17th Sunday 2020
1Kings 3:5, 7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13: 44-52
Three more parables of the Kingdom today, with a crucial difference among them: in the first two, the Kingdom is presented as something for which we are searching, whilst the third sees the Kingdom as something which searches for us, and of which we may or may not be worthy.
The third parable, of the dragnet which brings up fish of all kinds, some of which will be retained whilst others are rejected, has echoes of previous parables of the sower, and of the wheat and the weeds. God is the agent, the actor, throwing His dragnet into the sea, just as He sowed the seed which fell onto all types of soil, and planted the wheat which was contaminated by darnel. Both of these earlier parables included an element of selection, whether it be self-selection by the seeds, which may succeed or fail in producing crop, or selection by the landowner who instigates the weeding process.
Here we have the fishermen separating, as it were, the sprats from the mackerel, keeping some but rejecting others for whom a less than happy fate is in store. As always, we have to be careful not to push the analogy too far. Just as a weed cannot help or change its nature but will always be a weed, so a sprat will always remain a sprat, however much it may aspire to become a mackerel.
People, however, can and do change. In human term, today’s couch grass may be tomorrow’s orchid, today’s tiddler may be tomorrow’s best salmon. We have to keep in mind at all times the promise held out in last week’s readings of the possibility of repentance, of a change of heart, and must strive to be people who allow ourselves to be changed, indeed transformed, by the grace of God. Whether we think of ourselves as crops in the field or fish in the sea, we must always be conscious of, and open to, the love and mercy of God which have the power to transform us in the very depths of our being.
In the other two parables which we encounter today, there is a subtle shift of approach. Instead of being objects of selection by and for the Kingdom, we are presented as active searchers for the Kingdom, whether as merchants on the trail of fine pearls, or as treasure hunters seeking the discovery of a lifetime.
Success is available to us in both instances, but it comes at a price. Both the treasure seeker and the pearl tracker sell everything they own to procure the object of their search. Possession of the Kingdom of God is worth everything, but it costs everything. From TS Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, the Scottish priest and spiritual writer John Dalrymple borrowed the phrase “Costing not less than everything” as the title of his book about the search for holiness today.
What then does it mean to sell everything we own in order to purchase the Kingdom? In what sense does the Kingdom cost “not less than everything”? Presumably it isn’t a matter of getting rid of all our material goods. It is, rather, a radical call to put the Kingdom of God before everything else; to seek God’s will in everything and before everything. It is a call, not simply to avoid sin, but actively to strive to draw closer to God in and through our prayer and everything we do. It is a demand that we seek God, rather than regard Him as a vague background figure in our lives.
I suspect that it is possible to see a link with St. Paul’s words to the Christians in Rome when he comments that God “turns everything to their good,” in the case of those who love Him. If we do seek the Kingdom, we shall experience trials and difficulties, but God will use them to help us grow. Through them, we may change from sprats to mackerel, from weeds to wheat, from barren earth to soil which bears fruit.
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