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"Discovering What's Valuable"
I’m addicted to the Antiques Road Show. Do you know of it? On PBS, the show travels around the country and recently to Europe to appraise antiques, art and collectibles brought in by your average Jane and Joe. You know, something from the attic that Uncle Henry brought home from Japan. Or that ugly lamp that your grandmother insisted you take home from one of your visits with her 30 years ago. Hundreds of people queue up, antiques in hand, to visit with a world-class appraiser to learn of its value. It’s fascinating to watch as some unsuspecting soul has carried in something from his or her home, hoping to learn that it has a value of a few hundred or even a thousand dollars. But every show has a surprise! The man who scavenged a couple of old paintings in ugly frames from the curbside garbage learns they are quite rare and valuable, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars! Or the gentleman whose woven Navaho blanket turns out to be a national treasure worth over a half million! Something of amazing value has been discovered right under their noses. They had no idea. But now that they do.... Sometimes, of course, the tables are turned. A person with a beaming smile goes to great length to talk about a prized possession. Giving the viewers a history lesson on the object’s origin and how it came to be in their possession. One’s heart almost breaks as the appraiser then must inform the owner that their object has very little value, or worse yet, is a fake. That Aunt Harriet’s fanciful tales of George Washington’s sword were just that...tales. That the original Dutch Masterpiece is a forgery for which the owner paid far, far too much. Reading the parables of the Kingdom this week got me to thinking about the Antiques Roadshow, and these two scenarios: On one hand, a person having something of astonishing value right in their grasp without realizing its worth; on the other hand, the person who has been told a lie...and has since believed that something which is in fact common or ordinary is a great treasure. In telling these parables and making these comparisons, Jesus seems to be telling his Disciples, telling us that the Kingdom is like discovering something of enormous worth or power. The first example: A mustard seed. Tiny, yet when planted, watered, fed and grown it will become a magnificent plant, large enough for birds to build nests in its branches. Tiny seed, enormous plant. The second example, yeast. The smelly little organism that is activated when kneaded into three measures of flower...enough flour to produce bread to feed 100 to 150 people. Of course, flour and water and salt are not bread. It’s the yeast that turns the great measure of flour into nutritious bread for so many. Tiny yeast---abundant food. The third example, a treasure, hidden in a field. So valuable. So extraordinary that a person goes and sells all that they have so as to purchase the field. Our final example today, a pearl. So amazing, so perfect. So priceless. A merchant goes and sells all he has so as to possess the pearl of great worth. The first two examples--that tiny things make enormous differences. The Kingdom is like that...Jesus says. The second two examples--discoveries of great value--so great in fact that persons disposed of their entire life’s accumulation of possessions so as to hold the treasures. The Kingdom is like that...Jesus says. And all of the examples, involve hidden ness. The Kingdom is like that...Jesus says. The mustard seed hidden in the ground, the yeast hidden in the dough, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl hidden among all the clams. Barbara Brown Taylor once preached, “If the kingdom is like these, then it is not something that is readily apparent to the eye but something that must be searched for, something just below the surface of things waiting there to be discovered and claimed... It seems like we ought to start (looking) some place really holy, some place really extraordinary... Unless of course God has resorted to the oldest trick in the book and hidden it in plain view. There is always the possibility, you know--that God decided to hide the kingdom of heaven not in any of the extraordinary places that treasure hunters would be sure to check but in the last place that any of us would think to look--namely, in the ordinary circumstances of our everyday lives--(sort of like the great discoveries on the Antiques Roadshow! --lc) the kingdom of heaven all mixed in with the humdrum and ho-hum of our days. Jesus knew it all along. Why else would he talk about heaven in terms of farmers and fields and women baking bread and merchants buying and selling things and fisherman sorting fish, unless he meant somehow to be telling us that the kingdom of heaven has to do with these things, that our treasure is buried not in some exotic far off place that requires a special map but that “X” marks the spot right here, right now, in all the ordinary people and places and activities in our lives." Of course, there are those who believe they have found the treasure. Just like those on the Antiques Roadshow who must swallow the tragic news that the thing which they are holding is not treasure at all, but junk. There are those who do not sell all they have to possess a great treasure such as the Kingdom of God, but who have sold all they have to possess that which our culture has told them is really valuable, is really needed to be somebody. In fact, they have taken on extraordinary debt in some cases to take hold of more and more and more...only to discover that it all has very little value, in the way that matters, anyway. Some have even sold their soul, their scruples, their faith perhaps--because they have been told a lie about what is really valuable. Jesus remarks, what is really valuable, is the Kingdom. It starts out tiny, looks insignificant perhaps, but makes a tremendous impact. A couple came to pastor Will Willimon about a very urgent matter. “Our son wants to be a missionary. He’s leaving law school to go to some unforsaken country. He’ll starve. He likes you, he’ll listen to you. Stop him!” Willimon looked at the couple sitting in his study. “Tell me, from the time your son was a little boy, you were the ones who brought him to Sunday School each day, didn’t you?” “Of course,” they replied. “Why are you so surprised that the took to heart what was being taught there? That he would believe us when we taught him about serving God and living his life on behalf of God‘s children?” “It was just Sunday School,” they screeched. “It was innocent. We really didn’t think he would go off and do something like this!” You remember the old country Song, “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys?” I like to sing a different version. “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Christians.” Because they will walk a different path than the world walks. They will really believe this stuff we teach them, and some of them will take Jesus’ words to heart. Because what is small, innocent, something we hardly notice--like church and Sunday School, grows and grows and like yeast invades the soul and changes one into something else again...something nutritious and filling. What was small, innocent, grows and grows like a mustard seed until a veritable tree stands where only a sprout once was. And the result? A young man willing to exchange all that his life was, and all that his parents wanted his life to be...he was willing to sell it all, so as to possess the priceless pearl, the great treasure. . .a life lived out, poured out in the work of God. That, Jesus reminds us with this story, that is what the Kingdom of God is like. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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