Take the Treasure or Buy the Field?

Image by quadrapop via Flickr

In the reading for the upcoming Sunday, Jesus tells more parables.  Jesus tells the disciples that:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that is buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” I think that it is really important for the young church to hear these words from Jesus. I think that we walk around this world thinking that things are going to come easy. Or we at least hope that they will. But Jesus is very clear, that the person who found the buried treasure didn’t just take it on the sly and run with it. He or she actually reburied it and went and sold all that he/she had and bought the field. This really makes the buried treasure rightfully his or hers.  Finding God or a Church that becomes a sacrament of Jesus for us, is really something that we have to sell all we have for. We have to give up all the things that we thought our life would hold, and have trust in this faith of ours that God will break us open and make us new, and better than we ever thought we could be and our life could be and in turn a better world than we could ever imagine. Letting go of all our planning and scheming for our own life is scary, and it is so anti-cultural since our world tells us that we are the designers of our own destiny. Without that ultimate letting go we cannot become the person that God sees in us. God’s mind is so much wider and deeper than we can ever imagine.

I think that the question for us to ask ourselves, as the young people of our church is– what are we prepared to pay for that field that holds the kingdom of God? What are we willing to give our church so that it can be a reflection of God’s kingdom here on earth? As I said in other blog entries, we are not meant to do this religion thing alone, we are meant to reach out to those around us, and to give who we are so that in turn we can be the best of who we are.

Are we trying to sneak off with the buried treasure without buying the field?

Watch the movie, Of God and Men, totally worth living through the subtitles ... great example of men who bought the field!