JESUS IS OUR TREASURE

THE PARABLES CONTINUE...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard, a treasure, buried in a field. A person comes and hides it again. And out of joy, he goes and sells all that he has to buy that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes off and sells all that he has to buy it. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea which collects fish of every kind. When it is full, they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets, what is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of time. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Do you understand all these things? They answered yes. He replied, Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both new and old. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you remember, for the last few weeks, we've been hearing Matthew's gospel and the parables that Matthew records for our sake, and that continues tonight. This really will be the last series of parables from this section of the gospel. And the parables are always messages that have an underlying reason, an underlying not so obvious meaning. And tonight's no different. However, as I mentioned in the past few weeks, some of the parables reminded me of growing up at the Jersey Shore. And I'm sorry, I have to say it again. This one tonight hits it right on the head. We used to go dragnetting. Okay, a dragnet, some of you may know. We're in the bay, first of all, is a long net with poles on each side. And my brother and my cousin Mickey and I took turns and we would drag the net into the bay, and there's a certain way you do it. You go both go out, one stays stationary, and the other makes sort of a circle around him, and then together we pull the net in. And that's how they did it too. They tell you, everything comes up. Now, we were at the Jersey Shore. Um, most of the time we caught fish spearing little little fish, and the and the Italian ladies in the neighborhood would come and grab them and eat them, take off the heads and eat them. They were like sushi, I guess, for them. Um sometimes we got crabs. My father said they had to be a certain size. If they weren't, send them back in, and we used to do that. The big ones we'd be happy to keep. But sometimes we'd get a shoe or a piece of attire or some other piece of junk, garbage. And of course, we had it sorted out. We brought everything to the shore, and the bucket was there, the fish went in the bucket, the shore uh trash bucket contained the stuff that we caught that was garbage that Jesus would say would be thrown into the fiery furnace. Jesus continues his parables. Tonight, however, I want to focus on one of those parables that he gave us today, and that's the one of a man finding a treasure in his land. He didn't own the land, and he found the treasure. Now, when I was a kid growing up, we didn't have a lot of land. We lived in a city, and I wondered how that happened, how a man would go dig a piece of soil, find a treasure, then realize it is a treasure, hide it again, and then buy that land. Okay, it's a it's a it's a parable, and it has underlying meanings for Jesus and his listeners, the disciples. But if you think about it, in ancient times, it was not unusual for people to bury their treasures. They would have something very important, they would bring it out on their farm, dig a big hole, put it in there, wrap it up carefully, because there were no banks, as we know of, there was no insurance if they lost it. So they just buried it there, and sometimes obviously the man who owned this field forgot about it. So Jesus is tapping into known entities during the lives of these people. However, we also have a treasure. And our treasure is not buried any longer. Our treasure was in the tomb for three days, and then our treasure rose from the dead and is still with us. Our treasure is Jesus. Now, the figures in the story went off and sold everything they had to invest in that land so they would have the treasure that they found. We already had that treasure. It was given to us at baptism, and we renew that treasure every time we come to celebrate Mass. When we receive the Eucharist, we're receiving the treasure in Jesus, the greatest gift God can give us. Now, the man who invested in the field, pulled up the treasure, I'm sure in the parable, probably spent it. He used it. What do we do with our treasure? What do we do with the treasure of our faith? The pearl of great price or great wisdom. And that's our invitation during these summer months to understand that we have a treasure. Sometimes we don't pay attention to Jesus. Sometimes, and you hear this a lot in confession, oh, I missed Mass last Sunday, I went to the beach, I missed Mass last Sunday, I did this or that. And well, okay, confession, sacrament, person is forgiven. But realize that treasure is with us always, Jesus. And there are times in which we ignore him, we bury him, we put him aside, and yet we who are here today are here to renew the relationship between ourselves and the treasure that God the Father gives us. Think about how important Jesus is in our lives. He's there to hear us. Go back to the first reading and the second reading as reminiscent when Paul tells us through the letter to the Romans that he called all of us. We know that all things work for good for those who love God. His son is our gift, his son is our treasure. And the closer we get to Jesus, the more we depend on Jesus, the more we speak to Jesus in prayer, the more he's allowing us to realize how important we are and allowing us to really love him. Now that's an unusual phrase. We've heard it all in the scriptures forever, loving God as your neighbor. But not romantically loving God, but loving God upon whom we depend. Loving God who hears us in our prayers of need, of want, of thanks, loving God in Jesus, who is our greatest treasure. Think about our own lives. Where has Jesus been in my life? As we recall the parables, the parables always go back to a lot of various stories. What's the story of Jesus in our lives? Every one of us. Do we really know he's with us? Or, God forbid, do we keep him buried? We have found a great treasure in Jesus. It's ours to share.