There’s a charming story that Thomas Wheeler, CEO of the Mutual Life Insurance Company tells on himself: He and his wife were driving along an interstate highway when he noticed that their car was low on fuel. Wheeler got off the highway at the next exit and soon found a rundown gas station with just one gas pump. He asked the lone attendant to fill the tank and check the oil; then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs.
As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation. The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant. But as he was getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, “It was great talking to you."
As they drove out of the station, Wheeler asked his wife if she knew the man. She readily admitted she did. They had gone to high school together and had dated steadily for about a year.
"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged Wheeler.
"If you had married him, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer."
"My dear, " replied his wife, "if I had married him, he'd be the chief executive officer and you'd be the gas station attendant."
Yes, we often think we have the proper perspective on an issue when in fact we are way off. Jesus understood this propensity for us humans to get it wrong. Especially when it comes to things spiritual. So he told a few parables. He said the kingdom of heaven is like:
Among many things like A Hidden Treasure, a Pearl of Great Price, A fishing net
A Hidden Treasure - This seems like a very imaginative story to us, but to the people Jesus was talking to, this would not have been all that uncommon. We must be careful not to read the conditions of our lives into theirs. First, they did not have banks or other public depositories in which they could store their wealth, so there was the increased risk of robbery. Second, remember that Israel was the land between the great powers of the world. Every time these nations would go to war the land of Israel was caught in the middle. People learned how to protect their wealth from both thieves and from the plundering of enemy soldiers by buying items — including food, clothing, and various household objects as well as gold, silver, and jewels. The first century Jewish Historian Josephus wrote, "The gold and the silver and the rest of that most precious furniture which the Jews had and which the owners treasured underground was done to withstand the fortunes of war." It was common for the people to bury their valuables.
Now if the person who buried it died or was taken away as a captive, then that treasure would remain buried until someone happened to stumble upon it. That is the case here. We are not told specifically why the man was in this field — was he renting it? a hired hand working it? Someone walking through it? Or?
But the inference is that he stumbled upon this treasure. It was not something for which he was specifically searching. He is filled with joy over his find and not wanting anyone to steal it, he hides it again and proceeds to do what is necessary to make it his without any legal question, so he sells everything he has to buy the field.
What is the mystery revealed in this parable? That the kingdom of God was something that had to be personally appropriated. They expected to be part of the kingdom simply because of their blood relationship to Abraham. We see this same thing again in the next parable.
The Pearl - Here we find a merchant, here a wholesale dealer, who is specifically looking for very high quality pearls. When he found one that was extraordinary, he sold everything he owned to purchase it. The people would have also understood this illustration very well. Pearls are not so expensive now due both to the fact that they are not as rare (in large part due to cultured pearls) and that it is not as dangerous to get them as it was then — divers risked their health and their lives in getting them. But in that time, pearls were the most highly valued gem and were often bought as investments. The rich would flaunt their wealth by dressing their wives in pearls. This merchant found an exquisite pearl and sold everything he owned in order to purchase it.
The point of the parable is the same — the kingdom of God is something that has to be personally appropriated to receive its benefits. You are not going to be part of it based on your genealogical history. This was the mystery being revealed.
The difference between the two parables is that in the first, the person stumbles onto the treasure; while in the second, the merchant had been diligently looking for it. This is the way in which salvation comes to individuals. Some have diligently been searching for the truth before they find it. Others have just been living their lives without much thought to eternal things when they, from the human point of view, stumble into Christ and find the answer to the question that they had not even been asking - what is life all about?
God uses a variety of circumstances to bring the treasure of the kingdom of God to an individual, but there is only one way by which that individual can partake of what is being offered. In both parables, the man and the merchant recognised the supreme value of what they had discovered and everything else became secondary to taking possession of what they found. They "sold all they had" with nothing held back.
The net - This too is an illustration they would have understood perfectly — especially since they were in a fishing village which saw this activity going on daily. A large net would be spread out into the water by a boat. This net would capture everything in its path as the ends would be drawn together and then the whole thing dragged up onto the shore. The good fish would be put into containers for sale, but the inedible fish and garbage would be thrown away.
A fish swimming through the water does not think twice about a net should it happen to bump into it. It simply swims away from it thinking itself to be free. But slowly, the net draws around it and only as that net closes together do the fish become excited and start thrashing about, but by then it is too late.
How we imagine what the kingdom of heaven is like depends a lot on what we need the kingdom of heaven to be, which frequently hinges on factors we’d rather ignore. Our penchant for certain visualisations of the kingdom of heaven have less to do with what the Bible says and more about what’s at stake for us theologically. Our language about the kingdom of heaven tends to be attached to how we think God should act and not how God has already acted. Our assumptions about the kingdom of heaven rely heavily on our system of rewards and not on God’s choice to bless.
Make up your own parable about the kingdom of heaven, not just making something up, something that sounds kind of nice, but that you are giving witness in that moment to a specific expression of faith.
In the end, be assured that the reason Jesus spends so much time explaining the kingdom of heaven is because we need to be reminded that it’s there even when it seems so excruciatingly absent. The promise of the parables about the kingdom of heaven is that even when the kingdom is not seen, it is near. That’s a promise even a preacher, and sometimes especially a preacher, needs to hear
