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Sermon by the Sea - Matthew 13:44-46
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome. If you and I have not had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jeremy. I get the privilege of leading our team here at Commons, and it's great to have you here with us. If you are new, then especially we want to welcome you. But if that is the case, then you are also welcome to tune out for a moment here because I do need to update our community on some of the less fascinating aspects of church.
Speaker 1:Today is the last week in March, and that means we are coming to the end of the first quarter in two thousand seventeen. We will have our quarterly financial updates posted to the website in a few weeks once those numbers are finalized as we always do. But for transparency's sake here, we're tracking about 17% behind last year in terms of donation. Now we are aware of a lot of the uncertainty that many of us are feeling with the economy in the city right now, And so we are watching our expenses and keeping them in line. We are not running any deficit right now even with donations down.
Speaker 1:And so I really wanna thank our team and our board for managing those expenses well. That said, we do have a couple larger projects that are already scheduled for the next quarter. So new exterior doors are gonna be going in on the south entrance to match the ones by the gym. We have a new movable wall that has been finally ordered to replace the failing divide between the sanctuary and gym to my left, held together by duct tape. And also, we're having the exterior of the building painted this spring.
Speaker 1:We've actually had a very generous donation from a company connected to our community to cover most of that expense for us, and so we're very grateful for that. But we want you to know that while we are watching and responding appropriately to what's happening in our community and our finances as a church, we also want to ask you to consider your contribution to Commons and whether this is perhaps an opportunity where God is stretching you to become a more generous person in this season. Now all that said, I really do want to say thank you to everyone for your commitment to this community. It is very personally humbling to me to see what this community gives in order to create space for others to experience the Jesus story. A lot of the expenses that I talked about we have coming up are facility related, and just know that we are using this building very well to serve Jesus.
Speaker 1:We have four services every Sunday, and the church is packed every week with events happening throughout the community. And that's very exciting for us to see, especially in the season as we prepare ourselves for Easter because we are now just three weeks away from the center point of the Christian calendar. Spring has returned, at least a little bit. And as we gather together on April 16, however, we will celebrate the return of truth and resurrection as it invades our lives once again. If you go to our website right now, commons.church, you will see that we have put Easter front and center, and we are already hard at work in the background preparing for Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and then finally, the celebration of resurrection Sunday.
Speaker 1:And so hopefully, you'll be able to join us and perhaps even invite someone to join you in that celebration that weekend. And yet, even as we get ready, we know that to celebrate well means we need to prepare not just the services, but also our hearts. And so you'll notice on the sidewall here that we have artwork that reminds us of the season that we're in. I am wearing a clerical stole again today to mark the season of Lent. That's what this fancy scarf is if you haven't seen one of these before.
Speaker 1:And Lent is the season that we use to prepare ourselves to properly celebrate the joy and return and life of resurrection when it comes. And so to do that, we have been engaged together in a sermon that Jesus gives in Matthew chapter 13. And this sermon is just simply a series of parables, stories that Jesus tells. And last week, it was a story about mustard seeds. And I love this imagery because there is so much depth hidden in this very simple story.
Speaker 1:Jesus says that God's kingdom, the presence of the divine in the world starts out so small you can barely notice it. And yet once it takes root, it grows into something absolutely unmissable. Wherever you can bring something of goodness and light and grace and peace into the world, even if it is just a sliver of what you hope for. That seed will grow beyond your wildest expectations. So be encouraged because the best things in life come from a long obedience in the same direction.
Speaker 1:A line from Eugene Peterson that I steal all the time as I've always tried to hold on to that and live it out in my life. And yet, for me, the real beauty of Jesus' parables are the layers of meaning that he's able to hide in these very simple stories. Because Jesus has done something very subtle and yet very intentional in this mustard seed story. He says that a mustard seed grows and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air may come and perch in its branches. And so last week, we talked about how one, a mustard seed does not grow into a tree.
Speaker 1:It's actually just a scruffy little scrub of a bush. And two, this isn't a mistake. It's actually a very specific reference to the Jewish scriptures that Jesus is making. See, all through the Hebrew prophets, Israel is imagined as this great tree, a great cedar that will provide shelter and safety to the birds of the air, which represent all the nations coming to God. And now Jesus says, yes.
