Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Gospel Reading for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Like many homes containing individuals both my age and my sons’ ages, we have been deep (literally and metaphorically) in Hyrule. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out in early May and since its release the Cox men have been scouring the land, the sky, and the Depths for everything that we can in order to defeat the evil Ganondorf (or create an automated flame-throwing robot that will attack a camp of Bokoblins). It’s a delight.
Thus when I read in today’s gospel passage about a great treasure hidden in a field, I immediately heard the sound effect that has accompanied the opening of treasure chests in Zelda games for decades. In the parable, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven (the reign of God, the beloved community of God) to a great treasure that one stumbles upon. The treasure is so valuable that the one who finds it goes off and sales everything that they have just to buy that field.
In Tears of the Kingdom, there are treasure chests all over Hyrule. Sometimes the contents of a chest are not exciting: stakes, a piece of amber, a shield. But then sometimes you will come across a treasure chest that has an incredibly powerful and valuable weapon. This discovery often forces a difficult decision. Your character Link can carry only so many weapons. So if you come across a valuable item when your cache is full, you have to literally drop something in order to make room for it. Sometimes the decision to drop something is easy yet sometimes you have to make the hard decision to part with something valuable to make room for something better.
The parallel is not perfect. Even writing it now, I don’t feel great about comparing the Kingdom of God to a weapon. But I do think that following Jesus is something that often requires us to drop things to make room. When the first disciples were called, they were asked to leave their nets behind to come follow him. God often asks us to leave the chase of the American dream, comfort, pride, the need to be right, or all sorts of other things in order to follow. Those can be difficult things to give up. To some of us those things may even be treasures.
Yet God does not ask that we leave things behind as some sort of test of loyalty. God is not some vainglorious despot demanding we bleed to prove fidelity. God asks us to lay aside the good for the Good. This hidden treasure in the field is something so Good, so beautiful, and so true that it can reorganize all our priorities in life. It can. It does not mean that the community of God will completely revolutionize our lives. We still have agency. We decide what to drop and what on which to hold on.
I wonder sometimes if there were people in the crowd who heard Jesus tell this parable and scoffed. What could possibly be worth so much to a person that they would sell everything that they had? Jesus probably welcomed that question. What indeed is worth so much? Earlier in Matthew, Jesus tells a crowd that where their treasure is then there they will find their heart also. As we search through life, may we stumble upon transformative love and grace and may we have the courage to drop anything that gets in the way of that life.