Chapter
14
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Parable of the Hidden Treasure
"The kingdom of heaven is like a
treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he
goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. " (Matthew 13:44)
The word parable
means "laid beside." So the kingdom of God is known by laying it
beside certain symbols or signs. Unlike a simile, the parable actually contains
the truth revealed by the comparison. Hence the parables are not just
comparisons or something like something else. The kingdom is really is
the way that Jesus presents it.
Here the kingdom of
God is presented as a treasure. That in itself is not unusual. In the book of
Wisdom, wisdom is looked upon as a treasure that has to be sought. But what is
unusual--and problematic--is what happens in this parable once the treasure is
found.
The man in this
brief tale was probably a day laborer. In those days, people did not always have
a bank handy. Because of the vicissitudes of the times, they sometimes hid their
treasures in a field, hoping to return later in a period of peace to dig them
up. Thus it was not unusual for a day laborer working in somebody else's field
to come upon a buried treasure. This man hid the treasure again, and then went
off and bought the field. The hearers are left with the problem of evaluating
the morality of his conduct. If he owned the field, there would be no sense in
hiding the treasure. If he had a just claim to the treasure, why would he hide
it again? There is clearly an element of scandal in his behavior.
How can the kingdom
of God be compared to a treasure that gives rise to such improper conduct? In
rabbinical law, if it was not clear who owned the treasure, the owner of the
field was presumed to own it. Evidently this man hid it because he was trying to
conceal it from its rightful owner.
In the more
elaborate version of this parable in the Gospel of Thomas, after the man buried
the treasure, he becomes a money lender. So we may think, "Finding a buried
treasure for this man must be like winning the state lottery today."
Although the lottery is not a buried treasure and one never really expects to
win, somebody, in fact, always wins. In any case, this parable is about a
similar situation. The treasure is there before the man finds it. This is an
important aspect of the kingdom of God. It is in the world and available through
the preaching of the gospel. Thus we might find it without intending to--by
accident, so to speak.
This man had no test
of his virtue but simply found this treasure. His capacity to make good use of
his find was thus based on a shaky moral foundation. God has taken a similar
risk with each of us. The Father has made the treasure of grace available though
the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ, but we do not know how to use it. In
fact, we are not even remotely prepared for the responsibilities that this
treasure involves. Hence we may use the treasure improperly, or the treasure
itself may become a scandal for us.
The man in the
parable, in his joy, went and sold all he had and bought the field. Once it is
safely concealed in the field, he cannot dig it up again without people
wondering how he got it. Though he has the treasure, he is more impoverished
than before, because he has now sold all his other possessions. He winds up with
an enormous treasure that he cannot do anything with.
The parable alerts
us to the fact that the kingdom, although it is given us as sheer gift, is not
given to us just for our personal benefit. To share this gift with others is an
essential part of receiving it. Not doing so will engage us in some form of
scandal, especially if we try to use it only for ourselves.
Since the kingdom
comes to us as a great treasure without our having earned it, we do not value it
in the same way that we would if we had been forced to seek it. The scandal,
then, is that God freely gives us such an abundance of grace that we do not
place enough value on it and fail to grasp our responsibilities to make use of
it for the community. The treasure, when not used for others, becomes a source
of scandal for us. If we use it for purely selfish motives, all the ways in
which the false self manifests itself in worldly ways under a religious or
spiritual disguise are examples of how the kingdom can become a scandal for us.
This parable is a
counterpoint to the parable of the workmen in the vineyard. We saw there that
the kingdom comes as sheer gift. We do not earn it, but receive it. This parable
reminds us that once we have received the kingdom, we must assume the
responsibility to share it with others. From this perspective, the parable is
similar to the parable of the talents, in which one of those to whom the
householder entrusted his money hid it in the ground instead of taking the risk
of putting it out at interest. He was condemned as a worthless servant.
Notice the subtlety
of this teaching. This God of ours, like the father of the prodigal son, is
always taking us back no matter what we do. God's largesse is boundless. But
that very goodness involves a risk. The risk is that we treat the divine mercy
as cheap grace, because we have done nothing to seek it or earn it.
In the mythologies
of the various world cultures, the hero is always put to a test before he gets
the treasure, the beautiful girl, the Holy Grail, or whatever the reward of the
heavy trial. The hero has to slay the dragon to get into the cave or wherever
the treasure is sequestered. All of those myths suggest that we do not access
the greatest treasures of life without seeking for them ardently and passing
through enormous tests. Having been through the appropriate test, we can then
handle the treasure.
In Christianity the
risk is that the treasure of eternal life is given without our seeking it. It is
already there. The kingdom is among us and within us. It is a treasure that
involves our participation in the divine life, to which no other conceivable
good can compare. And for all practical purposes, most people are not
interested. Thus if one receives it at the eleventh hour without having borne
the heat of the day, the gift may not be adequately valued. Or if it is highly
valued, we may make use of it in worldly ways for personal gain, whether for
material profit, as in the case of the man in Thomas's Gospel, or simply by
burying it so that no one else can get it.
Finding a treasure
exempts us from everyday life. That is why this man experiences such joy, the
joy of coming upon a great treasure without having to look for it and without
having to work for it. Everyday life for most people requires earning a living.
The treasure dispenses us from that. In the parables, the miracle is always
muted and usually involves only moderate success after a string of failures. In
the parable of the man who sowed seed, we hear about three dismal failures
before the seed finally begins to take root and grow. But the final success of
the seed consists in an ordinary harvest, not the superabundant and grandiose
harvest that would go with the popular idea of the kingdom of God as triumphant.
The gospel reminds
us that what takes us out of everyday life is hazardous. The grandiose appeals
to our worldly programs for happiness. But the kingdom is not there. It is not
in the lottery, even if we win. People love miracles and the extraordinary. The
real response to this treasure is to discover the God of everyday, the God of
the ordinary, the God who manifests the kingdom in the unclean and what may seem
in our judgment to be scandalous.
When the spiritual
journey becomes an inner treasure, we want to give more time to prayer, silence
and solitude. We do not want to be disturbed by the cares of the world. There is
nothing wrong with this desire in due proportion, but to try to maintain our own
peace of mind for selfish reasons, such as avoiding the problems of others, is
to fail to understand the chief responsibility of the kingdom.
The parable of the
hidden treasure reminds us of what can happen if we treat the free gift of the
kingdom as something that dispenses us from the duties of ordinary daily life
and the labor of finding God's kingdom in it. In sharing the treasure of the
kingdom, one increases one's grasp of it. The kingdom dissolves the monumental
illusion that God is somehow absent from our lives or from our prayer. Faith
penetrates the psychological experience of prayer and the ups and downs of
everyday life, and keeps us directed toward God in the midst of all that
happens. This is to respond to the treasure freely given. If we make some
mistakes, we are not to let that bother us, not even if we make a fiasco of our
whole life. God is not interested in vindicating rights, but in persuading us to
be merciful to each other. The Father, whom Jesus reveals, loves us without any
conditions and without ever getting tired of receiving us back when we fail.
More information can be obtained by reading the book The Kingdom of God is Like .
. .by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered in our Book
Store.
