Deacon Dave Etters
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Deacon Dave Etters reflects on Jesus’ parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, reminding us that the Kingdom of God is worth more than anything this world can offer. Through a personal witness of conversion and a reflection on Scripture, he encourages us to let Christ reign in our hearts and order every part of our lives around His Kingdom.
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Today, Jesus speaks to us in parables about the kingdom of heaven. These are short parables and I looked it up. That means I’m supposed to do a short harmony.
I didn’t hear a lot of disagreement on that one. What a powerful germinal truth is found though in these parables. The treasure hidden in a field is discovered almost seemingly by accident, stumbled upon, and the man finds this great treasure and goes and hides it again.
Perhaps to protect it, and runs off, sells everything he has, and buys the field to have this treasure, to inherit this treasure. The pearl of great price sought. The difference with this is there was one man seeking this pearl of great price.
Now in the ancient world, the pearl was very valuable. They held it up like gold as the highest value. And the pearl of great price, the greatest pearl, would have been of ultimate value.
And from these two parables, we see that there are two basic things here. The kingdom of God is priceless. It is so valuable.
It cannot be estimated as to its importance, its value. And the second thing is that these people, these two men who found the treasure, one and the pearl, had given up everything to obtain it. It is a radical, discovering the kingdom of God, being discovered by Christ, and discovering Christ is so radically transforming for our lives.
Colossians, his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul says this, he, that is Jesus, has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. This is a radical transformation. Being transferred from the kingdom, the dominion of darkness, and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son, Jesus, in whom we have forgiveness.
I was not much of a believer in my youth, despite being raised in the Lutheran church. And when I encountered Christ, it was life-changing, radical change. And it’s a long story, and we haven’t got time for it today, because I said this is a short homily.
But it’s radical. When God gets a hold of your life, if we take it deeply and seriously, it’s transforming, and we reorient our whole life and order it around him, his kingdom. Well, what is this dominion of darkness that we speak of here? Other than Satan’s domain of sin and death.
And Jesus acknowledged this domain, this realm, this kingdom, if you will, of Satan. At the Last Supper, when he was explaining how he was going away and would return, he said to them, I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.
He was speaking, of course, of his impending arrest, his betrayal by Judas, and the enemy, Satan, out to destroy the Son of God. When Jesus was led into the wilderness, the devil took him up to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence and said to him, all these I shall give to you if you will prostrate yourself and worship me. At this, Jesus said to him, get away, Satan.
Jesus did not correct the devil and say, you can’t do that. He acknowledged a certain sense of his dominion. We wrestle with these principalities.
At the end of every Mass, we pray St. Michael, the Archangel. We ask for that deliverance from all the temporal effects of the darkness of sin in our world. Every baptism has the vow, the promise, do you reject Satan, Father and sin, the Prince of Darkness? I do.
This is serious, deep truth. There’s no middle ground. But the good news is, the Kingdom of God, we have been transferred to the Kingdom of God, where we have freedom.
And the Kingdom of God is a radical new order. The reign of God is justice, peace, love. In the letter to the Romans, Paul again says, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That’s the Kingdom of God. Now we tend to think of kingdoms as territories in our world. The ancient Babylonian kingdom in today’s world, the United Kingdom.
But there is another sense to this word, kingdom. In the Greek, it’s basileia. And it means ruling, reigning.
Again, St. Paul says, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. And how does this happen? How does the peace of Christ, His Kingdom, rule our hearts? It’s by seeking His Kingdom first. A conscious effort, a decision, the will to put Christ first in all things.
It comes by our encounter with Him, where we fall in love with Jesus. In adoration, we bow our lives before Him. And then from there, we order everything in our life around that center.
That is how a king rules, central. And as we prepare our hearts every Sunday, every weekday mass, every mass, we prepare our hearts in the Eucharist, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and we say these words, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, Jesus, rule and reign in me.