TREASURE

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:31-39; Matthew 13:44-45

I’ve hidden a treasure in one of the pews, so let’s take a minute and see if you can find it.

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What did you think while you were looking?

Did you wonder what it was you were trying to find?

Saint Augustine, who lived 1600 years ago, wrote a lot of things that are still helping us to understand our faith. Writing about himself, he concluded for us all, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

The truth of the matter is that sometimes we do know what we are looking for. The pearl dealer knew pearls, and he knew an exceptionally fine pearl when he came across it.

On the other hand, sometimes we don’t really know what we are looking for. The man plowing his field was probably only looking for rocks, but he found something quite remarkable by accident.

Then there was Jacob. We’re not sure how old he was when he met Rachel- maybe only 16, or 15, or 14. He certainly didn’t run all the way to his mother’s relatives because he was looking for a wife. In fact, we know he ran because he had tricked his father, swindled his brother, and needed someplace safe to hide. He was looking to live a few more years and have a good life if he could, but along the way he saw something he just HAD to have. Her name was Rachel, and meeting Rachel changed Jacob’s life. I suspect that there are more than a few of you who could tell me a similar story, about how you weren’t expecting to find the person you wound up sharing your life with, but how when you did  meet that person, it changed your life.

Maybe even some of you would say that all those years you’ve spent with that person seemed like only a few months.

So let’s draw this conclusion: maybe you were looking, maybe you weren’t. But when you found the right person, you stopped looking, because your life was complete.

Human beings are essentially insatiable creatures. We are always looking for something. I’ve done quite a bit of genealogy research, and I am still amazed at how much my ancestors moved.

My earliest known Pasley ancestor, Henry Allen Pasley, left Virginia as a young man and lived on at least 2 different farms that he hacked out of the wilderness in Kentucky. But he left Kentucky and settled in Indiana long enough for his second wife to give birth to a daughter, but not long enough for there to be any record of where they actually lived in Indiana. The whole family then moved to Illinois.

By that time Henry Allen was getting pretty old, so he didn’t move any more. At least, he never moved out of Macon County. But I think he did move from cabin to cabin. I found Henry’s grave, and it is situated in one of the most beautiful soybean fields in the while wide wonderful state of Illinois.

That soybean field is no longer owned by Pasleys, in part because his grandchildren left town. They seemed to have settled in Kansas, on some of the rockiest farm land they could find. Makes no sense to me, but there it is. We are always looking for something, and what we find does not always suit us.

But those two very short parables of Jesus are a promise: there is something in this life worth looking for, worth finding, worth sheltering, and worth keeping. There is something in this life that will change your life, make it complete, and make clear and certain its purpose.

That something, according to Jesus, is the Kingdom of God.

When you find it, you stay put. You don’t need to look anymore for that which makes your life complete, because it has taken root in your heart, set up camp in your life, and started running over like the water in Ward Lake when the snow starts to melt.

But step back a moment, and think about each and every single one of those things that make life frustrating- those things that send us out in search of something even when we don’t know what that something is.

Think about the insults.

Think about the disappointments.

Think about the injuries.

Think about the rejections.

Think about the failures.

Think about the bad decisions you made

And the bad decisions others made.

Think about things that seemed like good decisions at the time.

Think about dead ends and long detours and traffic jams and airport delays.

Think about humiliations.

Think about crab pots that came up empty.

Think about picnics in the rain.

Think about days that would not go right

Then think about whole weeks, months, even years that are sometimes like that.

Think about everything that could have gone right but didn’t.

Think about every mean thing that anyone ever said to you.

If you dare, think not about Rachel or Jacob. Think about Leah on her wedding night, snuck into the tent in the dark because no man would have her.

Think about how bad things can be when life goes wrong, and remember how often it does go wrong.

Think about that, and then listen to what Paul has to say:

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”

That’s the Kingdom of God- with us right where we are when we are experiencing life at its very worst. One of our creeds, the Nicene Creed, put it this way: “For us and our salvation he came down from heaven.” That’s on page 15 in our hymnal, you can look it up.

Another creed, The Heidelberg Catechism, put it this way:

Q: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

A. That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil

That’s the Kingdom of God- you, no matter your sin, no matter your failures, no matter your weakness, are adopted and beloved by God.

The circumstances of life will put us down; we human beings will TEAR each other down. But to God, we are a treasure in a field. We are a pearl of great price. We are as Rachel was to Jacob AND WHEN WE REALIZE IT, THE VICE VERSA BECOMES TRUE: The love of God becomes a treasure of immense and eternal value.

Back in Maryland we had this weed we called stick-tites. It had thousands of little seeds that stuck to fabric like Velcro, and it especially would stick to the wool of my sheep. It wasn’t a good thing, not at all.

But God’s love is a good thing, and it sticks to us worse than stick-tites.

A number of years ago one of the news networks did a special series on adults who were learning to read. That’s an extremely difficult task for an adult, but a group of three was working very hard at it and making some slow but steady progress.

But one week, one woman stopped coming. Her classmates went to her home and knocked on the door.

She answered the door and told them she had given up.

WHY? They asked.

Because her husband and her parents and her siblings had kept telling her she couldn’t do it, she was too dumb.

Our task- our DUTY- as the church is to be the voice of God, speaking wherever possible, as much as possible, to anybody who will listen:  GOD WANT’S WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU. GOD IS ON YOUR SIDE!

“Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

We need to tell that story, because the knowledge and experience of love is the only remedy to the wanton destructiveness of death, life, things present, things to come, powers, heights, depths, and everything else in all creation.

On Friday a waitress came to my table and asked what Romans 8:38 was. She always rights THANK YOU on the bills she gives to her customers, and one of them wrote back ROMANS 8:38.

We just read it, it’s one of other most powerful verses in the Bible, so I told her: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I also told her I was preaching on it this week and she should come listen.

Now, that’s not to say it won’t rain on our picnics.

It’s not to say there will be giant halibut’s biting our hooks.

It’s not to say we won’t make bad decisions.

It’s not to say there won’t be long dark periods in life.

But it does say three things:

It says no matter what, God will be with us.

It says no matter what, God will be whispering I LOVE YOU in our ears.

And it says that God will not give up on us and one day, when we stand before God in heaven, we will finally be pretty much exactly as God intended all along.

I heard part of a story on KRBD yesterday morning. It told about a young man who had studied and studied and practiced and practiced at playing the violin. He got to be good, and someone worked out an invitation for him to tour Europe, playing with the great symphonies. He was elated, of course.

But then someone said, “You know, the stakes are real high. They expect perfection. You really need a great violin if you’re going to do the tour, or your career will be ruined.

The young man’s heart sank. Great violins are expensive. But he had persevered thus far, he wasn’t ready to give up, so he went shopping.

It wasn’t long before he saw one- right away he knew what it was, and his heart about jumped out of his throat. He didn’t dare ask the price, and eh almost turned away. But the owner persisted. “Pick it up. Play it,” he said.

So the young man picked it up. He tuned it. Then he began to play.

OH Such wondrous music, music as he had never heard before! Then and there, he knew. No matter what it cost he had to have that violin BECAUSE WITH THAT VIOLIN HE WAS EVERYTHING, and without it he was as nothing.

That violin was a Stradivarius, an instrument of such wonder that it turns mere music into that which is breathtaking and unforgettable. To a musician they are worth the price at any price.

Now, the love of Jesus is like that violin in this way: it turns mere humans into children of God.

But the love of Jesus is like that young man in a most important way: Jesus loved us so much that he paid the price, no matter what it was.

And having paid that price, he is never going to let you go.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.