Pentecost X, Proper 12, Year A

1 Kings, 3:5-12
Romans, 8:26-34
Matthew, 13:31-33,44-49a

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Finding God is like stumbling upon hidden treasure in a field. The man in today's parable rejoices over his discovery, and he responds by selling everything he has so that he may buy the field and possess the treasure. His ethics, that is knowingly buying a parcel for a fraction of its real value, may remind us of an oil or mining corporation, but our Lord is not a moralist. His parables and teachings should not be distilled to mere morality tales. Our Lord's point is that drastic, risky action, selling everything - that is, a unqualified, unrestrained, positive response to the discovery is necessary. The pearl of great price has the same pattern. A merchant finds an especially precious and valuable pearl, and in his joy he sold all that he had to possess this great pearl. In both parables, there is a surprising discovery that brings joy, and this joy leads to drastic, risky, sacrificial, action so the joy might be full.

Joy is good, and we should seek it. The Church often neglects the value of joy, but it is the authentic experience of belonging to God, of believing in God, of possessing God. Having faith necessarily means having joy, otherwise faith is not Christian faith. Joy is one of the gifts we receive by being part of the Church, and is fundamental to being a Christian. The Greek word for joy is chara; joy, chara, comes from God through grace, charis. The gift of God's grace is charisma. We respond to God's gifts to us by giving thanks, eucharistia. Eucharist means 'giving thanks.' We give thanks to God for his gifts to us, and one of his gifts is joy. In common usage, 'joy' refers to good feelings, pleasure, delight, happy emotion; and its opposite is pain and sorrow. For the Church, however, joy means more than pleasure and nice feelings. We have joy from God no matter what our feelings, no matter what our circumstances. We are joyful even in pain and sorrow. Sure, when things are going well, joy expresses itself in good cheer and exultation and healing. But when there is sorrow and suffering, a Christian still has joy. In adversity, joy expresses itself in self-giving, in courage, in perseverance. ⁽¹⁾ If we lack joy in our lives, that does not mean we are in pain. If we lack joy, it means we are unhealthy. When we are in pain, we know we are in pain, but when we lack joy we often do not know we lack it, just like we can be unhealthy and not know that we are unhealthy. Joy is about health, sanity, well-being.

Everyone wants joy. "All human beings necessarily desire and seek what [S. Thomas Aquinas] calls beatitudo," or beatitude, well-being, joy. ⁽²⁾ Or as G. K. Chesterton put it, "all human beings, without any exception whatever, were specially made, were shaped and pointed like shining arrows, for the end of hitting the mark of Beatitude." ⁽³⁾ This is good and healthy because God made human beings to share his joy, his happiness, his Beatitude. The problem is where we look for Beatitude. Some seek riches, some pleasure, some knowledge, some power, some accomplishment. All of these things are sought because the person seeking them believes it will give him joy or satisfaction. S. Thomas taught that what makes a man happy, what gives him joy and beatitudo, is possession of God. This is what we were made for, and this is what we really want. Since all human beings want to be happy, all human beings have an innate desire for God, but again the problem is that we substitute other things for God. Christians make this mistake as much as non-Christians do. When we substitute other things for God, we make ourselves unhappy. Our lives have less joy.

While joy is a gift from God, we have to act to receive it. God does not impose it upon us. We have to cooperate with him to have it. God gave us Jesus, but it required a human being, Our Lady, to cooperate with him and to make the gift possible. If we want to be happy, it requires an act of will from us. Now there are real organic and chemical reasons why some people are unhappy, but we can not deny our own responsibility. "We have been given a world crammed with a million means to beatitude." ⁽⁴⁾ Yet, I am hardly convinced that we lived in a joyful society.

When alarmed pietists say the world is reverting to paganism, they mean the modern person is enjoying himself too much. When Chesterton says the modern world has reverted to paganism, he means the modern person is, like the pagan, no longer able to enjoy anything. "The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else." ⁽⁵⁾

Chesterton is on to something. Many people really are not able to enjoy anything because they are too worried about enjoying themselves. The treasure in the field is hidden, we Christians know where to look. If we want to find joy, we will not find it in ourselves. When we feel down, when we are depressed, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to do something for someone else, to make a special effort to do acts of kindness for other people. Only in giving ourselves will we receive God and his joy. George Bernard Shaw is hardly someone who can be relied upon for promoting the Christian faith, but if you twist some of his sayings a bit, he has something to say. Shaw said, "The true joy of life [is] being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one . . . being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances." ⁽⁶⁾ Shaw implies that we can make our own purpose in life, and he is wrong about that. God gives us our purpose. But Shaw is right that if we exist for a mighty purpose then our lives have joy. We become potent and vivacious, instead of being irritated and muttering. We stop complaining and worrying and begin enjoying and rejoicing.

Chesterton thinks that part of our problem is that we feel little wonder about ordinary things. His favourite part of Robinson Crusoe is the list of things saved from the shipwreck. He writes,

Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, . . . and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck. ⁽⁷⁾

Joy, happiness comes from gratitude and wonder, from knowing that everything we have, even ourselves, has been saved from a wreck.

A child may be attracted to a dandelion, but most adults hold them in contempt because we compare them to roses and orchids. So Chesterton says,

It is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all. ⁽⁸⁾

So maybe the most important of the Beatitudes is: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' If we do not think too much of ourselves, we would be more open to the wonder and awe of creation. We would find happiness in other people. We would be grateful for all God has given us. We would know his joy. We would be more likely to find the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price. The Kingdom of Heaven is here and breaking into the world all the time, in every place.

1. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, Adrian Hastings ed., OUP (2000), art. by Daniel Hardy, p. 354.

2. F. C. Copleston, Aquinas, Penguin (1955), pp. 186-87.

3. Quoted by David W. Fagerberg, 'The Essential Chesterton,' First Things, March 2000.

4. Fagerberg.

5. Ibid.

6. Shaw quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, HarperCollins (1997), #7363.

7. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Harold Shaw (1994), p. 65.

8. Chesterton quoted by Fagerberg.