won (the enemy is defeated)

When we encounter the Kingdom of God & the King himself lives are changed. In the first two parables, Jesus is saying that healthy change occurs when we understand that the thing that is being offered is greater & better than the thing that is bring taken away.  This is why he tells us that the man who found the treasure went out & sold everything he owned to buy the field, & that he did it with great joy.  The great theologian Raymond Brown had this to say: “these two Parables stress the great value of the Kingdom & the necessity of taking the once-for-all opportunity to gain it, even if that requires selling off everything else.”

           The field in the parable refers to the gospel, hid in the word of the OT & NT.  Some people only look upon the surface of the field (the gospel), & judge by that, & they see no treasure at all.  Those who have worked in the mines know that most of the time you have to dig deep in order to find the precious metals & minerals. 

The Pearl:  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away & sold everything he had & bought it.  A pearl is the only gem produced by a living process.  It takes a long time for the oyster to produce this precious gem.  Diamonds had been discovered by this time in history but the pearl was treasured more.  The ancient world valued the pearl as a symbol of hope.  In the book of Revelation the 12 gates of the New Jerusalem are described as 12 individual pearls.  In the parable today, entering the Kingdom of God is portrayed as finding a pearl of great price that is worth all one has.  The term “Pearly Gates.”

The Fishing Net:  Jesus knew about the work of fishermen, he grew up near the Sea of Galilee.  These folk would set out in two boats & when they reached the center of the lake they would let down a large net between them & pull it toward shore.  When the water became shallow enough, they would get out & drag the huge net onto the land.  Then they would sit down on the bank & sort out the fish. Only those that were edible could be sold, the rest were tossed back into the water. 

Jesus uses this illustration to explain what it will be like at the last judgment.  It will be up to God to decide who to keep and who gets thrown away.  I’m sure that more than anything else that God would want to keep all of us. In God’s eyes, we are all a treasure, a pearl of great price, a keeper.  But if it were that easy, then it wouldn’t matter what we did with our lives on earth.  That’s why Jesus stresses this point so strongly.

          In the last two weeks we have heard a total of seven parables describing what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  Jesus wants to make sure that He gets His point across to his listeners. Discovering Jesus & the Kingdom of Heaven can be a wonderful & exciting moment in our lives.  There is no price tag that can be put upon such a magnificent treasure.  We hear of people winning lotteries all the time.  But that kind of happiness is limited & short lived.  When we discover Jesus the ultimate treasure we have found something that will not lose its value or purposes.  God never changes, He never depreciates in value. 

This church is full of millionaires.  We Christians are the richest people in the world.  Why? Because we have found the most precious treasure, the pearl of greatest price.  We have found Jesus & through him we have found the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have everything we will ever need.  We have a reason to be excited & want to tell others about our greatest discovery.  When we live for Jesus others will see that excitement & happiness shining through us in what we say & do.  The word needs to be spread, just like the days of the gold rush people need to know about Jesus & come to know Him, and then they too will have found their own treasure & pearl of greatest price.  Amen+