Of Hiddenness
Today's Parables and the story of Jesus’ thwarted ministry are all about hiddenness.
- Parable 1 is all about the treasure which lies dormant and hidden in a field until the prospector finds it. Apparently by accident. The treasure is so fantastic that he hides it again, sells everything, absolutely everything, and buys the field. To everyone else, apart from the man, the treasure is hidden. No one else sees it or has any knowledge of it.
- Parable 2 is the Pearl merchant. Here we have someone just going about their daily business when all of a sudden he finds an absolute stonker of a pearl. He also sells everything in order to obtain this one solitary pearl. But for the first part of this little story it also is hidden from him. He hasn’t seen it until the right time.
Then we skip down to the part where Jesus is not honoured in his hometown.
And there is even more hiddenness going on here. In fact, there are lashings of concealment. The locals see the humanity bit, the familiar bit, the Jesus they knew from days of yore.
“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us?
They are amazed at his wisdom but can’t work out how the familiar home lad got to be so clever. It just doesn’t make sense.
He began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed.
“Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?”
Where then did this man get all these things?”
How does the apprentice carpenter get to be so enlightened and powerful?
The memories and familiarity of the Jesus lad mask the divine son of God. And this is a tragedy. For they miss out on their life being changed in marvellous and beautiful ways.
And just as the lucky prospector and pearl merchant had their lives changed because they saw what was right before them, so the parishioners at Jesus’ home synagogue fail to see past the mask of the familiar and continue in their same old way.
I think that it wasn’t because Jesus was incapable of miracles, He just knew it would be ineffective, as their unbelief would not change and it would not make a difference in their lives.
The familiar not only masks what is right before them but also stomps all over their full potential as followers of the Master and also the joy with which he longs to fill their lives.
So it is, that the familiar, the humdrum, the boring, the tedious and the everyday camouflage and cloak the divine. It is in and through the menial and the monotonous that God reveals himself.
And it works this way in the consecrated bread and wine that we received week in, week out in this church building. And it certainly works in every encounter that we are privileged to enjoy throughout the week. We might think that we are just having another conversation with old so and so who can be a bit of a whinge-bag and we know exactly what they’re going to say because we have known them for umpteen years and we know their siblings and we knew their parents and… sound familiar?
But we are challenged to see beyond the veneer of the familiar. To unleash the potential joys and delights, the life-changing things that might happen to us if we saw the precious pearl the treasure right before us.
This would open up all sorts of life-changing possibilities?!
And it's not just in our physical, people encounters. Letters and emails also have the potential to change us. A phone call can be infinitely precious. A muttered prayer can alter us irreversibly without us even realising it.
The Master accomplished many great miracles in his little ministry here on earth. Part of it I am sure is that he let others know out loud and unashamedly, just how marvellous they are, how spectacular they are. How infinitely precious they are in the sight of God.
What would happen if we also did the same thing?
A true story to finish with.
We’re quietly robing for an ordination service, so there are lots of priestly people about. In bounded one fine fellow, happy and joyous. He smirks, looks around the room and without any hesitation or any planning says for everyone to hear
“Gosh, these are some of the loveliest faces I know”
It changed my life. I can still see his face and I can still hear him saying it.
He saw the treasure. He knew all about the precious pearl. It was right before him and he let everyone know about it.
And sometimes I think, if he could see it and he could speak it… what stops me?
And what would happen if, at the end of this homily, I did not finish with
“In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit Amen.”
What might happen if I just simply looked around at you all and said
“These are some of the loveliest faces I know.”