NILS VON KALM looks at the parable in Matthew 13…
Melbourne, Australia
“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.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” – Matthew 13:44-46 (RSV)
PICTURE: Liudmila Chernetska/iStockphoto
When was the last time you made a huge investment by selling something you really valued to buy something better? How much of a sacrifice was it for you? Did it hurt?
In the short couple of parables in Matthew 13:44-46, Jesus makes clear that the Kingdom He came to show is the best thing anyone ever heard of. He tells of a merchant who sold all he had for the pearl of great value and bought it. It brought him unspeakable joy to sell everything he had and buy the pearl. He was willing to give up everything for it. It was that valuable that nothing else that he already had compared.
“Do we believe that what Jesus offers is that valuable? Or do we believe it’s too good to be true?”
The question for us is whether or not we believe it. Do we believe that what Jesus offers is that valuable? Or do we believe it’s too good to be true?
The invitation to belief is strong in the Gospels. The beginning of Mark’s Gospel has Jesus saying: “the kingdom of God is here. Turn your lives around and believe in the good news”.
This is where natural questions come up. Is it trustworthy? Is God trustworthy? It brings up the terror of risk. There’s the old saying that faith is a four letter word, spelled r-i-s-k. It’s wonderful beyond anything you’ve ever imagined, but it requires giving up everything else to have it.
That’s a big ask. It requires commitment.
Commitment is not a popular word these days, either in our society or in the church.
We don’t like risk. Our society tells us to be secure, to set up our retirement nest egg so we can live comfortably in our older age. There is a value in saving if we can. It’s good sense.
But our lifestyles really don’t allow much invitation to risk.
It’s often the people who have taken risks with their lives who inspire us. I have a friend who lives in a poor country who has done this. She left everything back in her twenties and went to live amongst the poor. My respect for her is huge.
We know each other well enough to speak into each other’s lives. So, when she says something, I listen.
A couple of years ago I was talking to her about a sense I had that I needed to do something more ‘frontline’ in terms of what I was doing with my life and how I felt like I needed to take more risks in my life, that I was too comfortable. The one thing she said to me that stood out was this: the only thing holding you back is you.
You know when someone says something to you, and you just have to admit, “yep; you’re right”?
So, since then, I’ve taken up what she said, and this year I’ve been working as a mental health support worker. It’s difficult work, but it’s showing me a lot about myself. I could probably get higher paying work in a different field, but this work is what I’ve wanted to do.
Earlier this year, I found myself unemployed after I was made redundant at my previous job. I then ended up getting a couple of jobs, one of them being the mental health job. I got both jobs around the same time. When I got the other job, which was a marketing and communications job, I was happy, but when I got the mental health job, that’s when I pumped the air with my fist and really celebrated.
But I had to give something up to get it. Some financial security and jumping into the deep end of what has for me been a new career.
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We come alive when we give up something of value for something of greater value. That’s part of the abundant life that Jesus talks about. It’s what the kingdom of God is about.
The Kingdom of God Jesus invites us to be a part of is the best thing for the world and the best thing for us. It’s good news all ‘round. And it comes in many forms. It comes practically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, in every way.
In a spiritual way, I find that when I am totally surrendered to Jesus and am genuinely willing to give up everything for Him, I feel lighter, I feel joyful and I can live life on life’s terms, without the demand that things go my way. It’s then that I have more energy for living and I find myself being transformed into the person I’ve always wanted to be. The more surrendered we are to Jesus and His love, the more we become the people we are meant to be.
That will look different for different people. The good news manifests in different ways for each of us.
We see this in the Gospels. For the woman with the flow of blood, good news is physical healing from her 12 years of bleeding, restoration to the community after being an outcast and despised by those around her, and restoration of her sense of self-worth. For Zaccheus the tax collector, good news is freedom from his attachment to wealth and the misery, self-hatred and shame that had been eating at him. For Peter, the good news was Jesus believing in him and trusting him with the job of leading the church after Peter had denied his master three times.
“The more surrendered we are to Jesus and His love, the more we become the people we are meant to be.”
The Gospel manifests itself in different ways for all of us. What the good news is for you will be different to what it is for me. And it will be different at different times in our lives. When we’re surrendered to Jesus, there is never a dull moment. It’s why he called it the life of the ages, which is what the term, ‘eternal life’ means.
I mentioned above that the invitation to belief is strong in the Gospels. It’s crucial to be aware that ‘belief’ in the gospels has nothing to do with just intellectual acceptance of a doctrine.
In the Gospels, belief is a verb. It’s about action and living out what we believe.
Living the Christian life is ultimately about where we place our allegiance, where we place our trust. The first Christians were so effective because they gave up everything for the kingdom. And they did it against the backdrop of an empire which demanded total allegiance itself. In a culture which demanded ultimate allegiance to Rome and the Emperor as Lord, the Christians said, “no, there is a new Lord, and it isn’t Caesar”. They turned their world upside down by living out their allegiance to this new king through service, sacrifice and love for the unloved. They did it through surrender to Jesus as Lord and not through acquiescence to the power and might of Rome.
And the important point to note is that they didn’t just believe it in their heads; it wasn’t a private faith for them. It was public and it played out in how they lived their lives. They were willing to die for it, and of course many of them did. They gave up everything for something greater. They were utterly convinced that Jesus had risen from death, and they were willing to give up everything to live and die for him.
How different this is to the world we live in today.
I believe we’re too comfortable in our world today. It’s no coincidence at all that, while we live in the richest time in human history, at the same time we also have the very worst social statistics. Despite our economic challenges at the moment, this period of human history is materially the richest we have ever been. Yet our rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness and overall mental illness are off the charts, particularly here in Australia. The British researcher, Johann Hari, says that we are the first society in human history to actively dismantle our tribes.
As well as that, the American author and speaker, Marianne Williamson, in speaking about where our culture is going at the moment in terms of our destruction of the environment, said recently that, “you and I were taught in school that when the environment of a species becomes maladaptive to its survival, it will either evolve or become extinct. Humanity is going that way today. No mammalian species survives that consciously and proactively destroys its habitat the way we are”.
They are prophetic words. We are running ourselves over a cliff.
When Jesus said, “what does it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your very self?”, and “life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”, He knew that commitment to that way of living leads to our death.
Our culture needs a better story than what we’re currently living by.
Jesus’ opening words in Mark’s Gospel, “the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news”, were good news then and they’re good news today. They apply to our individual lives and to our lives as the church and they apply to our society.
The reason that Jesus has transformed the lives of literally billions of people over 2,000 years is that there is something about Him that touches the very deepest part of what it is to be human. It touches us both deep in our individual hearts and at a societal and global level. Who He is, what He said and how He lived touches our very identity. That’s why He’s trustworthy; that’s why it really is worth giving up everything we hold dear for something better, that something better being the kingdom of God and its wonderful promise of the reign of God coming on Earth as in Heaven.
