Scripture Reading:  Matthew 13:31-46

 The thirteenth chapter of Matthew is sort of like the Better Homes and Gardens section of the Bible.  Where to plant seed, where not to plant seed, high-yielding crops like the mustard plant, baking with yeast… Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven here and taking the domestic approach, you might say.  I imagine that the people he was talking to were the kind of folks who grew their own food and whose livelihood depended on careful attention to such things. 

The garden that Karla and I have right now is the one we dream about in February—green, lush, and vibrant with growth.  Every year I tell myself that I’m not going to plant my vegetables too close together, but then I go ahead and do it.  Those seeds are just so tiny, and so maybe I don’t trust them enough.  Now even with the snap peas and lettuce almost done, the garden is packed tightly with growth, each plant straining to rise above the one next to it.

This is our first real year for raspberries.  Our first spring in Wisconsin, we planted a bush, and then we were given a few more, but for whatever reason, this summer seems to be our first for really big, plump juicy raspberries.  The other day Sylvia and I saw three of the biggest reddest berries we ever saw growing on our very own bush—three berries for three little girls. 

So I called them over and we picked each one carefully.  Now even though I’m a pastor, I tend to not inject too much liturgy or sermonizing in my daily life, but at this moment I couldn’t resist.  I said, “Girls, don’t eat your raspberry yet.  I want you to know something.  I want you to know that up until this moment in your life, you’ve never really eaten a raspberry.  You have, sure, but not like this.  The raspberries you’ve eaten before were picked somewhere else.  They were packaged and put on a truck and then they traveled to a store where they sat and sat and sat until we bought them and brought them home.  But not your raspberry.  Twenty-too seconds ago, the berry in your hand was still getting energy from the earth and the sun, and it is as good as a raspberry gets.  So take a moment before you pop it into your mouth and say to yourself, ‘This is what a real raspberry tastes like.’”

My girls stood there in the grass next to our garden, looking at me affectionately and patiently.  I realized briefly that there may come a day when they will choose to not suffer through speeches like these, but in that moment, they were as ready as any human being can possibly be to consume a piece of fruit.  There was a hint of Communion in the air as together they lifted the berries to their mouths and partook, and their eyes grew wide with delight as they chewed.  Immediately they began scanning the bushes for more and willing the unripe berries to hurry up and turn red.  We had found the treasure, and it was in our own field.

Jesus told a parable about someone who found some buried treasure.  “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.”  In all likelihood, the treasure wasn’t a single raspberry, or even three.  What could it have been?  Money?  Silver?  Gold?  Whatever it was, it was enough to make him look absolutely crazy as he joyfully sold every last thing that he had—his land, his home, his donkey, his sheep, his tools… This is the kind of behavior that gets people whispering about you when you’re not around.

That kind of treasure is hard to come by these days.  Though it does happen, I suppose. Today “Treasure Hunters” is a reality TV show and treasure is seldom a sack of gold coins buried in the ground.  Today’s treasure is a Honus Wagner baseball card or a 1^st edition Catcher in the Rye or even an old postcard collection, and they’re found on shelves, in attics, and locked away in storage unit.   

Back in Jesus’ day, you didn’t have too many options when it came to storing your treasure, assuming you had any.  No reliable banks, no safety deposit boxes, no climate-controlled storage facilities.  The best you could do was pick a spot under your house or on your land and hope no one was watching while you buried it.  So it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that treasure could exist underfoot back then, what with people and houses coming and going.  It was entirely possible that someone could own a field and not know about the treasure hiding in it.

The other day I was driving somewhere with Sylvia in the car.  I had this particular sermon in mind, so I asked her, “Honey, what would you do if you found some treasure hidden in a field?”  “I’d take it!” was her first reply.  “Ok,” I said, “but what if the field belonged to someone else, like a farmer?”  “I’d go talk to the farmer and ask if we could split it?” she said.  An honest, reasonable response, I’d say.  It made me wonder about the fictional man in Jesus’ story.  Why wouldn’t he have said something to the landowner?  After all, the owner could have been the person who buried the treasure in the first place, and prior to the sale, couldn’t he just dig it up and take it with him, leaving the buyer with nothing but an empty field? 

But this parable isn’t about reason or logic or any shred of rational thinking.  It’s about a treasure that makes someone so starry-eyed with desire that he can do little else until he has it.  And that, says Jesus, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.  That’s what the kingdom of heaven is like!  It’s like owning nothing for the chance to own something that’s worth everything.  It’s hardly a diversified investment portfolio, is it?  It’s all-or-nothing, says Jesus.  And once you know what the treasure is, it’s worth the sacrifice, worth the pursuit, worth the effort—because it’s worth everything. 

That tends to not be what we say today.  Not in the Presbyterian Church, or in the Methodist Church, or in the Episcopalian Church.  You may have heard that these “mainline churches” are dying these days—nation-wide, losing members each and every year.  In the past five years, we in the Presbytery of Milwaukee have disbanded five churches that simply couldn’t keep things going anymore.  Maybe it’s anxiety about that decline or maybe it’s something else… In any case, folks tend to be reserved when they count the cost of discipleship in the Christian church.  Worried about expecting too much—people are terribly busy these days, after all—some churches have lowered the cost of discipleship to bargain basement prices. [1] Their message:  don’t worry, you won’t have to do much if you become a member here.  Come when you can, give what you can, see if you’ve got spare time. 

And so in an attempt to appeal to potential members, churches lower their expectations.  Trouble is, in doing so they ignore or even deny a basic truth about human beings:  we hunger for things in our lives that deserve our commitment.  We long to be part of things that are so ultimately meaningful and life-giving that we give them our all.  We’re not afraid to make sacrifices, we’re not afraid to give, we’re not afraid to take risks and extend ourselves mightily.  But we want it to matter. 

We will fail if our message about church life and Christian discipleship is “Don’t worry, this won’t take up too much of your time” which is another way of saying, “We don’t need you that much.”  Because “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.”  It’s worth everything.

[1] This line is from the book Questions Of Faith: Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost by Marilyn Saure Breckenridge