The Best Investment…

            Continuing to use parables to convey the meaning of His teaching concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, our Lord in today’s Gospel uses the ordinary example of the investor:  the man who sells all his assets in order to purchase a field in which he has discovered a great and hidden treasure; or the merchant of pearls who finally comes across the pearl of all pearls, “a pearl of great price,” and he too sells everything he owns so as to possess this singular prize.  Nothing extraordinary here about an investor who simply follows the rules of his profession:  he invests heavily in what he knows with assurance will bring a good return.

            Implied then in the logic of Christ’s parabolic analogies – treasure-hunter and pearl merchant – is the reality of such a thing as a great treasure waiting to be discovered, a magnificent gem of an oyster lurking out there in the market somewhere biding its time until the knowledgeable dealer in pearls comes along to snap it up.  From here, following the structure of the parable, it dawns on us that unlike so much blather around us about heaven and God’s kingdom, or silence and unconcern about the possibility of so splendorous a thing as eternal life – unlike what we are so used to, come the words of Jesus that sting us with the bracing wind of reality:  there is a treasure out there; there is something, a vital potentiality that makes a claim upon us, a claim on us that is reasonable – as any investor would tell us – even if it means divesting ourselves of everything in order to realize the most valuable.  

             These parables always remind me of a startling scene in C. S. Lewis’ remarkable fantasy The Great Divorce, where the narrator of the story comes across the ghost of a man, suspended between the stark choice of the radiant bliss of paradise on the one hand and, on the other, of the hell of his own remorse for what he has “lost” in his earthly life.  The man complains of his death, as to why he and his wife could not have had some time to enjoy their hard-earned retirement, their little house in the English countryside (now finally paid for) – why could they not have been allowed the little bit of happiness that was theirs for so brief a time?  “After all, we weren’t asking for so very much.”  The implications of this scene are inescapable:  Why, comes the answering question from the depths of the beauty of heaven – why settle for so little?  This very theme our Lord expands in the conclusion of another one of His parables, with that sobering and demanding question so familiar to those who read the Gospels:  “What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and yet lose his soul?” 

            Here, then, is the genius of Christ’s parables.  They are spoken to us exactly where we are, in the midst of our buying and selling, our building and investing, our endeavors to carve out a bit of space for happiness in our lives – all quite normal and respectable things as far as they go; but the parable catches us off guard and pleasantly (at least at first) draws us into the deeper realities of human life.  Do you really want to be happy?  Fine, says the parable.  For such you were made.  But why, then, are you – Christ’s stories interrogate us – why are you aiming for so small a portion of that which God would give you in breathtaking abundance?  Why pretend to be completely satisfied with such a tiny, tawdry imitation pearl when there are real pearls of great price to be had?  To what purpose is our treasure hunting in a field that contains so little?  After all, there is a treasure to be had, a treasure the value of which is worth everything we already have and much more….

            So it is that Christ wakes us up to the worth, the infinite value of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He lays before us what should drive us on:  a treasure to discover and possess forever.  Thus His two parables – about the buried treasure and the priceless pearl – reveal to us what should be our understanding of the Kingdom and of our only adequate response:  to seek it after the manner of a worldling who has enough sense to invest in a sure return.

            Then our Lord switches perspectives as He relates the parable about how the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net that is thrown into the sea.  “When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets.  What is bad they throw away.”  Now the angle is not what we think of the Kingdom, but what the Kingdom thinks of us.  Here is a parable that, following the logic of a fisherman who keeps the good fish and discards the bad, points to the day of judgment, when the “good investors” will be distinguished from the “bad.”  Again, who is the good investor?  The one who goes after the surest and highest return.  And the bad investor?  Kind of like the man from Lewis’ story, the one who would “humbly” settle for so little (even if that means all the wealth of this passing world). 

            Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of our Lord’s use of parables is the assumption within them of the rightness, the natural goodness of just basic human activity (excepting sin).  Within all that we do as human beings – our jobs, marriages, education, vocations and avocations, hobbies, games, dinner parties, volunteer service, shopping, saving, redecorating, praying and worshipping – within all of this human endeavor are encoded constant messages from God who made us the way we are as man and woman.  These “messages,” fully explicated in the Person of Jesus Christ and His teaching, whisper a deeper reality to us, haunt us with the aggravating reminder that we are still not satisfied with all our activity and acquisitions, nudge us toward contemplating something more, and finally would open us up to the eternality of heaven in a fluttering and yet alluring vision that takes shape as we live our lives on this earth. 

            The parable, then, is thought-provoking… and effective, for it is never needlessly offensive.  It will shake us up a bit, but only by gently, and, yes, even entertainingly, explaining to us the most fundamental purpose of human life.  And that is God, the God who made us.  Out of the riches of living experience (as well as the sorrows and sufferings that come our way), God speaks, not to judge (not yet anyway) but to draw us to Himself and the delights of His Kingdom.  Follow honestly and intelligently the healthy implications of your life as lived as a creature made in the image of God, made for God, and you will begin to explore a field in which you will find, if you stay at it, a treasure that is the reality that all other “treasures” were simply hints of.