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"The Parable of the Treasure in the Field"
A Sermon preached by Dr. Laird J. Stuart
12 July 2009
Psalm 150; Matthew 13:44
There have been a number of deaths in the news lately: Michael Jackson, Robert McNamara and Farah Fawcett. Each one of these individuals was called "iconic." Michael Jackson iconic because of his extraordinary musical talent. Robert McNamara iconic because of his role in the war in Viet Nam. Farah Fawcett iconic for a poster of her that was popular in the l970's. There was also the death of a former professional football player, Steve McNair.
I have been thinking mostly about another death. It was a death that happened two weeks ago today. It was the death of Bill Forbes, a Presbyterian minister, a colleague, and a good friend. I have mentioned him to you before. Bill was just entering his fourth year with pancreatic cancer. His is a remarkable story. What has been remembered about Bill with such gratitude was his spirit. Bill was one of those people who was naturally out-going. He was extroverted. On Myers-Briggs he would have been an E to the tenth power. Yet Bill had something more than just his natural outgoing spirit. Bill believed in Christ, but he did not just believe in Christ, he had received Christ. He had welcomed Christ into his life. Somehow his natural energy and enthusiasm was blended with a deeper and more powerful, God's energy and God's life. We saw in Bill not just a person coping so well with life and challenges but God working in Bill.
There was about Bill an obvious spirit of gratitude. Even with his cancer, even with the terrible travails of one of his grandchildren who was born without a larynx, Bill had this spirit of gratitude. More than once when we were playing golf he would say, "It's all gravy." He meant life was all gravy. His life, the life he was able to live even with pancreatic cancer, even with all the treatments, even with all the unknowns. It was all gravy. He was grateful for the life he could still be living. He was also profoundly grateful to the God who was helping him live that life.
Gratitude is so compelling. I have known people like Bill. I hope you have too. Gratitude marks them. It is evident in them. It may not shine forth but it is there and it does not take long before you discover it in them. It is like integrity. It is one of those qualities, which when we find it in someone, draws us to them.
There are people who carry gratitude in them even though they have challenges like Bill. There are people who carry gratitude in them even though they work very hard.
Mary Oliver has a poem that was printed in The Writer's Almanac last Thursday. The title of the poem is "The Place I Want to Get Back To":
is where
in the pine woods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment.
for twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude
I cannot speak for you, but I want to spend time with someone like that, someone who carries gratitude in his or her life. The people who are out there grabbing, clutching, hoarding and wanting more ever fearful of losing what they have are a dime a dozen. People who live with a noticeable spirit of gratitude are special.
People who are grateful offer to us at least two blessings. First, they point us beyond ourselves to what is being given to us. We can be so pre-occupied with what we have to do and what we believe we must do that we forget to see and to receive what is given to us. Jesus talked about this all the time. The other blessing these people give to us is the example of their generosity in life. Gratitude makes people generous. They know how to give and enjoy it. For them giving is not a loss they resent or a smart tax move, it is a gain. No wonder our Stewardship Mission Team is calling us to see that gratitude is where giving begins. The best giving begins not with a budget to support, but out of a spirit of gratitude.
The wonderful thing about gratitude is that it is something we can choose. It is something we can cultivate. It is not determined by our genes or by God who will and who will not be grateful. We can each grow into it, into this compelling quality of gratitude.
I was reminded of this one Sunday morning, in, of all places, a taxi cab. At a stop light at Laguna and Lombard, I noticed the cab driver put something up in the visor, tucking it into a rubber band that was on the visor. There were two rubber bands on the visor. I have seen those rubber bands in other taxi cabs. They seem to be standard issue. It occurred to me that someone else had probably put those rubber bands on that visor. They had done that for anyone who drove that cab. Then it occurred to me that other people had installed the meter, the GPS device and the camera that was supposedly watching my every move. For that matter someone else had painted the cab. Other people, a number of them, had prepared this car to be a cab. The driver had to drive it but he was driving a car that had been prepared for him by others. Then it occurred to me that the red light there at the intersection was a kind of gift in itself. It was part of a whole grid of street lights that was created to have traffic flow as safely as possible. Then it occurred to me that the street we were on and the whole grid of streets we were using were gifts to us. The cab driver and I had not spent the night laying down Laguna and paving it. It was there for us to travel. Other people had provided it. Just so, it occurred to me, the whole city was a gift, prepared, built, and maintained by others.
Then the light turned green but in that short period of time I had moved with remarkable ease into a spirit of gratitude.
Gratitude starts with noticing.
Noticing the rubber bands led to noticing the other aspects of the cab which led to noticing the stop light, the streets and the city. During our Mt. Hermon Conference last October, we were encouraged to awaken joy in our lives by paying attention, especially by paying attention to those experiences that give us joy. Mary Oliver noticed the deer. She might not have taken the time to go into the woods, being so busy and all.
Gratitude starts with noticing, but it develops through awareness.
Once you notice something being done for you, it is important to savor it, be aware of it, and not rush off to something else. Mary Oliver sat still and waited long enough for the two deer to decide she was safe and waited long enough for them to come over to her.
There is such pressure on us not to be aware, not to savor experiences. A recent article said that the normal attention span on the internet is about ten minutes. A woman talking about interviews said the strongest impression happens in the first thirty seconds.
One of the hopes many of us have during the summer is that we will have time to become aware of some people we have been rushing past in the normal routines of our lives. A family from this church is going off on a backpacking trip in the Sierra. It is part of a 50th birthday celebration. They are taking some friends. Think of how much they will learn about each other, notice about each other, discover in each other, and appreciate about each other. It is so hard to do this in the rush and tumble of everyday life, especially with children in school.
