À Quel Prix

À Quel Prix?

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Matthew 13:44-53

July 27, 2008

Matthew 13

⁴⁴“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

⁴⁵“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

⁴⁷“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; ⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

⁵¹“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” ⁵²And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” ⁵³When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

À Quel Prix? At what price? When Julie and I were a young married couple, we visited the city of Acapulco in Mexico. The beach was deserted; we were the only people enjoying the sun and the sand. And then they came—the sellers of serapes, the peddlers of piñatas, the traders of turquoise. They surrounded us on the beach, blocking the sun, all speaking at once and all saying the one phrase they knew in English—“How much you pay?” My Spanish was worse than their English and so I didn’t even know how to tell them to go away and leave us alone. So we bought a few things. “How much you pay?” they asked. And we paid very little. It was amazing how much we could buy for just a few pesos. We were thrilled to get our shopping done so cheaply. But there was a reason the things we bought were so cheap. It was because they were of very poor quality. The colorful dresses were thin and poorly stitched. The colors ran and faded at the first washing. We didn’t pay much; we didn’t receive much. Cheap.

Sometimes we are satisfied with cheap faith also. One year when I was teaching a class on World Religions at Midway College, I happened to have two students from Japan. I asked them what religion they were. They replied that they were Shinto and Buddhist. “Wonderful!” I exclaimed, “you can help me when we study Shinto and Buddhism.” Fear came into their eyes and they cried, “No, no, we don’t know anything about our religion. A priest comes once a year and blesses the shrine in our house. That is all we do.” They were satisfied with cheap faith. Sometimes we Christians do the same thing. I visited with a member of my church in Austin, Texas, who never attended worship. I asked him if he still considered himself a member of the church even though he never came. “Yes,” he replied, “I want to be a member of the church so that my funeral can be held there after I die.” Cheap faith; it cost him very little. Some of us only want to wear the name “Christian.” We want to be a member of a church so that someone will bury us when we die. We want to be able to say that we believe in God. But that is where our faith stops. It doesn’t cost us much time or money or energy or sacrifice or mental effort. It is cheap faith. But it is not quality faith. It is not the faith that Jesus was talking about in these parables. If we want the kingdom of God, then faith is worth more than what some of us have been paying.

⁴⁴“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

What is the gospel worth to you? In a world that puts a price on everything, surely we can put a price on faith. In a world that demands so much from us, surely faith must have some demands also. What would you give up to follow Jesus’ way? At what price would you stop?

A man who had served in World War II once asked me, “Do I have to love Japanese people in order to be a Christian?” “Yes,” I responded, “you do.” “Well then,” he said, “I guess I won’t be a Christian.” His hatred of the Japanese was more important to him than his faith. He was more passionate about hate than about Jesus’ gospel of love. He had heard the gospel, he had found the treasure hidden in the field, but it was too costly for him. So he turned and left it there. How much is faith worth to you? At what price do you stop?

Recently I was talking to a new acquaintance and we discovered that we knew the same person. “Yes,” I said, he is a very active member of my church.” “Really?” said the other person, “I have known him for years and I had no idea that he was a Christian.” How many people who know us do not know that we are Christians? Many of us do not want to talk about our faith in front of others. We say that it is impolite, rude. We are afraid of offending the other person or embarrassing them somehow. But how will they know that God loves them unless someone tells them? How will they know that it is okay for them to come to you with questions about God and faith if they never know that you believe? Is privacy the price that we are unwilling to pay for our faith? It seems that we are willing to keep our faith hidden so that we don’t stand out in a secular crowd. If so, we are stopping short of the kingdom of God. What would we give up in order to have the kingdom of God come alive in us? What price would we pay?

⁴⁵“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

These two parables of Jesus are intended to tell us that Jesus wants everything we have. A little girl wandered into a store, showed the clerk her five pennies and asked for a Coke, a candy bar, a toy, some bubble gum, and a music CD. Trying to tell her that she was asking for too much, the clerk said, “What will you want next, little girl, the moon with a picket fence around it?” And the little girl replied, “May I see it please?” Perhaps Jesus is like that little girl; he wants everything, everything we have. He wants our allegiance to him before anyone else. He wants us to know that faith is more valuable than money. He wants us to let go of negativity and fear and embrace compassion and love. He wants us to break down the barriers of national borders and social class and skin color and language, so that we may know that all are brothers and sisters in him. He wants us to stop asking the question, “At what price?” Because the answer is: “At any price.” He wants us to give everything we have, all of our talents, all of our abilities, all of our effort, all of our hope, all our mind, soul and strength, to sell it all joyfully in order to possess what is of greatest value—the kingdom of God.

Do you watch the TV game show, “Deal or No Deal”? A contestant chooses one of many briefcases in hopes that it holds a lot of money. As the other cases are opened one by one, the banker tries to buy the briefcase of the contestant, offering more money sometimes and less money other times. The contestant always makes a deal and sells the briefcase before all the rest are opened. At the end of the game, after the contestant has accepted the offer of the banker, Howie Mandell, the game show host, says, “Let’s see if you made a good deal.” And he opens the contestant’s briefcase to see if he sold it at too low a price. These two parables of Jesus end with a fearsome passage that tells us that we will eventually see if we made a good deal with our lives.

Don’t get caught up in this symbolic description of fiery furnaces and gnashing of teeth. What this passage is saying is that our lives will one day be opened like a briefcase and we will know then whether we have made good choices or evil choices. If we sell all of our earthly attachments to purchase heavenly faith, we will have made a good deal—no matter what price we paid, no matter what it cost us on earth.

What is our faith like? Is it cheap faith that doesn’t cost us much—and doesn’t gain us much? Or is it the pearl of great value, the unsuspected treasure, for which we would give up everything else? When it comes to faith, where do you stop? At what price? À quel prix?