“Finding its true value”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, June 3, 2024
Matthew 13: 44-52 (Forward, p. 36) CEV p. 1000
I love the stories of people discovering, almost accidently, that they were ‘sitting’, totally unknown to them, on items of great value. There was the story of the North Carolina couple who bought a 25 cent Michael Jackson cassette, only to later discover that it had been signed by the great singer himself. Experts allege that should the signature be found to be authentic, the tape could be worth between $1,000 and $3,000 on the market.
And then there’s the rare 70-year-old Batman comic discovered accidently under a piece of plywood in an antique dresser being refinished by its unsuspecting owner. The press release didn’t disclose how much that owner originally paid for the dresser—it was sold in 1974 at a garage sale—but the comic itself went for over $55,000 at an online auction sale.
In both cases, there was an unnoticed, unsuspected treasure, right under their noses.
It is this kind of thing that Jesus refers to in today’s reading. In the first instance, someone finds a treasure in a field, someone else’s field mind you, and decides to keep it secret. He reburies it and then goes and sells all his belongings in order to buy that field. This suggests several things, first that the ‘finder’ is honest enough not to just go and outright steal whatever the treasure is, but perhaps not ‘honest’ enough to let the owner in on the secret. But, perhaps, he was honest about it, which is why he had to spend so much to buy the field. Certainly, the entire enterprise rings entirely true of Middle Eastern transactions: to obtain even a small part of a landholding, one had to buy the whole ‘shooting match’, the entire parcel. Anyway, to the new buyer, it is entirely worth it. The same thing with the buyer of fine pearls: the prospective buyer sells everything he has to buy this particularly lovely specimen. Jesus is suggesting that to His disciples, those who choose to follow Him, choices and sacrifices sometimes need to be made in order to obtain what is truly valuable.
With the draught of fish, there is the same kind of discernment, a kind of sorting the truly valuable ones from the ones that aren’t. But, according to Jesus, this sorting is carried out by God’s angels at the end of time, and
concerns, not earthly things, but people. Here it is God who makes the decision concerning value.
In the one last pericope of today’s passage, Jesus speaks of one last piece of sorting, one that I have often seen as pertaining to Matthew himself. A good scribe, an excellent student of the Scriptures, is one who digs into his storeroom the best of both the old and the new. And so it is, with the Scriptures and us, as well as history and knowledge in general, to be able to sort out the best of the old and the new and learn from it and make the most of it. It is our task.
Forward notes: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden” (v. 44a).
“I felt estranged from Jesus and went to a retreat center for solitude. I strode to their chapel with my detailed, two-page agenda to find Jesus. Inside, I found a stranger in the aisle. I whispered, ‘If you want to be alone, I’ll leave.’ His eyes filled with tears, ‘My wife just died; this was our special place.’ I put my hand on his shoulder, ‘Tell me about her.’ He wiped his eyes, and we talked for a long while, ending with a hug.
“I rushed to my next agenda item—a meditative massage. Minutes into the massage, a bell rang. The therapist sighed, ‘I’ll be right back.’ On return, she looked distraught. I asked, ‘Are you ok?’ She shook her head, ‘No, my mother lives upstairs; she has pancreatic cancer. When the bell rings, she needs more painkillers.’ I offered my hand, ‘How about we pray?’ Our prayers were cut short by the bell. ‘I’d better go,’ she sighed and left crying.
“The treasure I found—Jesus, the kingdom of heaven—was at hand, not in solitude, not in my agenda, but fully immersed in human sorrow and pain.”
Moving Forward: “Where do you find Jesus?”