CLW - Feb. 9, 2017 - Joel Gregory "Finders and Seekers"

6:44 But yet once again, may I have the opportunity to express my great sense of gift and grace to be here for these winter days of worship. to President and Mrs. O'Brien for their hospitality, to Ned Measles, your staff, and all of you so kind to me, and to the faculty who so graciously received me here. And I must add this word of appreciation for the collaboration I've enjoyed this week with the gifted Pepper Choplin, whose musical gifts we've enjoyed, and again to this great student choir and orchestra for gracing this occasion tonight. They know how to put pressure on a preacher to be here.

7:43 What an evening to share this gorgeous music. Our theme has been divine timing. This evening, finders and seekers. There's something about all of us that likes a good treasure story. I don't know what it is, just the surprise of finding something. I could choose one out of a hundred, but one of my favorite is the story of Charles IV, the king of Spain. In the late 18th century, he had a hunch that Napoleon Bonaparte was going to take his throne. He lived in a 365-room palace. He had a clock collection that was priceless in the crown jewels of Spain. He asked a trusted servant if he would hide the clocks behind one set of walls in one of 365 rooms, another in the other, crown jewels behind a wall.

8:48 The trusted servant had a scheme. He cut a piece of drapery, which was different in every one of the rooms, in case the family ever got the throne back. Well, fast forward, 1814, his son Ferdinand II is the king. He wants the crown jewels and the clock back. Problem is Napoleon had installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who was something of an interior decorator. He'd change the curtains in every room. Charles either had to tear up his palace or cut his losses. He decided, I'll cut my losses. That sounded like a tall tale. until a few decades ago, a plumber working in the palace dug through the wall in one of the rooms, and there were the antique clocks. Someday, a workman digging through a wall is going to find the last hidden crown jewels of any European monarchy.

9:52 He'll be a surprise finder. Some of us stories like that appeal to us. Jesus liked to tell at least one or two such stories like that. In Matthew's gospel, these tiny parables, short, short stories as they're called in literature today, very short stories. He talks about a plowman in Matthew 13, 44. He says again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. Which a man found and hid.

10:28 He hid it for the joy over it. He goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it. Like many of Jesus' stories, these are not particularly religious stories. There's no theological language in this. Here's a man out powering the field of another man, a day laborer, and he finds a treasure. Here's another pearl merchant who finds a pearl better than any pearl he'd ever seen. And Jesus said, the reign of heaven is like that. Like what? Well, it's like somebody who's not looking for anything except to get through the day and wins the super lottery. Or it's like somebody who's a jewelry trader and he takes a pearl empire that he had pyramided for years and gives it all for one pearl.

11:41 We've been talking about divine timing in our lives, how God brings together things that have no causal relationship, isolated, a book here, a person there, a knock at a door here, and yet they come together with great significance.

12:03 That's true about finding the reign of God in your life. Some people are surprised finders. This little story that Jesus tells is about a plowman. He would have been a day laborer in that world. He wasn't even a tenant farmer. He was hiring out to plow the field of another man. Might be they went down to the marketplace in a panel truck, picked him up, said, we'll give you a denarius, about 17 cents, if you'll spend the day sun beaming down on your head, sandals searing on the sand, heated, seething. I can picture it. It's late afternoon, but not there all day. And all of a sudden, the animals jump in their traces. There's a clink. And he falls on his knees and starts digging through the soil with his fingers.

12:58 and there is a clay jug, an amphora, as the case would have been. He rips the top off of it and he sees the gleam of gold. He looks around, makes sure nobody saw him, buries it again, and it says he went and sold all he had. What do you suppose a day labor plowman had? Stick of furniture, maybe another tunic. Couldn't have been much. and for the joy of it, sells the field and gets the treasure. Now, lest you think Jesus is making him just a scoundrel, the rabbi said you could do that. The rabbi sat and talked about every conceivable circumstance, and they said if you found a treasure as a day laborer, it was probably left there by some ancient Canaanite, didn't belong to the man anyway, it was yours if you could buy the field.

13:53 so he did that. Now this sounds like a strange story to us today. We don't expect to go out in our backyard and find a jug full of gold coins. I know those people go around with those devices. What do you call them? They don't find much, old coins, bottle tops sometimes. But it wasn't that unusual in the Holy Land, this narrow neck of land between the great empire about the size of the state of Vermont. It had been a battlefield for millennia. There weren't any savings in loans, no deposit box, no wall safes, no safe rooms. If you saw an Assyrian or Egyptian coming, you ran out and dug a hole. I hoped you might remember what the curtains looked like someday, and you could dig it up. And there was stuff everywhere. W.M. Thompson was a missionary in the 19th century. He said in 1880, some laborers, Palestinians we'd call them, were digging up a garden in the ancient city of Sidon.

