A Prize by Surprise

“Wealth and wages make life sweet, but better than either is finding a treasure” (Sirach 40:18). That line from the Book of Sirach turned over and over in the mind of Ben, the hired hand, as he sweated beneath the sun. His body was overheated, sticky, and weary in the seemingly permanent heat that was ceaseless by day and apparently unending at night. He'd had dreams once – dreams of a life he could enjoy. Dreams of having a place to call his own. Dreams of farming his own land, instead of hiring himself out to farm this distant edge of a vast plantation not his own. Dreams of really being his own man. But life didn't turn out that way. He had to eat by the sweat of his brow – and then some. His daydreams were useless. But they got him through the long days of manual labor when there was no breeze to help. So he dreamed. And he dug at the soil.

And then he heard an unusual sound – clink – like instead of hitting dirt or hitting rock, he'd struck a patch of wood and metal beneath the sediments. Scratching inquisitively, he found a box – very narrow but two feet long and plunged lengthwise into the earth. He needed a break anyway, so he paused to pull it up. And when he opened it, his hands trembled so he nearly dropped it. He unfurled a stretch of canvas and saw something he'd seen in a textbook once, in that art history class he'd never finished – he gazed at the Renaissance painter Raphael's lost Portrait of a Young Man – worth a fortune – he thought he remembered an estimate of a hundred million dollars it might fetch now. Ben was so overwhelmed, he absentmindedly turned over and over the yellow gem in his hand, with all 126 of its facets gleaming in the fiery sunlight – the missing Florentine Diamond, unchanged since its theft from the last Austrian emperor in 1918. What room was left over in the box alongside those two fit in – it was overflowing with gold coins. There could not have been a greater surprise.

Ben looked around – no one in sight. No one could see him except maybe as an indistinct silhouette on the horizon. It was a vast plantation, after all, with few to work the spacious fields. And so, with his heart pounding in his chest, Ben carefully rolled the painting back up, slipped it into the box; gently placed the diamond in; and scooped gold coins in until they were all there. Wedging the box back into the crack whence it came, he dropped a few spadefuls of dirt over it, smoothed out the soil, and moved merrily along his way, with a barely concealable spring in his step – it was joy, plain and simple.

Ben hustled home – he had scarcely any time to think. He knew his neighbor had been wanting to buy his house – wanted room to expand, he'd said – so Ben hammered on the door and made a cash sale. Ben cashed in his few stocks and bonds. He emptied his retirement fund account. He sold his clothes, his favorite chair, everything in his house that wasn't nailed down – and a few things that were. Wasn't much – but when everything was put together, it was enough. Enough to march into the landowner's office. Enough to say he wanted a new start, some land on his own – and a plot of a couple acres at the edge of the plantation would be quite nice. Oblivious, the owner saw only a dumb peasant willing to fork out 190% of the plot's retail value – a winning transaction for the owner. He had no clue what had been buried there years before he'd bought the land himself. He signed the bill of transfer. Done deal.

In the days to come, Ben threw quite a few parties in celebration. His former employer was now, you see, the second richest man in town – a distant second, in fact. It had cost Ben everything he had – his home, his investments, his security in the future, his clothes, all his earthly possessions. When his brothers and sisters heard, they were ready to drag him off to the asylum. Why become homeless and penniless to get a couple acres of dirt? But as soon as the land and all its contents were legally his, he dug up the box. The cost was nothing next to the value of the prize. And thanks to the discipline to handle it wisely, Ben was set for life. “Wealth and wages make life sweet, but better than either is finding a treasure.” Amen, thought Ben. Amen.

If Ben were real, and if Ben were one of the relatively few Americans who still possess some basic biblical literacy in this day and age, Ben might have drawn a comparison to a teensy snippet from the Gospel of Matthew – a story from the lips of Jesus. Two stories, in fact. Jesus invited his students and the eavesdropping crowds to imagine two men. One, a refined pearl merchant on the hunt for quality merchandise, makes a stunning discovery: a seller who apparently has less refined tastes is willing to part with the biggest pearl anyone has ever seen for a price criminally cheap; so the merchant divests himself of all his stock and his personal possessions at a discount, and scoops up the bargain of the century. Or as Jesus tells it: “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 13:45-46).

