Matthew 13.44-52 Parables of the reign of heaven

Have you ever moved? Not a short move, but a long distance away, and not from one short-term home to another but after you’ve lived somewhere for a decade or more and then relocated to a new home. Isn’t it amazing how much crap we accumulate?

My husband and I moved to Michigan from West Virginia in December. We moved our belongings via U-Haul Pods, aka shipping containers. We looked around our house and provided we weeded out a bunch of stuff through donations, sold a few things, and junked a bunch of stuff, three pods might be feasible. It became readily apparent the first day of loading we were going to need more. We ended up with 6 and I left some things behind that I didn’t really want to. Mostly large, bulky furniture that just took up too much space. I miss that loveseat… but it was just furniture.

Now, I remain indefinitely in the “unpacking” phase of moving. I have unpacked all the essentials: dishes, everyday clothes, my office, the TV. You know the things you can’t live without. And then… there’s all this other stuff. In my defense, our move was sudden and unexpected; I only had a few weeks to pack up the four-bedroom home with a full basement we had been living in for 15 years. The house we bought a month before we got married.

The amount of stuff I have thrown or given away straight out of boxes is alarming. Things that seemed worth bringing at the time. Some of it I just thought I had space for early on before I realized I didn’t and then it was too late to remove. Other things don’t fit in my new home, which I had never thought of as being an issue. Who knew I had purchased so many household items and pieces of furniture that were for a specific location in the house that my new home just doesn’t have?

Like corners, there are very few corners in my house that don’t have windows, doors, or light switches leaving me nowhere to put a lovely antique corner cabinet. There also aren’t large wall spaces and I have several large pieces of art to hang on the wall that I just can’t. This isn’t a problem; it’s just something I did not take into account in my relocation strategy. Also partly not my fault as we moved in October and were unable to close on a house until December. For some reason, I feel the need to justify my actions today as if you don’t already think I’m a little bit nutty.

But, when we move long distances, some things just have to go, they don’t make the cut to come along; they don’t have enough personal value to them. There are things with monetary value that you don’t leave behind. For instance, I recently had to replace my refrigerator. It’s one of those four-door countertop width ones and I love it. Who knew as an adult you would suddenly have a preference for things like refrigerators and vacuum cleaners? I refused to leave it behind.

In our passage today, Jesus’ parable is about the things which people search for and would give up other things to have. The merchant seeks a pearl; I gave up a loveseat and matching chair for a refrigerator. And yet in many ways I kind of feel like a fisherman who dragged everything across the country in a net and only now is throwing out the things I don’t need. I’m not going to call them good or bad because we talked about weeds and wheat last week.

Now, I like how we are not told what treasure the man buried in a field that made it worthwhile for him to sell everything he owned to buy the field later. Most people would assume it was money, but why would he bury money and not just buy the field with it? This means, he buried something there more valuable than the land itself.

Treasure is not always new like my refrigerator. Sometimes it is but not always. The things Doug couldn’t leave behind? The things that I took an insane amount of extra care and padding to make sure they could survive the trip? Two items from his grandmother, an antique mirror and a Hoosier Baking cabinet that Nita used to have in her kitchen and used nearly every day.

I like how this parable emphasizes the point of the parable of the wheat and the weeds that we learned about last week. Value isn’t determined until after the harvest. All the fish in the fisherman’s net came back to shore. All of them were taken to the kingdom of heaven, it is only then they are sorted. And value to God isn’t determined by age. Our value isn’t determined by how long we are on this earth, some treasures are new and some are old.  Our value isn’t determined by us.

Between the refrigerator and Ralph? Ralph has more value. The refrigerator doesn’t have a name. It is replaceable. Not one my greatest treasure; I just like it more than I liked the loveseat. This stuff dog? He’s been with me since I was 3 years old. He has lived in every location I have. He went with me to college. Made the cut of things I could pack into the bed of my pickup to move to Texas. Also made the cut of things I could fit in my suitcase when I took a seasonal position in Wisconsin. Lived on my futon in my first apartment in Alabama and every one thereafter. Now he sits behind me in my office, one of the few things you can see on camera when I do telehealth with clients.

Snuggled me at my best and seen me at my worst. Stayed with me through every fear without judgment and caught every tear when my father died. Embedded in his fake fur is a lifetime of memories… and probably enough viruses and bacteria to cause the next plague. He is invaluable.

So, in the kingdom of heaven, what do you think is of value to God? What do you think is buried in that field that makes it worth it to God to buy the whole field just to have what was buried there? What’s in that net that makes it worth it to drag all the others that will be discarded just to make sure that which is sought doesn’t get… pulled up with the weeds? There’s a mixed metaphor for you. Do you think it’s your monetary value or how well you saved to get yourself through retirement?

Is it the number of children you produced? The shininess of your hair? How many friends you have? Nope. It’s none of those things. It’s nothing we can measure here on earth because there is no objective way to measure how much you love God, your neighbor, and yourself. And that’s what we will be judged by. Righteousness, our true value, is determined by our capacity to love one another.

During this move, I had to leave a lot behind. Not just material things but friends, Doug’s family, neighbors, my church, my charge. My pods were held captive in Sault Ste Marie for a month. A mirror in my China cabinet was cracked, my precious refrigerator was dented, there are things I still can’t find, and things I still can’t figure out why I didn’t get rid of them before I left. But… none of that matters. The greatest treasure for me, even greater than Ralph, was to buy a home near my family, something I had buried when I graduated from college. The treasure of love and home would have been worth losing everything I owned.

I have my husband and partner in ministry. I have my dog, Bayley. And I have faith in God that everything is going to be okay. Transferring my membership to the Michigan Conference has been easier than anticipated. I am able to engage in a new form of ministry that lets me meet and love all kinds of new people. Michigan holds treasures for me both old and new.

These parables are about prioritizing what is truly important to us in life, as well as not judging others for what they deem important. Value is determined by God, not us. That value is not determined while we are on this earth but in the ever-after. So, so long as we remain on this earth, we seek to be of value by loving God, loving one another, and loving ourselves.