14:52 found two copper pots filled with 8,000 gold coins with the image of Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. Problem was, they couldn't keep their mouth shut. Had to give it back. It was still happening then. It was a scene like that. A surprised finder. Matthew puts great emphasis on the word joy. For the sheer joy of winning the super lottery of that day, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field. And Jesus said, the reign of God can be like that in your life. What strange timing.

15:51 A day laborer wanting to get a denarius to buy a piece of pita bread, maybe some goat cheese, keep bought and sold together. And all of a sudden, he has a fortune. I wonder. That's where I wish I could sit down at your kitchen table over a cup of coffee. I really do. Just talk with you. How long's it been? since you had that sense of surprise when it comes to the reign of God in your life.

16:23 I'd expect there's somebody here you could go back to a third or fourth grade Sunday school class. There was a teacher who made Jesus so real that you thought he was about to walk in the door. I had somebody like that. You were a student. you had a vision of what life could be under the lordship of Christ maybe in the midst of life now. And something of all of that has faded away. You feel like C.S. Lewis, who grew up as a little boy, an Irishman, playing with his brother Warren up in the attic, and he remembered something called joy. But somewhere between that and being a professor of medieval literature at Maudlin College at Oxford, he lost it. And he kept looking for it everywhere.

17:18 We look a lot of places. Some people look in work, and the more they work, the more they work, like drinking salt water. Some in wealth. I was pastor of one of the richest churches in the country for a couple of years. Senior pastor, I asked him, what have you learned here? And he said, I've learned that great wealth brings great misery. Some look for it in one relationship after another, looking and they find out no. And someone else, even in the academy, I'm a part of the academy, I teach in the commanding, I haven't had for years.

18:00 But that, behind all of that, is a larger search. And that's a search for what Jesus called the reign of heaven, the kingdom of God. He says some people are serious seekers. You run into them in the Gospels. We're so familiar with the stories, they're like a coin, a dime that's been passed from hand to hand until the edges are rubbed off and they don't arrest us anymore. Here are shepherds out keeping their sheep. They're not looking for anything. Angel sings, they jump over fences. They're looking at the word made flesh. You know, they weren't expecting anything. Or perhaps it was that Samaritan woman. I think about her.

18:53 They're coming out at noon. Doesn't want to be around the other women. Stranger shows up, give me a drink. He says, if you knew who I was. Surprise finders. Howard Carter was like that Howard Carter was a kind of amateur Egyptologist he wanted to find a tomb of a pharaoh that hadn't been the object of the grave robbers he had a British lord, Lord Carnarvon who lives in High Clare Mansion you've seen that if you ever watched Downton Abbey he bankrolled Carter and for six seasons He dug in the Valley of the Kings. You may have been there, somebody here 300 miles up the Nile. Couldn't find a single tomb that hadn't been molested by the grave robbers. Seventh season, last chance, money gone.

19:49 He dug into the tomb of a minor pharaoh underneath the tomb of a major pharaoh and saw what he'd been looking for for seven years. The unbroken cartouche, the seal of a pharaoh. So he was sent back, Lord and Lady Carnarvon came, and in the most famous scene in archaeological history, he lit a candle, stuck it in. Lord Carnarvon said, what do you see? And Carter said, I see wonderful things. He saw the treasure of King Tut.

20:28 How long has it been? since you could say, I saw wonderful things when you look at the reign of God. He's a prize finder. But then there's another story here, and that about a serious seeker. That serious seeker, oh, he was very opposite of a day laborer plowman. This is a pearl merchant, not a retailer down at the mall. This is a wholesale pearl merchant. He deals big time. He's not in the Holy Land. The atmosphere of these two verses is somewhere to the east, probably in the Persian Gulf. He goes and visits a pearl sheik. Just like they're oral sheiks today, evidently they were pearl sheiks. A man who fished for the best pearls.

21:24 I can almost imagine it in that kind of culture. all of the elaborate greetings. The man lives in a tented city. The gossamer tent flaps weaving in the winds behind the Persian Gulf. And after elaborate greetings, how are your camels? How are your donkeys? How are your children? He gets asked to a room, then to another room. Finally, into the room where the grand man sits. Their eyes meet. He has some strong bitter coffee. And the pearl merchant takes out a silk purse and out of it palms a pearl of perfect proportion. And their eyes meet and that traveling pearl wholesaler says I'll give everything I've got to have that one. What a moment.

22:17 Now that confuses us because we consider diamonds to be the most valuable stone. They were all but unknown in New Testament times. The pearl was it. Cleopatra had two of them worth $4 million. Julius Caesar gave one of them to Brutus' mother worth $350,000. He might have reconsidered that later on.