But Ben would have resonated even more with the other story, a story of a farmhand and some buried treasure: “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 he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). See, back in those days, people did bury their savings – no banks in Galilee, after all – and it wasn't outside the realm of possibility to uncover a stash hidden a couple generations ago, before the land changed hands a few times. Finders keepers, for landowners.

The dream of finding buried treasure was to them what winning the lottery is to twenty-first-century Americans – it's not likely to happen, but folks find it fun to daydream about. And if there were a fair and legal way to make it a sure thing, there's no cost within your reach that's too great. It's simple math – the jackpot outweighs your current assets, so if it can be a sure thing, you ditch your current assets and grab that jackpot. If the field holds a buried treasure worth more than all you own, you sell all you own and buy the field. Passing the opportunity by makes no sense. Dismissing the find of a lifetime is ludicrous. Dithering and dilly-dallying would be foolish. Deeming it just another day on the job would be absurd.

There's nothing humdrum about finding buried treasure. That's the moment that changes your life forever. That's the moment where your dreams come true, and a totally new life comes within your reach. When you find buried treasure, you don't just move along. You figure out how to get it legally in your possession. And when you find buried treasure, you don't shrug your shoulders and say, “That's pretty nice.” Your heart races, you grin, you leap and holler – you celebrate – you rejoice. And no matter what sacrifice it calls for to get it, even if it's everything you own, even if you have to sleep in a cardboard box for a month, no matter what worldly possessions or creature comforts you have to part with for a season to get that treasure – you know you'll look back once you've got your prize, and you'll think, “It was all worth it. I would have been an idiot to pass this up. I would have been an idiot not to take the deal. I would have been an idiot to forgo this treasure I found... a prize by surprise.”

Jesus told just such a story. And the point of Jesus' story here is that this is what God's kingdom is like. Have you ever thought about it like that? When people imagined God's kingdom, what they were thinking about was a healed world – a world fixed and made right – a world with God at the center and God in charge – a world and a society with God as King, who would finally reward his loyal people with victory, with top-dog status, and with every lavish luxury their hearts have ever dreamed of – who would finally crush all evil and cleanse all stains – that God would take charge and enforce his perfect will, to the benefit of all those who gained his favor.

That's what people meant when they talked about the kingdom of God – it was the world they were all waiting for, a world their ancestors had almost tasted in the days of David when Israel was humming along in working order, but which had clearly fallen into grave disrepair. And then Jesus came along and announced that the kingdom, this long-lost world, was arriving – it was showing up in strange ways wherever he went, in whatever he touched – like he said, “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them; and blessed is the one who does not stumble on my account” (Matthew 11:5-6). This abundance, this healed world, this lavish grace – a new world poking into our old world wherever Jesus is. And those who follow him and live according to his vision get tastes of it now and, when the new world takes over fully, will enter it and enjoy it completely. That's the kingdom of God.

And what Jesus is telling this story for is to show us what a surprise this kingdom is. Jesus' new world pokes and prods at the fabric of this one in places you didn't think you'd find it. His lavish grace jumps out at you when you're not looking. You're going about your daily business, trudging through the dirt, lazily strolling the aisles at the corner store – and whoa, there it is! There's the kingdom! The kingdom shows up where you least expect – even at an execution on a hill outside Jerusalem – even in a locked-and-guarded grave. The kingdom is not content to be obvious. You'll find the kingdom hiding under a layer of topsoil. You'll walk face-first into it and break your nose. But there it is. The only question is: Will it be yours?

And when you crash into the kingdom, when you turn over the dirt and catch a glimpse, you need to understand: what you have just found, what you have just seen, is not merely one option among others. What you've found is not mundane. What you've found is incomparable. What you've found is an only hope. What you've found is riches beyond compare. What you've found is not worth trying to find a measuring system that can handle both it and what you've known before. The kingdom is of an incomprehensibly higher order of magnitude than all else you've ever known. Because the kingdom yields abundance. The kingdom yields peace and joy. The kingdom yields virtue. The kingdom yields wholeness. The kingdom yields eternity. The kingdom is divine – it is the very treasure of God. If you can think of the kingdom and dismiss it as unimportant, you ain't seen the kingdom. Every act of terror, every mass shooting, every tyrant's injustice, every mob's riots, every famine and drought, every scream of grief or silent pang of poverty – that's from the old world, where we're all grabbing at the crown. But the invitation to a new world stands open, and those who enter in will ultimately find that “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

