The Thursday Sermon (on Wednesday)

“In His Joy”

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost • Matthew 13:44–46

The gospel writer, Matthew, has given us a big job this morning. There are five parables here in this short reading of a dozen verses. I want to slow down this morning and focus on two of the parables that we tend to hurry past.

This whole chapter — which stands as our reading over several weeks of the summer — is filled with parables. Illustrations. “The kingdom of heaven is like this…” language. Jesus is throwing images at his disciples one after another, trying different angles on the same underlying question: what is the kingdom of heaven like?

Preachers often try to cover all five in a single sermon. Again, I don’t want to try that today. Two of them share something so specific and so beautiful that I want to sit with them alone, and let them do their work.

The parables are these. First: the kingdom is like treasure hidden in a field. Someone finds it — the text implies almost by accident, while doing some ordinary work — hides it again, and in his joy goes and sells everything he has to buy that field. Second: the kingdom is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he finds one pearl of great value, he goes and sells everything he has to buy it.

Do you hear how similar they are? Same ending. Someone finds something. Someone sells everything. Someone gains what they found.

But do you hear how different the beginnings are?

• The first person isn’t looking. He’s walking in a field, maybe on a job, and he trips over treasure.

• The second person is a merchant — a professional. He’s been looking for pearls all his life. He knows the market. He knows what he’s after. He finds it because he’s been searching.

I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus tells both parables because both are true. Some of you are the accidental finder in the field. Some of you are the merchant. And Jesus wants both kinds of people in the kingdom.

Let me start with the accidental finder, because I think a lot of us know that story.

Some people come to God the way that person came to the treasure. They weren’t looking. They weren’t in the market for God. They were doing something ordinary — going through a hard time, sitting in a hospital room, walking somewhere new, hearing a song at the right moment — and something interrupted them. Something they weren’t expecting. Grace, we sometimes call it. The kingdom found them before they were looking for it.

I want to tell you something about that first parable that I think we miss. The text says the man found the treasure, “and in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” In his joy. Not out of duty. Not because he’s been told to. Not because someone has convinced him he should. In his joy.

The joy comes first. The selling is what the joy produces. He is not making a sacrifice; he is making a purchase. Something has landed in front of him that is worth so much more than what he is giving up that giving up his other things is not a hardship. It is the natural next move for a person who has just found something that valuable.

I think this is one of the most important pastoral truths in the whole Gospel. When we understand the kingdom rightly, giving up things for it does not feel like giving up. It feels like trading up. It feels like closing your fist around what you have just discovered and opening the other one because you no longer need what was in it.

Now, the church has sometimes gotten this backwards. Sometimes we have preached the kingdom as a set of demands — give up this, give up that, sacrifice, pay the cost — and hoped that people would eventually feel joy about it. That is exactly backwards. Jesus in this parable does not say the man sold everything and then discovered joy. Jesus says he found treasure, and in his joy he sold everything. The joy is the engine. The selling is what the joy makes possible.

Photo by Kai Rohweder on Unsplash

Now let me turn to the other parable, because it describes a different kind of Christian, and I do not want anyone in this room to feel left out.

The merchant is a professional. He knows pearls. He is not stumbling into anything. He has spent his working life examining pearls, holding them up to the light, learning the difference between the good ones and the great ones. He has been searching. And one day, after who knows how much looking, he finds one that is different from all the others. And he sells everything to buy it.

I want to suggest to you that this parable is for the seekers. For the people who did not come to God by lightning strike but by long looking. For the people who have been reading, and asking questions, and going to the hard places, and taking the ideas seriously — sometimes for decades — before something quiet inside them finally recognized what they were looking at.

Not everyone in the church came in through the accident story. Some people came in through the search story. And Jesus tells both parables side by side because he wants both kinds of people to know they are welcome.

Here is the thing that unites them, though — and this is where I want to land this morning. Whether the pearl was found by accident or by long looking, the response is the same. Joy. And joy leads to the same action: giving up everything else, gladly, to get this one thing.

So I want to ask you a question that I think this parable is putting to us this morning. What is the joy in your life that is big enough to make the giving up easy?

I ask because I think a lot of us are living small lives — not because we do not want more, but because we have not found the joy that makes the more possible. We are holding onto our small comforts, our small habits, our small fears, our small circles, because we have not seen anything valuable enough to make us willing to open our hands. We are hoarding pennies because we have not yet found the pearl.

The gospel today is not that God requires you to give up more things. The gospel today is that there is a joy available to you that would make the giving up easy. There is a treasure. There is a pearl. And when you find it, you will not need me to convince you to give things up. You will do it, as the man in the parable did, in your joy.

Now — where do we find that joy?

I think we find it in the same places both of these characters found their treasure. Sometimes we find it by accident, in ordinary work. In the hospital room. In a difficult conversation. In the middle of a mundane Tuesday. Something breaks through, and we see it — the kindness of God, the goodness of the world, the presence of Christ. And it changes what we are willing to hold onto.

And sometimes we find it by long searching. By reading and asking and refusing to settle for the easy answers. By showing up in worship even when we do not feel it. By taking prayer seriously as a practice. By opening ourselves to communities that will challenge us. And one day, after we do not know how much looking, something quiet in us recognizes what we have been searching for.

Both are real. Both are true. The joy is what unites them.

So here is what I want to leave with you this morning.

Whether you came to God by accident or by search, whether you have been in this church for fifty years or fifty minutes — the invitation of these parables is the same. Look at what you have found. Really look. Notice the size of it. Notice the weight of it. Notice that what you have in your hand — the love of the God who made you, the presence of Christ who accompanies you, the Spirit who indwells you — is worth more than everything you have been holding onto with your other hand.

And then, in your joy, let the other hand open. Not because you are supposed to. Not because I am telling you to. Not because it is the price of admission. But because you have seen what you have, and there is no comparison, and holding onto anything else no longer makes sense.

The kingdom is worth everything. The treasure was in the field all along. The pearl is worth every day you have spent looking. And the joy — the joy is what makes the trade not a sacrifice but a homecoming.

Amen.

Christ our joy — you have set treasure in front of us this morning. You have shown us the field, and the pearl, and the man who found what he was not looking for, and the merchant who had been searching all his life. You have called them both blessed. You have shown them that what they found was worth everything else they were holding.

Forgive us for the times we have held on too tightly to what does not matter. For the small comforts we would not lay down. For the pennies clutched in our fists while the pearl waited in front of us. For the fear that has made us guard our small lives when you were offering us large ones.

Give us the joy that makes the giving up easy. Not the duty that grinds; the joy that changes everything. Let your love land in us with the weight it actually has, and let our hands open by themselves.

For those among us who have been searching for a long time — reading, questioning, refusing the easy answers — let them recognize the pearl when they hold it. For those among us who have not been looking — going about their ordinary Tuesday, doing their ordinary work — let the treasure interrupt them today. For all of us, in whatever posture we came in this morning, let us leave in the joy that you are worth everything.

You are our treasure. You are our pearl. You are our joy. In your joy, we come. Amen.

One: Come, all who have stumbled into something you were not looking for. Come, all who have been searching for a long time.

All: We come in our joy to the God who is worth everything.