Speaker 1:The kingdom of God starts small like a tiny cedar sprig or an insignificant mustard seed. And it grows and it expands and it surprises us with its scope, and it absolutely will provide safety and shelter and welcome to everyone who would come. But here's the thing, says Jesus. You have this noble, impressive, imposing image of a grand cedar in your mind. But the true beauty of the kingdom of God is found not in its grandeur, but in its scruffy, scraggly, mischievous ability to show up where you least expected it.
Speaker 1:See, the mustard seed is Jesus' way of talking about the beauty of God's kingdom. But it's also his way of subverting our expectations of God's kingdom and reminding us that God isn't impressed by the things that we are. And so every single time I think I've figured God out and I have understood where his kingdom begins and ends, The mustard seed is one of the images I go back to in order to be reminded that his kingdom is probably a little bit messier than mine, and that's what makes it divine. Now this week is all about treasure. So let's pray, and then we'll jump right in.
Speaker 1:God of unruly, unkempt gardens, God with dirt under fingernails, God with mischievous love that crosses our well manicured boundaries, would you continually remind us that just when we think we have understood you, you surpass our expectations, and you invite us into an ever larger imagination of grace. God, where we have directed our energy to pruning when we should have let your kingdom grow free. Have mercy. Where we have let our plans expand without cutting back to create room for you and your plan grant forgiveness. Where we have become enamored with a false kingdom built on the pretense of spectacle, would you be present in our daily lives by your spirit showing us the unexpected presence of your kingdom everywhere we turn?
Speaker 1:As we speak today, a treasure that is worth more than anything we can imagine. Would you enliven our hearts to the truth and beauty of your kingdom? To the intrinsic value of what you have invited us to see in your world. Might we become those willing to pay any price to experience your presence in our lives, knowing that you would do the same for us. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. New parable. And in fact, we have two new parables today that are come together as a package. But let's start off actually where we left off last week in Matthew 13 verse 34 where Matthew now adds some commentary for us.
Speaker 1:He says that Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. Remember last week, we talked about how the explanations of the parables are just for the disciples. The crowd, all they get are the stories. And so when you read through Matthew 13, you almost wanna skip the explanations and come back to them later because Jesus has designed these parables to stand on their own.
Speaker 1:And so it's not a mistake if you read Jesus parables and you're a little bit confounded. Like that's a good sign because these are stories that are designed to keep you digging. So don't give up. Matthew continues. He says, so was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet.
Speaker 1:I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world. Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came with him. Now Matthew adds this little commentary here from the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:And the passage that he's quoting comes from Psalm 78. Verse two says, I will open my mouth with a parable. I will utter hidden things, things from of old. Now what we really have to understand here is that this was not originally a prophetic passage about the Messiah. This is just a poem from a guy named Asaph.
Speaker 1:And when he says, I will open my mouth with a parable, he's actually just talking about himself. He's saying, hey, guys. I'm gonna tell you a story. And so what's fascinating about Matthew in particular is that he has this tendency to take these Old Testament passages that have nothing to do with the Messiah and then say, see, this points to Jesus. Now it's not a mistake.
Speaker 1:You know, this writer knows exactly what he's doing. He is reinterpreting these ancient passages to mean something new for us. It's almost like Matthew is so caught up in the Jesus story, And he is so enamored with what he sees in Jesus that he just can't help to see him everywhere now. And I almost wonder whether Matthew is kinda telegraphing this for us in the passage that he's chosen here. It's like he anticipates that people are gonna say, hey, that's that's not a passage about the Messiah, man.
Speaker 1:What are you trying to pull here? And so he says that Jesus speaks in parables to utter things hidden since the foundation of the world. In other words, nothing is new. The the kingdom has always been there just below the surface. You you know that God has never not been in his world.
Speaker 1:Right? Jesus has always been present in some way, somewhere embedded all through your experience of life. Whether you noticed him there or not. And so these parables aren't so much designed to introduce you to the kingdom of God as much as they are meant to awaken you to it, Matthew is saying. That they're meant to remind you that God's kingdom is actually already in and through everything you know.
