EMPTY-HANDED

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus tells three parables of the kingdom. The parable about the merchant in search of fine pearls who finds the pearl of great price. 

Then there’s the fellow who finds a treasure buried in a field, and goes and sells everything he has to purchase the field. The third one is slightly different. It’s the one, you may remember, about the net cast into the sea that brings in all sorts of fish, and the man has to sit down and sort through the fish, keeping the good ones and casting the other ones aside. 

Jesus ends this short series of three parables with a question: “Do you understand all these things?" What's behind his question?

I think that his idea is that none of these parables, especially the first two, ends when someone discovers a valuable pearl or a hidden treasure. That’s not the point of these parables. 

No, the point is that each of these people then has to act. More than that, in fact, he has to give up everything to possess the pearl or the treasure. And it’s this giving up part, I think, that Jesus is referring to when he asks his disciples. “Do you understand all these things?“ Do you understand what it will cost you to possess the kingdom?

In the first two parables we are given models of people who give up everything for the sake of the Kingdom. They sell everything they have!

So these two parables pose a real challenge for you and me. I feel blessed that the Lord has called me to belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. But, h ow much am I willing to give up in order to enter the Kingdom? I can’t just walk in as my old self, with my old attitudes towards possessions, with my judgments about other people, and my selfishness, and so forth. 

The parables challenge you and me to let go of all of those things in order to possess the Kingdom, the pearl of great price, the treasure that is ours for the taking.

Let us ask the Lord, who promises us the Kingdom, to give each of us the strength to let go of everything else so that we can join Him in the Kingdom of Heaven.