July 26, 2026 Pent. 9. 1 Kings 3:5-12, Psalm 119:129-136, Romans 8:26-39, Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52. “If you only like the new, or the old, you’re missing out!”
This week’s gospel continues Jesus’ parable stories. He’s trying to clue us in, to what God does in the world. The ways God show up in visible & invisible ways. The scripture calls it REVELATION. God revealing himself. & God does so in ordinary & surprising ways! God shows up often in unexpected people & places!
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man discovered it, he hid it, & because of his joy he went & sold everything had & bought that field.”
That’s how Jesus opens his storytelling: God is like, or the KOG is like “A treasure hidden in a field.” It’s so valuable you would sell everything you had to get !it -its worth that much, & more! (think Shawshank Redemption) extravagant.”
But if you don’t much like treasure hidden in a field, there’s more. Jesus doesn’t only stick with one image. “Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for good pearls, & when he found one very precious pearl, he went & sold everything he had & bought it.”
God’s kingdom, God’s ways, God’s truth, are so important, so valuable, so worth it, you’d get rid of everything else to belong to it, to get in on it! Like one of my favorite stories, “the diamond.” Goes like this. . . The master had reached the outskirts of a village & decided to lie down under a tree for the night.
Just as he settled in, a villager came running up to him, saying, “the stone, the stone, give me the precious stone!” What stone, asked the master. “Last night, an angel appeared to me in a dream, & told me, if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk, I would find a wise master, who would give me a precious stone, that would make me rich forever.”
The master rummaged in his bag , & pulled out a stone. “He probably meant this one,” he said as he handed the stone over to the villager.
“I found it on a forest path some days ago, you can certainly have it.” “The man gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a very large diamond, as large as a person’s head.
He took the diamond & walked away. But all night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep. Next day at the break of dawn, he returned to the master under the tree, woke him up & said: “Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily.”
Finding the kingdom of God, is much better, Jesus says, than finding a treasure hidden in a field, or a very large pearl. When the kingdom really comes, writes Frederick Buechner, “its as if the thing you lost & thought you’d never find again is YOU!”
God is all about finding the lost, finding people, finding us! “I came to seek out & to save the lost.” Jesus says several times. Priorities! “But many who are first will be last, & the last will be first.”
Writer Kent Nerburn, worked with the Lakota people over many years, & helped them tell their stories to the white world. He tells how, on one reservation visit, he met an elder in a run- down café & felt drawn to him. He was curious about the boarding schools, where native people were taken away from their parents, had their hair cut off, & were cut off also from their native language, their history, & culture, so they would be forced to assimilate into white culture, all in order to “kill the Indian, & save the man.” At least that was the idea.
Kent Nerburn met an elder in this café, & they began talking. “Oh yeah,” said the elderly man, matter of factly. “I went there, to the boarding school at fort Totten, ND. I learned good English. I learned to be a good Christian. But I am no longer myself. I am somebody else.”
Jesus came bringing the Kingdom of God, through the Holy Spirit, in order to make us into ourselves. The selves, the human beings God meant us to be! Not to Christianize the world — but to make us human! More human than maybe we ever thought we could be!
Theologian Tom Wright puts it this way: “In the future when people are finally raised from the dead, this is always so that they can be genuine human beings in a fuller sense than they otherwise would have been.
And genuine human beings, are given the mandate of looking after creation, bringing order to God’s world, of establishing & maintaining communities.” Wright goes on: “to suppose we are saved for our own private benefit, is like a boy being given a baseball bat as a gift & insisting that he only plays with it all by himself! We are saved as wholes, not just souls!”
Saved for something beyond ourselves, for God’s kingdom project! We will be working for God’s kingdom, God’s way, even after this life.
Then the last thing Jesus says in his parables today, is about the value of the old & the new. “For this reason, every scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house, who brings out of his treasures new things as well as old.”
In this case, the old is the faith of Israel, & the tradition of the church. What is new is the coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus. What is new is where God’s Spirit leads, beyond the settled tradition we know!
Jesus told the religious opposition of his time, the Pharisees & Sadducees, that while they respected Israelite tradition, they did not believe God’s Spirit was doing anything new in Jesus. He told them, even if you don’t believe me, believe what I’m doing. See for yourself, don’t my actions come from God?
Then when John the Baptist asked him if he were the Messiah, the chosen one, or not, Jesus told John, look around at what I’m doing: “The lame walk, the blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, poor people hear good news, & blessed is the one who is not offended at me.”
Jesus came to remind us of the good things of tradition, love for God with everything you have, & love for neighbor, respect & hospitality for strangers. Respect for law. And Jesus also taught that God is doing new things in himself, through the Holy Spirit, & through people who follow his way! Jesus showed the way of forgiving love, healing people & the world. Treating all people, with dignity since they are human beings like us! It’s not only one or the other – but BOTH!
The prophet Isaiah said, even before Jesus, “God is doing a new thing, can you not see it?” So if we only like what is new, or only the tradition of what is old, we’re missing out! For God is involved in both; present in what is new, and what is old! In Revelation we learn, “God is making all things new” not all new things! And as we grow older, that’s good news for sure! Amen!