Matthew 13:44-52 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
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"The first thing of course is that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. So someone has hidden it there's a little hint there that there's something slightly more mysterious going on. ... We must assume that it was hidden in the field and that the owner of the field didn't know about it, and that very very carefully the person who finds it does exactly what a good Jewish contemporary of Jesus would have done when finding such a treasure, which is not lifted it out. You hide it over of course to make sure that no one else saw it, but also you've glimpsed it - if you lift it out then there's a whole new legal ball game and you have to start discussing it with other people. But by hiding it over, you know it's there, you know something about the field the owner doesn't know - it's not his - and in your joy you go and sell all that you have and you buy that field. In other words, the treasure is something which you know about, that's there, which is not visible to anybody else, is not known about, something that has been hidden and it's worth your while to give everything in order to explore. ...
"Remember, in this first parable the kingdom of heaven is shown to be like the hidden treasure, the treasure hidden in the field. In other words, someone hiding something somewhere unknown is what sets off the process by which you can discover and then get yourself into a position of giving yourself completely away to the digging it up and finding out what it's about.
"In the second parable, which at first sight seems very like the first, it says, again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls... That one sounds a bit like the person with the treasure in the field - goes and sells all that he hasn't bought it - except that here the kingdom of heaven is not related to the treasure, it's related to the merchant: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant.” This kingdom isn't about [the] fine pearls. ... Here is this merchant in search of fine pearls on finding one pearl of great value he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.
"Well please notice that if you're a merchant and you go and sell everything that you have and buy something, you cease to be a merchant! You're not able to take part in any more give and take... And here's the bizarre thing: it's got you! If you've sold everything you had in order to get this, this is not your property, you are its property, that's the bizarre feature. You cease to be able to be a merchant, ... the moment you get rid of absolutely everything in exchange for this, you can't partake in trade anymore. It's got you. You become, if you like, the setting which shows it off, that's all.
"And that's the really interesting thing about this, is that here, rather than us being, if you like, the people who are taken inside a process of working out ourselves what the kingdom of heaven is, here we're shown that the kingdom of heaven is looking for us. And this is the remarkable thing: in this [parable] the kingdom of heaven finds a pearl, gives everything he has away completely for the sake of the pearl, and then actually becomes identified with the pearl - he can't get rid of it without getting rid of himself. It's everything he's got, there's this complete identification with the pearl.
"The suggestion being that that's what the kingdom of heaven looked like, it's God completely identifying with us and giving us a value that we had no idea that we had the value. The value is discovering ourselves in the regard of this 'merchant' who gave everything up in order to become completely associated with us, such that he actually ceased to be a merchant, ceased to be able to be a a bargain hunter looking for better things. He's where he's found us, and that's it, that's who he is to be hereafter. So being on the inside of the process here is discovering what it is to be a pearl who has been found, rather than discover the process of being the finder of the pearl.
"Then we have, “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea,” and in the translation we have, it says, “and caught fish of every kind.” It's actually not what it says in Greek at all. In the [Greek] it says, “Again the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet,“ so not any net - a dragnet, that's the kind of thing you draw drag along the bottom of the sea - “that was thrown into the sea and caught or gathered together every kind.” So the word fish does not appear in the Greek. ... Well here's the interesting thing: because of the word fish we're very inclined to miss I think what's going on here, which is that if you put a dragnet it brings things of every kind.
"If you were a fisherman in Galilee or in Israel at the time, in Palestine at the time, you would be very aware that there are many sorts of things that you can bring out of the waters, especially with the dragnet, some of which are inert, inanimate objects, but there will be, of the living things that you might find, there would be three quite distinct sorts: things that were edible, things that were inedible and things that were, although edible, in principle impure, for instance, any shrimps lobsters, crabs that you might come across, the crustaceans - these are all impure. ... But this dragnet mysteriously is quite unbothered by all that, this dragnet goes along the bottom brings up everything, it gathers things of every sort.
"“And when it was full they drew it ashore sat down,“ so there's a nice notion of this slow process, “and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” And it's quite interesting that the words here for good and bad are the same words which Jesus uses earlier in Matthew's Gospel to refer to a tree which produces good fruit and the tree which produces bad fruit, those are the terms that are being used. In other words, it's something to do with a form of growth into goodness and the form of failure, to grow into badness. And then we get at the end of the age the angels will come and do all the separating. In other words, as we heard in the parable of the wheat and the [weeds] last week, here we have the notion that the separation is only to be done by angels, and at the end of the age. We are not to be involved in that, we are part of everything that is being gathered together - without the usual forms of discrimination, that's the surprising thing, you know. Where's the category of impure fish, impure crustaceans? No, it's not here, everything is being gathered in here. And then the badness will be nothing to do with their previous status. ... Process is all: the gathering of everything and the refusing to discriminate before time.
"Then Jesus turns to them, “Have you understood all this?“ They answered, “yes.“ And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who's been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.“ Well the phrase, “who has been trained for the kingdom“ literally means “who is being discipled to the kingdom.“ It's a passive, and it suggests that it's the kingdom that is doing the 'dragging' into the process of learning to make proper discernments as we go through whatever situation [in which] we find ourselves.
"This process of being dragged into the middle of the things - the scribe who is being trained to the kingdom - is one who finds himself in the middle of these processes - the process of finding something hidden, covering it over with joy; the process of discovering yourself valued above everything by one who has given everything up in order to become identified with you; the process of being brought in along with everything else without discrimination long before there's any kind of separation. Finding ourselves on the inside of that is what we hope and we pray [teaches] us to be capable of bringing out of our treasure house things old and things new."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 17 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S4fIzOS2rM)
[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper12a/]
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