One Sunday in January 1927 this passage from Matthew 13 was the subject of a sermon by my predecessor as Rector of Horsted Keynes Frank Stenton-Eardley. It was an exceptionally profitable sermon. One of the congregation from nearby Broadhurst Manor went home, dug in a field there and unearthed a hoard of sixty-four gold nobles. This gold, deposited 500 years before, is now in the British Museum. [Picture of gold nobles by Paul Hudson]
The guy who found the treasure remembered the Rector’s sermon when his spade clinked the treasure. What does today’s former Rector suggest you might find memorable about the same Scripture?
The two parables of the treasure and the pearl remind Christians of the need to put supreme value on building our longing for God and his kingdom.
It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be wrote the mystic author of that Medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing.
What would you be? Where’s your heart set?
God wants his aspirations to be of supreme value to his children and we can’t attain these without alertness and determination, two virtues that come out of the parables of the treasure and the pearl in our gospel reading from the end of Matthew Chapter 13.
Like the Horsted Keynes labourer, if we proceed about our lives with wise mindfulness we don’t have to go far to find God and his riches. The purpose of scripture, of sermons and bible study, is to school us to be alert to the possibilities of God breaking into our situation, as the clink of the spade on the gold alerted the farm worker schooled by the Sunday sermon in January 1927.
The treasure parable of God’s kingdom is a reminder to recognize the treasure that’s already there in our lives and the joy it's discovery brings. Over the summer we’ve got great opportunities to rediscover the joy of family as the demands of work and lockdown lift from us.
If this parable is a reminder to be alert to God’s moments the parable of the merchant is a reminder to be spiritually determined. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Jesus emphasises in this parable how being his follower takes you on a determined spiritual search. The cost of this will be eclipsed by the outcome but there is a cost.
To be better disciples of Jesus we need opportunities to discipline ourselves so our personal agendas give way more and more to his. This cannot occur, Jesus cannot reach into our lives, without prayer, scripture and the eucharist.
May the Lord build that determination for him as well as the day by day, hour by hour alertness to the treasure we don’t need to go on holiday to find since it lies buried and awaiting us where we live.
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