The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. (Matthew 13:44-45, NIV)
My wife and I spent a long February weekend in Naples, Florida, visiting her brother who snowbirds there every winter.
Ever been there? Crazy growth. Every few minutes another New Yorker pops out of the southbound pipeline and builds or buys a house. There are golf courses aplenty and tee times are very hard to come by. It’s a supply-and-demand thing, I imagine.
While there we took a 2-hour sightseeing cruise from the Naples harbor out to the Gulf and back. As we cruised, there was a steady stream of private jets rising overhead, having just taken off from the nearby executive airfield. They were likely golfers heading home from the Chubb tournament which had just concluded.
While cruising, we also floated past a gazillion docked boats – some of which were seriously large and fancy. One of the larger of the yachts was named “Well Played.” Must belong to a pro golfer, we figured.
And the mansions lining the shore – yikes! Massive, ornate, and pristine even though only a few months removed from Hurricane Ian. They were conspicuously short on occupants which were puzzling considering it was February – precisely when you’d want to be in South Florida. We thought maybe they were staying in their European villas until all that yucky hurricane damage was erased.
The owners of these boats and mansions were not short on worldly treasure, for sure.
This brings us to the question of what, exactly, is the treasure described in today’s text. I’ve heard it explained in two ways.
The first is that the man who finds the treasure is us – recipients of God’s grace, citizens of God’s kingdom. If we have a proper appreciation of the value of the kingdom of God (which, according to this understanding of the parable, the treasure represents) we’d be willing to sell all we have to attain it. This, after all, is exactly the deal that Jesus offered the rich young ruler who came asking how he could inherit the kingdom of Heaven. A deal that the young man sadly didn’t take.
The second explanation is that the man who finds and buys the field with the treasure is Jesus, and the treasure is us. At first glance, this seems like an unnecessarily lofty view of humankind. But I favor this latter explanation for the simple reason that the treasure finder is described as buying the field and the treasure. At an incredibly high price – “all he had”. (The field/treasure parable is followed immediately by a very similar one in which a man buys a pearl of great price.)
The only person who pays any kind of price for the kingdom of Heaven is Jesus. Indeed, the remainder of Matthew’s Gospel is the unfolding of what that price was and how it was paid. And it was pricey. Very pricey. Having paid the price and also being the King, Jesus certainly is the owner of the kingdom of Heaven, the purchaser of the field.
“Well Played” indeed.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, keep us always mindful of the price of our redemption. In Jesus’ Name, we pray.