Today we conclude our three-week study of the parables told by Jesus in Matthew chapter 13. Two weeks we ago considered the Parable of the Sower, and last week we looked at the Parable of the Weeds. Our lectionary system then skipped over parables about the mustard seed and the leaven, and today we zero in on the final three parables, known as the Parable of the Hidden Treasure, the Parable of the Pearl of Great Value, and finally the Parable of the Net.
All three of today’s parables seem – and I stress the word “seem” – to be pretty straightforward. They seem to be pretty easy to understand. In fact, for most of the past 2,000 years, the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value have often been explained by something called “the cost of discipleship.” The idea is that the kingdom of heaven is of such priceless value to us that we should be willing to pay the ultimate price – give up everything – to follow Jesus. It’s a concept that makes sense – after all, the 12 disciples left their homes and their livelihoods so that they could follow Jesus – and if we are going to follow Jesus, then we should be willing to give everything, too. But we have to be very careful here, because when you think in terms of giving up everything to follow Jesus, you may start to believe that you are actually earning your way into heaven by making those personal and financial sacrifices. You may begin to think that you can buy your way to eternal life.
After all, the parables of the treasure and the pearl tell of people who used money to purchase their possessions. If you have enough money you can, indeed, purchase something of great value and make it yours. But the kingdom of heaven doesn’t work that way. You can’t buy your way into heaven. There’s not enough money in the world to get that job done. The wealthiest man in the world would still fall short, because the kingdom of heaven is not for sale.
So if Jesus isn’t talking about us and the cost of discipleship in these first two parables, then whom – or what – is He really talking about? I’d like to suggest to you that the subject of these two parables can be summed up by the word redemption. Once again, we’re talking about a theological term that never makes it into our everyday conversations. And even though we hear that word used frequently in Church and Bible Classes and even in our own readings and devotions, the actual meaning of the word redemption is probably pretty fuzzy in many of our minds.
But I can almost guarantee that back in the 1950s and 1960s and even into the early part of the 1970s, many of you did know exactly what the word redemption meant outside of the walls of this or any other church. Specifically, I’m thinking of the redemption centers that were in places like Springfield and hundreds of cities across the United States for the old S&H Green Stamps. Remember Green Stamps? I see a few heads nodding, but for the benefit of those of you under the age of probably 50 or so, I need to take you back a few decades to the time when many retailers – especially grocery stores and gas stations – gave you little gummed stamps that were based upon the dollar value of your purchase. Each stamp represented either one, ten or fifty points, and you would very carefully lick those stamps to glue them in small paper books that each held 1,200 points of stamps.
While you accumulated your stamps, you would carefully study the pages of the Green Stamps catalog – pages filled with all sorts of wonderful merchandise including appliances, household goods, radios, televisions and stereo equipment, cameras, tools, camping gear, lawn equipment and patio furniture – in short, just about anything you could ever want.
For example, let’s say that you wanted a new toaster – I understand that toasters were one of the most popular Green Stamps redemption items – and that toaster required five books of stamps. When you had your five full books of stamps, you went to the redemption center – you told the clerk what you wanted – and you would redeem your stamps for that item. You couldn’t pay cash for anything in that catalog or store, but you could purchase your heart’s desire by redeeming your books of Green Stamps.
So in its simplest terms, redemption represents the purchase of something – albeit not a purchase made with money. But we’re talking matters of Scripture and faith in these parables and not, obviously, S&H Green Stamps. You can scan the words again of today’s Gospel lesson, and you will not find the words redeem, redeemer or redemption anywhere in there. But redemption is there – it’s all through those words, even if it’s never specifically spoken.
In his explanation of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Martin Luther wrote: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.” Not only does Luther use the word redeem here, but he also gives us a better understanding of what that word means in Biblical usage. Whenever the words redeem, redeemer or redemption appear in Scripture, they refer not just to a purchase – but to a buying back or recovery.
When God created Adam and Eve, they were His most precious creation – more valuable and infinitely more beloved than any other creature in heaven or on earth. More valuable than any hidden treasure or any perfect pearl. But mankind became damaged goods when sin entered the world. God still loved us – that has never changed – but our sins had earned us nothing less than a one-way trip to the eternal damnation of hell. As soon as Adam and Eve sinned, they realized as we still realize today that there is no possible way for us – on our own – to make things right with God, to do something or anything to make up for our sinful condition.
We don’t want to accept that, of course, so people keep trying – always unsuccessfully – to please God, to make God happy with us, to hope that God will see the good we do and ignore our sins. Luther himself fell into that trap when he joined the monastery, and for years he tried to pray harder, to work harder and even to abuse his body and damage his health in an effort to purge his heart of evil and make God look upon him with favor. He felt overwhelming despair when he realized that no matter what he did, he could never please the righteous and holy God by acts of a woeful sinner.
But thanks be to God, Luther did not forever wallow in his despair, for eventually he turned away from acts of man to the Word of God. And here he found a Savior who came to redeem us, every one of us lost and condemned people. A Savior who came to purchase and win us from our sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. A Savior who came to redeem us, to purchase us, not with gold or silver, but with nothing less than His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.
People who incorrectly explain the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value say that we – believers in Christ – must be willing to give up everything for the treasure of eternal life. But the plain fact of the matter is that we can’t really give everything to follow Jesus. It sounds good, but none of us can ever really do it. Would you be willing – or could you right now – walk away from your home and your car and your possessions and start traveling the countryside as the disciples followed Jesus? You know the answer. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is all too weak.
But since these two parables are really about redemption, we need to focus on the one who does the redemption – the one who redeems – our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. In the parable of the hidden treasure, Jesus tells us that the man sold all that he had to buy the field where the treasure is hidden. In the parable of the pearl, Jesus tells us that the man sold all that he had so that he could purchase the pearl. The man who buys the land and buys the pearl is most certainly not us – it is Jesus!
Think of it this way. Jesus, the eternal Son of God and second person of the Trinity, came down from heaven to be incarnate as a man. He left behind His heavenly powers, using them only during the final three years of His life and even then only for His revelation as true God. He lived the same life we live, knowing the same hunger and thirst and pain and sorrow that we humans know. Like us, he suffered temptations. Like us, he suffered rejection. Like us, he suffered death.
The difference is that Jesus, the Son of God, willingly allowed Himself to suffer and die. He willing allowed Himself to suffer the pains and torments of hell. Although He had lived the perfect, sinless life that we cannot live, He willingly suffered the death of the damned that we – not He – most certainly deserve. In short, Jesus gave up everything – everything including His own precious life – for you, His great treasure. He looked at you and you and at every one of us and saw not damaged goods, but treasures more valuable than all of the riches in the world. He gave absolutely everything that He had to purchase us. St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians: “You were bought.” Jesus was the only one who could pay the ultimate price for our redemption – and He willingly, lovingly did it.
So if the first two parables don’t mean what we assume that they mean, what about the third one, the Parable of the Net? Actually, the meaning of this parable is perfectly clear, for here Jesus is talking about judgment day, the day that the good fish, the believers, will be separated from the bad fish, the unbelievers. The unbelievers will, just as Jesus says, be thrown “into the fiery furnace” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
But the good fish – the keepers – are the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value. The good fish, my friends, are us. We have been caught in the net of God’s infinite love. Jesus has paid the ultimate price for us. And because he has paid that price, our redemption and our salvation are assured. As St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans, words that we heard in this morning’s Epistle lesson: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
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