The kingdom, the grace of God, comes knocking with a rare invitation. The grace is given freely – but to accept this free grace may well cost you, and cost you dearly. Like the man in the story, you may have to sell more than you bargained for. Entering the kingdom means doing the Father's will (Matthew 7:21). You can't see it unless you've got a new start to life, a new birth (John 3:3). You have to strip away all your pride, stoop down, turn around, become like a humble, helpless kid (Matthew 18:3-4). You've got to get hold of a righteousness that “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20). You have to let the big sack of possessions roll from your back, or else you'll no more fit through than a camel can squeeze through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). And yet the most sinful and outcast, “tax collectors and prostitutes,” can find this deal within their reach (Matthew 21:31). But the pathway in is “through many tribulations” (Acts 14:22). And you'll find that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9) – those who cling to lives of “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry..., hatred, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy..., and things like these … will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21).

The grace of God comes knocking... but the kingdom's new world will cost you all that old-world junk, and more besides. A German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed under Hitler, famously wrote about this kind of costly grace. He said: “Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have. It is the costly pearl, for whose price the merchant sells all that he has. … It is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.”

And that's the honest-to-God truth. And that's the measure of a true teacher: a true teacher will showcase the value of God's kingdom – and its cost. Lose out on either, and you've missed the message of Jesus. “Therefore every scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). The kingdom treasure has more facets than the Florentine Diamond – it shines from all angles, all different but all beautiful, no matter when those angles were cut, whether in the era of Isaiah or the days of Paul. There's plenty in that treasure – and a true teacher is going to show you an endless parade of reasons to celebrate in finding it, but won't gloss over the price tag.

The truth is, even though God offers his grace freely, even though the gates of the kingdom are thrown wide to all who'll dump their old-world junk by the wayside and come near to slip on through, there are plenty who count the cost as too high. The Gospels are honest about that: folks invited to follow Jesus to the kingdom, but they make excuses – they want to cling to life as they know it. Not everyone knows an eternal investment when they see it. You can even sit in a pew, you can get your name on the membership roll, you can put a token bill in the plate now and then – but still not be buying the real treasure. Jesus tells another story: “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the end of the age...” (Matthew 13:47-49). The Sea of Galilee was full of plenty species you could catch by trawling with a net spread between two boats. But not every species was kosher, not every fish caught was clean. When the net gets pulled ashore at the end of the day, some won't pass muster for the kingdom. The kingdom was within our reach, and yet there are those who don't know a treasure when it's right underfoot or staring them in the face. And only when the net's reeled in and the crops are harvested do we get sorted.

But what about now? Maybe you hear that story, and it makes you concerned. Well, Jesus probably meant it to. If you truly trust in him, if you proclaim him as the Lord who rescued you, if the truth of his resurrection is planted in your heart – then you've found a real treasure. It's already yours, by grace through faith... and when the end of the day comes and the new world crashes fully down, you'll enjoy it without any impediment. In the meantime, though, sticking to that path and following through is a costly endeavor. But if we've actually caught sight of the treasure, if we really understand, then the price doesn't seem so high, because we see how short it falls next to the surprise we've uncovered. And so we can sell all we've got with joy.

There are plenty of things we have. Many of them are obstacles in our progress toward the kingdom: demands on our schedules, demands on our energy, demands on our bank accounts, demands on our lifestyle – demands that proceed from society, from culture, from family and friends, from traditions, from desires, from all sorts of scripts we make up or accept and pursue. And when we lose sight of the joy of buried treasure, we struggle to sell those off – but that discovery, that sale, that blessed purchase, is just what the kingdom of God is like.

Do we rejoice to invest our time, gathering with fellow kingdom-citizens on a Sunday morning? Do we rejoice to invest our efforts, serving those around us with what they need? Do we rejoice to invest our paltry funds to favor those through whom our King accepts our gifts? Do we rejoice to invest our devotion in our King? Do we rejoice to invest our words to invite others to his treasure? If so, we're getting more than the bargain of a lifetime – we're getting the deal of eternity. Thanks be to God. Amen.