Speaker 1:And and there's something really profoundly beautiful in that realization. Once the hiddenness of the kingdom of God becomes seen, that you can actually look back and see the ways that God has been with you every step of your journey, patiently waiting for you to notice him. You just didn't see him there. And so maybe, like many of us here at Commons, you have had this experience where you have had some sense of coming back to faith. Maybe there was a time in your story where you knew there was good in the world, and you knew that you had experienced something beyond you, something divine.
Speaker 1:But somehow, somewhere along the line you lost sight of that. And maybe life got heavy, or circumstances pulled you in lesser directions. And perhaps the answers that you had been given reached a point where they just no longer added up for you. And yet somehow you you held on, you retained this sense that somewhere buried in the soil of your life, there was more than just a faster car and a bigger yard. Like like somewhere hidden in the foundation of your world was something more beautiful than all of that.
Speaker 1:That's what Matthew was tapping into here. This imagination that all truth is God's truth. And anything that is good ultimately comes from and points back to Jesus. You could almost say that the hiddenness of God is like yeast mixed through the dough, Jesus might say. But what's really compelling about this little commentary aside that Matthew gives us is that I think it flows beautifully into this set of parables that Jesus is about to give us.
Speaker 1:Matthew says that Jesus unveils what was always there hidden in the world. Then in verse 44, Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again. And then in his joy, notice that word, he went and he sold all that he had and bought that field. So whatever the kingdom is, it is joy not obligation that drives us to search it out.
Speaker 1:If Christianity feels like a burden, you're doing it wrong. But Jesus continues. Again, 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, and bought it. Now that's Matthew chapter 13 verses 44 to 46.
Speaker 1:And I think clearly these parables are meant to go together. Right? In fact, they are almost the same story told over again. Except that there are a couple differences here, and I think those differences are meant to help draw out Jesus' point for us. But let's take them in order.
Speaker 1:The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. And this one just sounds strange. Right? I mean, who buries treasure in a field? Is this some kind of pirate story you have in mind here, Jesus?
Speaker 1:Well, my three year old son would love this story because he is fascinated with maps these days. Anyone's house that has been infiltrated by Dora and her explorations will likely understand of what I speak. Although it is very cute because we can't go anywhere without consulting the map. Before we go literally anywhere in our lives, my son will hold up this imaginary map and examine it diligently and then pass it to mom or dad so that we can have it just in case we quote, get lost in the fog. It's always the fog.
Speaker 1:I don't know why, but whatever. Now it doesn't matter if we are going for a walk or a drive. Sometimes we can't even go upstairs without checking the map. Here's an image of Eaton checking the map on a hike that we took last summer. Here he is checking the map on a scooter ride that we went for yesterday.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. Other than the lack of vaccinations for deadly sickness and the scarcity of food and the likely early death due to some combination of violence, debilitating labor, and insufficient sanitation, my son would have loved the ancient world because buried treasure and indeed treasure maps were legit. You see people actually did bury their belongings back then. In fact, Jesus tells another story in Matthew 25 about a rich man who entrusts his wealth to one of his servants and then expects them to invest it for him. Except that this servant is so nervous that he decides to just bury the money in the backyard in order that he can at least dig it up and give it back to the master when he returned.
Speaker 1:That doesn't go well for him, but you can imagine that in the ancient world, banks existed in some sense, but not really for normal people. And so regular people would actually often bury their savings and perhaps family heirlooms to keep them safe. In fact, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in the Qumran Caves in the nineteen forties, we have something that we call the copper scroll. And it was very unique because instead of being rolled up parchment, it was actually a sheet of copper that had been engraved and then rolled up like a scroll. But when scholars very carefully unrolled it, on it was a treasure map.
Speaker 1:Now unfortunately, no one has found the treasure. You can imagine that landmarks are pretty hard to decipher two thousand years later. But even in the places where scholars think the map is pointing to, whatever treasure may have been there is now sadly long gone. But the idea of stumbling across a small treasure buried in the ground was not observed. This might be akin to telling a story about winning the lottery today.