22:43 It was the most valuable thing to have. And he found that pearl as a serious seeker. You meet those kinds of persons too on the pages of the New Testament. Anna and Simeon. Those octogenarians waiting around the temple. I don't know if they knew what for, but they knew something was coming. And one day some Galilean peasants brought a baby and Simeon said, this is it. that Ethiopian who'd gone up to the temple even as a Gentile God-fearer he couldn't go any further than the court of the Gentiles so a sign there if you go any further will put you to death plus his physical condition debarred him he was going back disappointed as a seeker when suddenly in a moment of synchronicity Philip finds him jumps in and in a moment he says Here's Lydia. Lydia, traveling businesswoman down by the riverside in Philippi.

23:55 There's an interesting word about Paul's sailing voyage from Troas to Philippi. You could miss it. It's in the original language of the New Testament. He said he sailed a straight course. That meant the wind was directly behind his sail. and what usually took three days tacking across the Aegean, he did in one day so he could get to Neapolis and then to Philippi and down to the river where that Lydia was seeking in a prayer service. Not everybody's a surprise finding.

24:35 In fact, I got a feeling some folks here tonight seeking the best things. And behind every one of them is the Logos Word of God. I remember years ago, Baylor University, that place looked just like this. There was a religious emphasis week. There was a sign in the Miller Chapel, and it said, Jesus is the answer. The week was over. Some students were carrying it out, and some sneering cynics said, well, if Jesus is the answer, what's the question? and there's a sense in which for people of belief, You name it.

25:20 Problem is, we're like one of those people in O. Henry's stories. O. Henry's about forgotten. At the beginning of the last century, he wrote these surprise package stories for popular magazines. He told a story about pearls. There was a young couple in New York City. They were upwardly socially mobile. It was time for the social season when they had such a thing for people in the social register. And they went to a wealthy matron and asked to borrow a set of beautiful Tiffany pearls.

25:54 She loaned it to them. The night before the first big ball, there was a burglary. The pearls were stolen. They were ruined. What were they going to do? They mortgaged everything they had, had another set made to match the set that was taken, but it cost them their livelihood for years. When the matron was dying, they got guilty, as people do, in the presence of mortality, and they went and told her what had happened. They said, you know those pearls we borrowed from you? They were stolen. The set we gave you back were equally valuable, but they weren't the ones we borrowed. She sat up in bed and shrieked, said, you fools, nobody loans the real thing.

26:42 Those were paste pearls, cosmetic jewelry. That kind of potboiler of a short story has behind it the truth. It is possible to spend our lives paying for paste pearls. let me sit down but let me know there was something that these two different characters had in common a day laborer wanting to get 17 cents and a pearl merchant trading an empire to get one pearl in a moment of divine timing they had to take a risk if you're familiar with the parables of jesus not a single one of them says the kingdom of heaven is like a man sitting in his lazy boy recliner.

27:37 no as Jeremiah said they're parables of crisis a moment of decision sometimes dramatic and sometimes quiet risk now we like to look at risk one of my beloved colleagues at Truett Seminary Dr. Laila Ngan an Asian lady is a rock climber she will wedge her fingers and toes into the cracks and fissures of sheer rock cliffs and for the thrill of it, take up a sport that's taken up by 4,000 people a year. Rock climbing. I'd rather watch it, thank you.

28:19 250,000 people shoot the rapids and the Colorado River every year. They like the thrill of it. There's other kind of things. I've got a friend, nearly 90 years old, very wealthy man. He spends his day watching CNBC with his phone to his ear talking to his broker. He does a thing called covered calls. He puts millions in the market, some days up, some days down, but he does it because he wants the risk.

28:51 We don't often associate Jesus with risk. We're more often to say come wheel or woe, the only status I know is quo. But there he is telling stories like this. he said if you really want to know what I'm about it's like the risk of finding buried treasure covering it up selling your stuff buying the field to have the treasure are like meeting a pearl merchant and trading everything to get just one I think it was Major Ian Thomas, a Keswick speaker years ago,

29:38 told about a continental Indian, a person of India, a little beggar, sitting by the roadside, cursing his karma because he had a few grains of rice in a bowl between him and the inn. and as he was cursing karma, he saw a cloud of dust way down the road. He put his little ear to the ground, and he heard the thunder of a hundred horses' hooves. He knew how to do that, listening. He knew it was the Maharaja. Sure enough, the man stopped in front of him. The grandee got out in his robes. The little beggar held his bowl up. and he was shattered. The Maharaja said, Give me your rice.

30:35 He spit on the ground, cursed his karma, gave him one grain of rice. The grand ruler said, is that all? The little beggar in despair gave him one more and turned away. The man got on his gilded coach, cursing karma. The beggar fingered and he felt something hard. Picked it out. It was a grain of gold. in the exchange there would have been a grain of gold for every grain of rice I know a Lord like that but it's in that moment of risk and exchange that surprise finders and serious seekers come to know what the reign of God is about in his prearranged timing