Thinking of this sermon I decided this morning to pay attention to my breakfast. I have had the breakfast every Sunday morning I was preaching for all these years. On a couple of occasions I could not have my Sunday morning breakfast and I had the shakes for a week. So this morning I noticed and savored the eggs, the salt, the pepper, the muffins, and the butter on the muffins, the juice and the tea. So often we just gulp down our meals.
Then I read in the paper about Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter Friday night. The story referred to how the pitching coach, Dave Righetti savored the win. He stayed in the club house instead of just rushing home. He is allergic to wine but he had a couple of glasses for this occasion. They had stayed in part to be sure he could drive but he also stayed just to savor the accomplishment of one of his pitchers, and to shed a few tears.
Prayer becomes powerful for us when we savor it and don't rush it. Especially when prayer is not simply placing an order at the God Store, especially when we do not use prayer just to ask for what we want, when we instead use prayer to talk about our life, to talk about our struggles and to invite God into them, prayer becomes powerful. It is possible in those prayers to begin to sense by faith God's presence there with you, not as an answer to your prayer's request so much as a presence for your life.
If you and I make those two choices, the choice to notice and the choice to be aware, then the gratitude almost happens by itself.
Mary Oliver is grateful for the deer and the world around her that is all there given to her. People who take time with each other can grow in the gratitude for what is given to them by those people. My friend Bill Forbes found his life for all its struggles lifted again and again by his discovery of the presence of God in his life, with his life, working in his life. It lifted his heart and spirit. It came out of him in the spirit of joy and gratitude.
This is where the parable leads us. It is about discovering that God is living in our world, living beside our lives, living in the fields we walk through, living and eager to bless us.
The man makes these same choices.
First he noticed the hidden treasure. Jesus does not spell this out very fully. It was probably a bag of coins hidden in the field. This is a part of the world where there was and still is so many invasions, occupations and changes in fortune. It was not uncommon for people to bury some of their wealth in the ground, hoping to return at some future time to retrieve it.
Other people had presumably been on this field, walking through it. By whatever combination of circumstances, this man noticed something that caught his eye, something that drew him to the treasure. Maybe it was a piece of cloth sticking up out of the earth, a piece of cloth that was part of the bag holding the coins. Maybe it was a coin or even just part of a coin there in the dirt that caught his eye. He noticed.
Then, secondly, the man let himself become aware of what was really there. He stopped. He went to whatever sign he had seen, probably knelt down in the dirt, and dug up that bag.
The rest happened for him. Finding a treasure that was not his but could now belong to him he was filled with gratitude and joy.
Jesus uses this very short parable to announce that like that treasure in the field, an even greater treasure is now available through him. It is the treasure of God's presence. This is what Jesus was doing. He was declaring God is here now. God is staking God's claim to our fields, our struggles, our lives. Jesus called God's presence in this world, wherever that was happening, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God.
Jesus was competing with other kingdoms. There was the Kingdom of Rome for all its power and for all its oppressive power especially for the peasants who flocked around Jesus. There was the Kingdom of Judaism which for all its treasures was ruled in part by people who resisted the Son of God.
Jesus has to compete with other kingdoms in our lives. There is the kingdom of wealth. There is the kingdom of life-style. There is the kingdom of work. There is the kingdom of good times. There is the kingdom self. There is the kingdom of political party. There is the kingdom of ideology. These and other kingdoms call to us and call us away from the Kingdom of God.
But this risen Christ of ours bends to no other kingdom, is subservient to no other kingdom, stands forth in resurrection power and glory and calls you and me into the Kingdom of God. He does that knowing that whenever we choose to enter that kingdom, to put our lives in God's custody the sign will be gratitude and joy.
The very last psalm is so telling. It is a psalm of praise. It is placed at the end of the psalms for a reason, just as the first psalm is in its place for a reason. The first psalm is the one that tells us if we pay attention to God's teaching day and night in our lives we will be like a tree planted by a stream of water that will remain green and bear fruit even in a drought. Then the final psalm is all about praise. What is remarkable is that before you get to the last psalm you will find other psalms speaking about so many of the real and hard struggles of our lives. There is a psalm about resenting people who do evil and get away with it, another psalm about being betrayed by friends, yet another psalm about dying, a psalm about being surrounded by enemies, a psalm about being forsaken by God, and several psalms calling out to God with no sign, by the end of such psalms, that God has showed up. The psalms are remarkably honest about life.
God is honest, Jesus is honest, and the bible is honest about life. They never say you can only have a spirit of gratitude if life is going your way. They say just the opposite; you can have this spirit of gratitude, even when life is not going your way. All you have to do is invite God into your life and struggle.
Psalm 150 is a sign and a promise: to those who notice evidence of God and to those who practice an awareness of God there will be joy and praise for what God can do and will do in our lives.
So the man sells everything he has so he can buy the field and have that treasure. Jesus knew this about us, for all our complex desires and dynamics, for all our confusions moral and spiritual, Jesus knew this about us: when one of us finds God's presence right there in our life, it is more to us than anything else. It will be what is most desired in our life for the rest of our life.
So, what if … What if along with the "To Do" lists we all have and what if along with the "Honey Do" lists that come along, what if you made a "Done For" list. It would be a list of all the things that are done for you. If you make that list, as you go along, you are bound to notice some gifts that have come to you from God. All the gifts, especially those from God, will lead you to a spirit of gratitude.
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