You're Not the Treasure Hunter - You're the Treasure! -Matthew 13:44-46

You're not the Treasure Hunter - You're the Treasure!
Matthew 13:44-46

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jesus liked teaching in parables.  It’s easy to understand why. We all like good stories, and when a great story is told by a powerful story teller the hearer cannot help but be captivated and pulled into the narrative. When Jesus tells a parable, he’s creating a story that reaches into the lives that the people live. The characters are just like them or their neighbors and the situation is one they could see themselves involved in. Jesus tells these parables, these stories, to help people understand a truth about Jesus, or His Father in heaven, of the Kingdom of God. Some parables were difficult. The last two week’s Gospel lessons were the parable of the sower and the parable of the weeds. Both were sufficiently challenging that the disciples had to ask Jesus, in private, what the parables were about. Other times, the parables are so easy to understand that anyone can grasp the truth Jesus is trying to convey. But, sometimes, the easy parables are a bit deceptive: at first glance, they seem easy to “get,” but on further reflection, a deeper truth is realized.

This morning’s Gospel lesson is one of those parables that is easy to grasp, but if you’re not careful, it can trick you and leave you empty instead of fulfilled.

Well…Let’s go on a treasure hunt this morning. If we’re going on a treasure hunt, we need to know how a successful treasure hunter does his or her job. So, with Pirate Jack Sparrow’s cunning wit, and Lara Croft’s good looks, and Ben Gate’s knowledge of historical minutia, and Indiana Jones’ soundtrack - combined with a dash of plain old good luck and a double-portion of Hollywood happy endings - we have a winning treasure hunting combination.

Of course, we need to have a treasure to find. Jesus gives us the map in this morning’s Gospel lesson: 44“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” There it is: our treasure is the kingdom of God, as precious as the most beautiful pearl in the world.

So, if this is true, it appears that we are treasure hunters who are on the hunt for the kingdom of God, right? That’s what discipleship is all about, right – SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND ITS RIGHTEOUSNESS…? Searching for the truths of what God gives us. So here we go, disciple treasure hunters. The kingdom of heaven is like a buried treasure or a hidden pearl and it is our task to seek and find. It sounds like a great, grand glorious treasure hunt.

I don’t know about you but, other than having a beautiful woman at my side and my own rugged good looks, I don’t have too many of those other characteristics that would make me be the next Indy, Ben, or Jack. I imagine most of you are in the same pickle as me, lacking the cunning, skill, wit, strength, and – of course – a Hollywood writer to be a great treasure hunter. I guess I’m out of the treasure hunting business before I even get started. It’s just as well, I guess…speaking for myself, I am not much of a traveler, I don’t really like the idea of crawling around in tunnels and old buildings that have a tendency to collapse, I dislike spiders and hate snakes, and much prefer the air-conditioned comfort of my study to the humid jungles where treasure seems to be found. Besides…how would we know where to start our search? Then again, how would know if we found the kingdom of heaven on earth? And, if we did find it, how would we pay for it? I don’t have unlimited wealth at my disposal – do you? Do you really think that even if you sold everything you had – like the character in the parable – that would be enough to pay for heaven? But then again, what if – like the ancient knights of the round table – you spent your life searching for the Holy Grail of the Kingdom but never find it --- then what? Does that make you a failure at kingdom treasure hunting? Or what if your treasure hunt adventure doesn’t have a happy ending?

But is that what Jesus is telling us in this morning’s Gospel lesson – that we have to be treasure hunters? Is the purpose of the parable to inspire, fire up, encourage, exhort, and otherwise cause us to leave here in search of treasure, only to leave us as empty-handed as the almost-there-but-not-quite anti-heroes of the treasure-hunting movies?

What if you’re not the treasure hunter at all? What if this parable is not about you? What if this parable is about Jesus instead?

Before we get ourselves tied up in knots, let me read the text again for you. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

The last several weeks, we have heard Jesus telling his disciples of the difficulties of being His disciples. Discipleship is not an easy task. Although the disciples had had early successes – they had been sent out in a ministry of compassion, remember, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and even raising the dead – and came back to Jesus delivering their wonderful ministry reports, Jesus has since warned them of the difficulties to come. Through the parables of the last few weeks, He explained that the Gospel would be preached all over the world, like a sower scattering seed, but in many if not most locations, the Message would not grow to fruition. In other places, the Gospel would be preached and faith begin to grow, but Satan and his minions would be right there alongside the faithful, seeking to destroy that which is planted and growing.