Speaker 1:Definitely not a common thing, but also not completely unrealistic to talk about. There was even a rabbinic saying, there is only one safe place for wealth, the earth. So obviously, lot of people are doing this. And with all of the instability in ancient Palestine, land being turned over to new owners all the time for economic or violent reasons, they may well not have known what was buried therein. Now this particular story from Jesus seems to be about more than just a family heirloom buried in the backyard.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a fairly significant treasure, but even that has some precedent. During the time when Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in Babylon, it appears that all across the Middle East, unscrupulous government officials got about burying gold coins everywhere. And their plan was to go back and dig them up once the chaos of regime change had settled down. Inevitably, some of those stockpiles were left unreturned to and discovered years later. In fact, as late as 1876, a cache like this from the reign of Alexander was discovered buried in the ground.
Speaker 1:The point is it's not a crazy story. Somewhat fantastic story, but also a believable one drawn from Jesus' world. However, probably the bigger issue here is whether this man who finds the treasure is a bit of a slimeball. I mean, come on. He finds a treasure.
Speaker 1:He hides it again, and then he puts together a plan to buy the land out from the owner. All sounds a little shady, at least, doesn't it? So what do we do with this? Well, because of all this burying of treasure that was happening, there were actually rules for this kind of thing. Specifically in Jewish law or Halakah in Hebrew, said that if a treasure was unmarked and found on public land, it belonged to the finder.
Speaker 1:If it was on public land but marked, then the owner had to first be sought out. But if an honest effort was made and the owner could not be found, it belonged to the finder. However, if it was on private land, then the treasure belonged to the owner of the land. And so it would have been understood to have been purchased with the land. That's why the gentleman in our story is so eager to buy the land.
Speaker 1:And yet we could still ask, well, does this man have an obligation to explain his find to the current owner? According to Jewish law, the answer is no. I'll quote one Jewish writer here. Property always has potential beyond what an owner can know. For only God has perfect information, an owner can investigate the opportunities offered by what he owns, but others are not obligated to occupy their time by increasing his knowledge.
Speaker 1:And so, basically, what we have here is the famous ancient maxim, finders keepers, losers reapers. Now, of course, beyond the letter of the law, we have to remember that this is a parable. Right? And so when Jesus says the kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field, The word he uses is homoias, and it means like, as in similar or reminiscent of or it reminds me of in some way. And think we all get this.
Speaker 1:We all understand simile and metaphor and how to use them, but this is actually really important here. Because sometimes when people read scripture, it seems like they all of a sudden forget about literary devices and how they work. And they try to read too deeply into these stories. The kingdom of God is not a mustard seed. The kingdom of God is not a field full of weeds.
Speaker 1:The kingdom is not treasure hidden in a field. It is like those things in some specific way, even as it will be completely unlike those things in all kinds of other ways. So please understand, this is not a license to go around ripping people off as long as you don't technically break the law. The point here is simply that the kingdom of God is hidden all throughout the world. And you can stumble across it even when you're not looking for it.
Speaker 1:But when you do, you will know in your heart that it is worth everything to you. Now, obviously, the setting for that everything here in the story is financial. I think I think that's clearly part of the story. We have to be willing for our faith to cost us, yet I think it would be artificially limiting to read the parable as if it was all about money. It's not.
Speaker 1:It's about so much more than your wallet. This is about relationships. This is about aspirations. This is about your career and your goals in life. This is about all of the ways in which the kingdom of God reorients our priorities as human beings.
Speaker 1:This is about how the kingdom invites us to invest in something that is bigger than ourselves. And if the biggest thing that you can think to dream of is a slightly faster, shinier, larger version of something you already own, then what you have is a deficit of imagination. The kingdom wants to help you. But there is a second parable here as well. And far from simply being a reinscription of the first, I think this parable is actually integral to Jesus' point.
Speaker 1:Verse 45. Again, the kingdom is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Now, basically, on the surface here, have the same story. Right?
