Ninth
Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12A)
July 26, 2026
Text: Matt. 13:44-52
If you’ve been in
my living room, you’ve seen it. The beautiful Ed Riojas painting of our
Lord in a cemetery, a field of headstones, face dripping with sweat, holes in
His hands. And with those bare, pierced hands, He is ripping a coffin out
of the ground. The headstone above that coffin bears the artist’s
name. And from the east, the light is dawning. It is the Great
Day. Christ has come, making all things new. At the bottom of the
painting, a banner: “For joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that
field.” See, according to the painting, Jesus is the One who
buys the field. Jesus is the One who sells everything to acquire the
treasure. And what is that treasure? You are,
beloved. You are.
As it turns out, that is not the traditional
interpretation. The traditional interpretation is that the treasure, or
the pearl, is the Kingdom, and you are the one who should go and sell everything you
have, give up everything, including your possessions, your home, your freedom,
your loved ones, your very life, in order to purchase that Kingdom. Now,
that isn’t wrong. And I’ve heard many an edifying sermon on this Gospel
with just that interpretation. We should be ready to give it all up for
Jesus. What this traditional interpretation does, is it exposes our
idols. What do we cling to more tightly than Jesus? What is more
important to us than the Kingdom of God, and eternal life with God? What
do we fear, love, and trust more than the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit? We are reminded of the rich young man, whom Jesus commanded to go
and sell everything he had, give it to the poor so that his treasure may be in
heaven, and come follow Jesus. That young man, remember, went away
sorrowful. Why? He had great possessions (Mark
10:21-22). He wasn’t so sure the Kingdom was worth it. That young
man… and you and I… ought to ponder Jesus’ question in another place: “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole
world and forfeits his soul?”
(Matt. 16:26; ESV).
So, the traditional interpretation? Take that to
heart. The Kingdom of God is worth it. It’s worth everything.
Even your life. Read about saints and martyrs and all they suffered in
view of Christ and the eternal prize. Take that cloud of witnesses (Heb.
12:1) as your inspiration. God may not call you to shed your blood for
Jesus, who shed His blood for you. But you should be ready. And you
should be willing to suffer every lesser pain in love for your Savior and
God. Heavenly Father, grant us Your Holy Spirit, that we be faithful even
unto death, and so be given the crown of life (Rev. 2:10). Grant us never
to forsake the holy faith. Beloved, let the lesson of this interpretation
be written on our hearts. Buy the field. Buy the pearl.
Whatever the cost. That the treasure may be yours.
But also, every scribe who has been trained for the Kingdom
of heaven is like a householder, who brings out of his treasure what is new and
what is old (Matt. 13:52). Here is something new: The less traditional,
significant minority interpretation of these parables is as compelling as it is
beautiful. And that is that Jesus is the One who sells it all to buy the treasure
for Himself. And that treasure is you. After all,
this is the very heart of the Gospel. The Almighty and Transcendent Son
of God does not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but makes
Himself nothing… comes down into your flesh and blood (conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary)... takes your sin and your sorrow and your
death into Himself, and upon Himself, and empties Himself out… humbles Himself,
to the point of death… even death on a cursed Roman cross (crucified, dead and
buried) (Phil. 2:6-8). He
goes and sells everything He has.
To buy the treasure. To buy the pearl. To purchase you for
Himself. And so gain for Himself a Kingdom.
I actually find this second interpretation more compelling
than the first, for a number of reasons, but chief among them being that, while
we should be ready to give up everything for Jesus, we can’t actually buy the Kingdom for ourselves. No matter how much we give up. No
matter how much blood we shed. It will never be sufficient. We
can’t do it. But Jesus can. And He did. And then
He gives it to us, freely. In Word and Sacrament. He gives it to
us. He is giving it to us now, in the preaching. And soon we’ll take our
place at the royal table to taste
it; to eat it,
and to drink it; the very Kingdom of heaven in His true body and
blood. It is a foretaste of the eternal feast to come.
There is, of course, a third parable in our text: The
Parable of the Net. The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the
sea. That net is the Gospel. That net is being cast this very
moment by the Lord Jesus Himself. Just as He is the One who buys the
field and the pearl, He is the One who casts the net. He does it every
time a preacher preaches, and every time you proclaim the Gospel, confessing
Jesus in your daily life and vocation, loving with His love, and serving in His
Name. And what does the net do, but gather in fish of every kind.
This is a picture of the Church, gathering in sinners. Gathering in you.
Specifically, it is a picture of the Church on earth, because, at the close of
the age, on the Last Day (the Day of Judgment), Jesus says that men will haul
the net ashore and sort between good fish and bad. This is a picture of
what the angels will do on Judgment Day. In the present, we’re all
together in one net, believers in Christ, and hypocrites (those who say they
believe, but don’t… those who are Church members outwardly, but not in their
heart). But on that Day, the righteous (true believers in Christ) will be
gathered to the Great Fisherman, Jesus. But the evil (unbelievers) will
be thrown into the fiery furnace, which is to say, hell, where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Here’s the thing about those evil fish. Jesus loves
them. Jesus died for them. To purchase them for Himself.
Jesus rose again for them. To give them the Kingdom. Jesus cast His
Gospel net for them. But in the end, they were not Kingdom fish, because
they wouldn’t receive the Kingdom by faith in the One who purchased them by His
blood. They wanted another way. Their own righteousness,
perhaps. Or, like the rich young man, their great possessions. Or
creature comforts. Or freedom. Or an easy life. Whatever it
is. The separation of the evil fish from the good is like the separation
of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25. What makes the difference?
Faith in Christ. Believers enter into the joy of their Master.
Unbelievers are told to depart from Him into the eternal fire prepared for the
devil and his evil angels. It’s a great tragedy. This is why we
preach the Gospel. That evil fish be turned (converted,
repented) into good fish (that is, believers) before that dreadful Day.
And we rejoice (and we must not take this for granted) that we have been turned
by the Spirit in the Gospel from evil fish to good, not because we are better
than anybody else (we were evil fish, too), but by God’s grace alone. And
we walk circumspectly, always with Christ and His Word in view, lest we forsake
our God, and return to unbelief once again. God preserve us from that.
That is why I have that painting hanging on my wall.
Because every day, I sit there and meditate on what my Lord did for me.
And I marvel. “For joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that
field.” It is profoundly moving. Profoundly beautiful. His
sweat. His blood. The holes in His hands. He did that for
me. My name is on the headstone. It is my
coffin He will rip out of the earth. And yours. He did that for
you, too. And one Day soon, He will pop the top off that coffin, as the
eternal light dawns, and call you and me, by name, to come out of the grave,
and to Him. And because He is risen and lives, that’s just what we’ll
do. We will rise and live. With Jesus. Eternally. That
is the Kingdom. That is the treasure. Jesus gave His all to
purchase that. God grant us ever to believe it, and so
receive it. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy
Spirit.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment