Jesus said: ‘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.
‘Again, 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 teaching in parables is a way of teaching that goes beyond our usual processes. These little tales or sayings or images grab us by their unusualness and ordinariness.
The images Jesus uses are from daily life, they are things that everyone who first heard them would understand, yet they always have a strangeness to them.
They are wonderful because they somehow stay with you, yet seemingly somewhat out of our grasp.
The Kingdom parables that we hear today are an even more so.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls
On the surface these two parables seems to be saying the same thing.
They speak to us about the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven.
‘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.
‘Again, 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.
Our initial thoughts are that the Kingdom of Heaven is so wonderful that we would sell everything we own to have it.
Jesus uses an example of selling all we own. The idea is that that would hurt in some way. Essentially we would suffer to own this better thing.
But a closer look reveals they say somewhat different things:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field
the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls
In the first example, the kingdom is like treasure which we find.
In the second, the Kingdom is like someone in search of something.
In the first example, it is the object that is found, in the second, it is the one who is searching.
The first is passive, the second is active.
Jesus puts these two parables together for a reason.
In the first, we are the one searching.
In the second we are the ones found.
So what is the treasure that is found in the field?
It is something that is hidden within us all.
It is an inner reality within our soul, waiting to be discovered.
When we find this inner reality, we will happily give up all other desires, ambitions, and goals to make that inner reality our whole reality.
We search within ourselves for the kingdom of God, as Jesus tells us in Luke’s gospel, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’
But what about the second parable?
Again, 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
Here the Kingdom is someone searching.
Here, we are the pearls being searched out.
We search for, and we are searched out.
The kingdom is what we find in ourselves as an inner treasure.
It is also that which is searching to find us.
We are the treasure that the kingdom of God searches for.
And the Kingdom of God is that treasure.
I don’t think it was by accident that Jesus placed those two parable next to each other. One needs the other.
The Kingdom is neither one or the other, it is both.
It is treasure, and it searches for treasure.
This is the paradox that Jesus taught.
The kingdom is within us, and it searches us out.
The sad thing is that the treasure in the field or the pearl of great value has been replaced in many peoples lives by other things: drugs, drinking, gambling. These things cause people to sell everything they own so people can have them. And because they are addictions, they seem to seek people out.
They can be seen to be the antithesis of the Kingdom:
The cause destruction,
People lose themselves,
They lose who they are, and lose meaning in their lives and in themselves.
When we find the kingdom within ourselves,
we experience a growing wholeness,
an increasing sense of who we are,
the meaning of our personality, an expanded consciousness.
All this takes us beyond ourselves, and into the transcendent.
We know who we truly are and we begin to get a sense of who we are in God.
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