Speaker 1:Same punchline with a slightly different setup, but it's telling the same thing. And and yet whenever I see something like this where it seems like I'm reading the same thing again, It's actually somewhere that I want to spend some time with and pay more attention to. Because while some of us have a plethora of words and work to compress our communication so that it fits on a Sunday morning, Jesus seems to have a surprising economy of words. He often gets right to the point. His stories are very pithy and they invite us into a world of imagination in a few short sentences.
Speaker 1:And so Jesus does not strike me as someone who repeats himself just to hear the sound of his own voice. And so if Jesus wants to go over this material again, there's probably something here we need to notice. Well, this time, it's not a hired worker who stumbles across the treasure. This time, it's actually a merchant, a business person who is very purposely looking for treasure. And the Greek here makes that very clear.
Speaker 1:In the first story, the important verb is, to come upon something or find something accidentally. In the second story, the significant verb is, to seek out or to investigate and examine something diligently. Now it's true. Both stories end with the same emphasis on cost and investment and what the kingdom is worth to the protagonist. One is very passive.
Speaker 1:He happens to come across the treasure. The second is very active. He seeks it out and searches the treasure out. And I like to think that both of those descriptions probably fit for me at certain moments in my journey. But that contrast got me thinking.
Speaker 1:And that kept me reading and that led me to notice something new in this story. You see, in the first story, the kingdom is like treasure hidden in a field. But in the second story, the kingdom isn't actually like treasure at all, is it? In the second story, it's like a merchant looking for treasure. You see, these aren't the same story at all.
Speaker 1:They are the opposite story. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is hidden all through this world. And your life is so full of the divine that you can just stumble across it in the course of your day. And when you do, you will see how beautiful it is, how worth everything it is. Once it gets a hold of you, it will change everything for you and about you.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing Jesus says, all the while that you are out there stumbling around, the kingdom has actually been looking for you. Because the kingdom isn't the pearl in the second story, you are. The kingdom is the merchant who's searching. And Jesus says that even as you are stumbling through his world, God is deliberately searching you out. God is tracking you down.
Speaker 1:God is investigating and examining every opportunity because he is desperately looking to find you. The beauty of these stories together is that when he finds you, kingdom of God discovers you where you are, then it will give everything to get a hold of you and bring you back home. See, this is not a set of parables designed to tell you to try harder. This is not a set of parables designed to scare you off with the cost of following Jesus. This is a set of parables designed to show you that the same God who costs you everything is the same God that gives everything to search you out and bring you home.
Speaker 1:You see for me, this is a parable about the economy of God's kingdom. That God is not asking anything from you that he would not give himself to you. He's not asking you to buy his affection or to earn your place at his table because God's kingdom is not transactional. It is relationship. It is giving everything away so that we can receive it all back.
Speaker 1:It is breathing out fully so that you can breathe in completely. God's kingdom is gift and reception. It is inhale and exhale. It is coming to understand that when we give ourselves away, this is where our life comes from. Because everything in God's kingdom is upside down.
Speaker 1:Even when he asks you to give everything to find it. And so if you have discovered some small sliver of the kingdom in your world, and may you one day find yourself ready to give everything to it, Trusting that when you do, you will discover Jesus on the other side ready to give it all back. God has been looking for you for a very long time. And my prayer is that one day you would allow him to find you. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, help us to take these images of your kingdom and to allow them to set aside our expectations, our preconceptions of who you are and what a kingdom looks like. To realize that you are not calling us to buy our way to a seat at your table. That you're not asking us to give everything up just as a test of our value. But instead, God, you are inviting us into a relationship of give and take and inhale and exhale. A kingdom so beautifully that in our joy we would give everything to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:Trusting that on the other side, you have always been searching us out, looking for us. That you are willing to give everything to bring us back home. And so God, as we enter back into your world, And we walk through our lives and we stumble across your kingdom, the divine there in our experience of today. And God, by your spirit would you help us notice those moments. To capture them and to grab ahold of them and to celebrate just how beautiful they are.
Speaker 1:And then at the same time, to invite all those around us into the same experience of your grace. God, might we understand just how valuable you are and how worth everything it is to be with you. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.