Pentecost 9A2023
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
“The kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says, “is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
With the complex tangle of parable, all I’ve got this morning is testimony.
The summer I was 16, I sang in the Minnesota All-State Lutheran Choir. Made up of high school students from around Minnesota, the Minnesota All-State Lutheran Choir gathered at a Bible camp for 10 days to learn and memorize a 2-hour choir concert after which we piled in buses and toured Minnesota, singing at a different Lutheran church each night for three weeks. One night after 8 hours of singing and devotions with the chaplain and team building with the rest of the choir, I experienced what you might call a genuine affirmation of my baptism. I had always believed in God, had always participated in church activities, and had always found theology fascinating, but I had never much cared. About God. About church. About faith. But that night, I laid in bed and realized I wanted to follow Jesus. Life changed for me that night. I was already reading the Bible regularly, but now, I dug in. I journaled my prayers daily, and my life became about what God wanted, not what I wanted. That summer, I adopted my first truly life-shaping spiritual discipline: a commitment to seeing Christ in every person and thus honoring each person because of their identity as a child of God and because of the Holy Spirit’s presence in them. I had discovered treasure hidden in a field.
Eight years ago this summer, an employee of Grace Lutheran where I was serving at the time made a significant change in the heat respite program, a program where we provided—and they still provide—a cool space to sleep, meals and water, and human services for members of the Grace community experiencing homelessness. The employee decided we would no longer call the police when violence erupted, that we would create a safe, hospitable space in which we would solve our own problems, that we would learn with and from one another to live together in community. The summer before, our community action police officer told us, we had called for police intervention 27 times, more than twice a week for the 12 weeks of heat respite. And of course, even after making this change, we still had fights. But we had a lot less. And the incidents of violence continued to dwindle through the years at all our programs as people began to trust that Grace really was a safe place. Last summer during heat respite, there was one fight. One. By building relationships, by giving people tools for coping with trauma, by teaching nonviolent communication and entering into seemingly endless rounds of civil dialogue, we-together-virtually ended violence in our community. I had always prayed for an end to violence in our world at large, but it wasn’t until I saw violence end before my eyes that I discovered—truly—the power of love, God’s love, to heal not just individuals but communities. I discovered treasure hidden in a field.
Today, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone found and hid; then, in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. I feel this pull to tell you to go buy the field. I want to tell you to drop everything when you discover the kingdom of heaven in your midst and run toward it. I want us all to see that God’s love actually does something in the world when we start believing that it could. Because believing that God’s love can heal the world means we will take the risk of actually loving people.
Buying the proverbial field means investing our lives in God’s kingdom. Loving and serving our neighbor, prayerfully discerning and using our gifts for the sake of the common good. Forgiving others and working for justice and peace.
When I hear our human family complain about the state of the world, when I too feel overwhelmed by indifference and violence, when the injustice of systems seems too complex to pick apart and solve, all I can do is invest my life in God’s kingdom. Because I don’t have workable answers to enormous, systemic problems. Because I don’t have the political savvy or the budget to lead a global revolution and put the world to rights. But I can invest my life in God’s kingdom. I can see my neighbor, learn their name, listen to their story, and find community in their presence. I can let go of the wrongs done to me so that I live in freedom that allows me to be present here and now. I can use the gifts given to me by God for whatever work and play God calls me to. I can sit in silence once in a while and listen for what God would have me do. I can risk learning something new and allow for the possibility of changing my mind, admitting that I was wrong, acknowledging that there could be a better way—or in short, practicing humility.
My favorite part of today’s parable is that discovering treasure hidden in the field isn’t accompanied by a dirge. It’s not grueling labor. It’s joy that leads someone to go and sell all that they have so they can buy the field. The good news of God’s kingdom is that, when we find it, when we invest in it, joy is part of the treasure. For that, we can say: Thanks be to God! Amen.