To be blunt, there would be times in the disciples lives of ministry where it would appear that the Gospel is not powerful enough to overcome the Devil’s work, that it might seem they are wasting their time in serving Jesus, and that this Good News of Jesus being preached wasn’t enough to overcome the world’s own power. He spoke plainly of being rejected because of His name, and having to flee for their lives, being rejected by their own family members and even being arrested and brought before the civil authorities.

We understand these struggles of being a Christian in today’s world, don’t we. We continue to see these prophetic words of Jesus being fulfilled in our own country, in our own community, in our own lives and even in our own homes. Across the globe, Christians who dare to confess Christ are marched down main street, bound in chains, and beheaded in a public demonstration of militant Islam’s power. Christian bakers, who refuse to bake a cake because of their Christian principals, are fined into bankruptcy by civil court. An employee is called into the HR department because there is a cross and some Bible verses on her cubicle wall and is told those things need to be removed so no one is offended. A middle schooler is teased by his friends for going to Vacation Bible School instead of going over to watch a sexually explicit DVD. At a family gathering, when the father says something about what the Bible says concerning a hot button issue, the adult son laughs at his father saying, “You still believe in that religion stuff, Dad?” and walks away. When you go out to eat today and bow your head at a restaurant, someone snickers at you. While we know, and we believe, all of God’s promises fulfilled in Christ Jesus for the eternal well-being of His Church and that not even the gates of hell shall prevail against it…if we are honest, there are some days that frankly, our faith is shaking, our knees are weak, our resolve is questionable, and – like the disciples – we simply pray, “Lord, I believe…help my unbelief.”

To the disciples – and to the church today --- to you, the people of God in this holy place, Jesus speaks this parable about treasure hunting. He is not telling you to get busy treasure hunting and that “failure is not an option.” Rather, He is giving you a picture of what He is willing to do for you, His faithful.

In the parables, the Kingdom of Heaven is what God is doing in the world to establish and re-establish His reign in the fallen world through the life, work, and ministry of Jesus Christ. The treasure is the church, which includes all who hear and believe the Gospel of Jesus in all of time and into eternity. You are the treasure, not the treasure hunter. The field is the world in which the church lies, hidden. The man who finds the treasure and the pearl, and then who re-buries it, is Christ Himself. To redeem – to buy - the treasure and the pearl, the man sells everything. Jesus does not redeem us by selling everything he has --- how ironic that would be since all things are His anyway by virtue of His being God. Jesus redeems by giving Himself into death. He gives His all – His very life – to buy the Church. He does it because to Him, the Church is of greater value than any treasure or pearl.

He tells this to give us, His disciples then, His disciples now, His disciples of all ages, a Word of comfort. This world in which we live may be opposed to the church, it may speak against the Gospel, it might even become physically, violently an enemy of God seeking nothing more than to destroy all Christ has done, but Christ has redeemed the Church. He has purchased the Church with His own blood. He did not abandon His disciples than, He will not abandon us, His disciples now, and He will not abandon us in the future.

We often feel as if we’ve been buried under the burdens of this world with its challenges and dangers. We wrestle with our own sinful nature and desires. The devil, the father of all lies, continues to roar around trying to deceive us into thinking all is lost. But do not doubt that we belong to Jesus. You have been acquired. You were purchased at the price of Jesus giving up everything He had, including His own blood. In a remarkable picture of grace, you are worth more than any treasure or any pearl. This is his promise, given you in this parable.

There is one hidden promise I haven’t mentioned. Remember, the man finds the treasure and pearl, buries them, and sells everything to buy the field. But that’s where the story stops. Here’s the hidden promise: after he buys the field to redeem the treasure and the pearl, He returns. And when he returns He will dig up His treasure and bring it into the light. This is a picture of the resurrection; When Christ returns, He will raise you from the dust of the earth into His own light of resurrection. You will stand, in your flesh, in front of Jesus, the great treasure, the great pearl, that He died to redeem. On that day you will see the ending of this parable, and you will see yourself as the greatest of all treasures, the greatest of all pearls, that Jesus gave everything to save.