Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 13:44-52
July 26, 2026
What does God wish from you? Do you ever find yourself asking that? What does God want from you? If you’ve been paying attention these past few weeks, the Lord has provided an answer, hasn’t He? He wishes from you and me that we be His people and He be our one and only God, that we delight in His goodness and relish in His presence. That we go about our days with His name and His goodness on our lips, displayed in how we live our lives, how we prioritize our days, simply because of the fact that He is God and He has given His greatest treasure for us, His only Son.
Yet, what we most often find is that He is not our God and He is not what we delight in; being in His presence is not all that relishing, that we’d much rather be in the presence of just about anything and everyone else rather than in His.
Like Eve, we reach for the wrong fruit. Rather than living and embracing the fruit of the tree of life, we settle for the fruit of the tree of death. This is sin, and this is like a disease that affects every human being from conception to last breath. We know how we should be living and for whom we should be living, but we find ourselves elsewhere, both spiritually and physically, much of our time.
Now, I’ve heard these parables interpreted in a couple different ways, and I myself have interpreted it in a couple different ways. Some have said that the treasure and the pearl are about us finding God, which would make the third parable sort of out of sync. Others have said that the treasure is about God finding us, that we are the treasure and the pearl, and that we are the fish that are preserved, except then we have to deal with Jesus’ words, “The Kingdom of heaven is like…” which seems to refer to the treasure being the kingdom of heaven and the pearl being the kingdom.
Well, to be honest with you, I’ve heard very faithful Lutheran pastors preach these parables both ways. And I think that’s right. Because depending on how you read these first two parables – and we do have to keep the third parable separate because it is very different than the other two – you are going to read it as an either “what you gotta do” or a “what God has done” set of parables, and that’s the whole point. And we will get to the third parable, but let’s stick to the first two.
In Matthew 6:21, Jesus says it. Where your treasure is, there also is your heart. What you put most important in your life; for what you are willing to compromise everything, that is your treasure. Or as Luther puts it, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god.”
And today we have a lot of treasures, don’t we, a lot of idols for which we’re willing to compromise a whole lot to possess. We are, by nature, more willing – even eager at times – to sacrifice the treasure of faith for the treasure of wealth, or for the treasure of popularity, we are willing to forego the treasure of Christ. For the hording of fun, having a good time, turning everything in life into a moment-by-moment pursuit of entertainment, the 24-hour news cycle way of living, we are more than willing to sacrifice the priceless treasure of stable, consistent prayer and worship, to treat the body and blood of our Lord as an occasional meal so that we can daily gorge on the things of the flesh. We make everything about the pursuit of people, places, and events that tantalize the self even if it means we have to sell ourselves to sly serpents to secure it.
In the garden of Eden, it was just a fruit hanging on a tree, like other fruits hanging on other trees. But Eve, deceived by the serpent, turned that fruit into the greatest of treasures, built on a false promise of course, but the greatest of treasures nonetheless. That fruit fulfilled every need and desire of her existence – sustenance, an emotional stir, and the pursuit of knowledge and understanding…all wrapped up in a piece of fruit. And Adam, the man of God who was created to be God’s representative on earth, he just went along with it.
And we laugh and judge Adam and Eve as foolish for so quickly giving up paradise for a bite of a piece of fruit, yet we do the same thing…all the time.
How often are you willing to forego the Lord’s Supper for something in life that cannot give you life? Or how about this…baptism. We will put off baptisms for months until all the family and friends are able to come and take pictures…and yet Holy Baptism is the tree of life in the Garden, the good tree that gives life and salvation and forgiveness of sins and ascribes a new name on us. Why do we so nonchalantly put everything tree the world before the priceless gifts of God?
If we read these two parables with the notion that the kingdom of heaven is the priceless treasure or the valuable pearl that we must pursue, then not one of us is worthy of it because not one of us truly pursues it as we ought. We’ll give something for the field, but we see it as an auction where, if the price is too high, we won’t pay it. So, when it comes to the kingdom of heaven, how much is too much for you? Is having your weekends free to do whatever you want, is that too much to give up for this treasure? Is pursuing sound doctrine and rejecting false doctrine too much? Is it the endless pull and demands you place on yourself, the allowing of yourself to become too busy and distracted by the things of the world that you will give no time to the kingdom treasure, no space in your life for the great gift of God?
If these parables are about us pursuing the treasure, then we have failed miserably and we are in the same situation as Adam and Eve, our first parents. And then if we take the next deadly step and we turn the gifts of the Kingdom such as baptism or the Lord’s Supper or worship into some legal thing that we HAVE to do – FAIL, because a priceless treasure you stumble across in a field is not something you HAVE to pursue even though you don’t want to; such a treasure is something you WANT to pursue and are eager to sell everything to possess, even though you really don’t have to.
Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is, and let’s be honest, our hearts are not always with or in pursuit of the right treasure, the only treasure that matters or has value – the kingdom of heaven.
But if we’ve learned anything about our Lord, then we know that not only is Jesus the roadmap, but He is the road. Not only is Jesus the good advice, but He is the saving truth. Not only is Jesus the good example of what it is to live, but He is the life.
While we’re on this earth piffling away in the dirt of our sins trying to find some flake of copper or silver or gold; while we’re trying to find value in our lives through the pursuit of things that only bring death, Jesus is pursuing us. For in the Lord’s heart, we are the great treasure in the field; I don’t know why. To Him, we are the costly pearl and it makes no sense how the God of all creation could look at us poor, miserable, sinful people and find anything of value, and yet He was willing to even send His own Son to die for us, and not just for us, but for all humanity.
And then this third parable, the fish and the net, what is it all about?
The fisherman sees the value of the fish, that’s what it’s all about. It’s not about the fish trying to sell themselves to the fisherman or prove their value, but about the fisherman, selecting from all those fish caught in the dragnet, what He deems valuable and what is a treasure to Him.
See, you have priceless value, not because of who you are, not because of something you did or something you said or some commitment you made. You have priceless value because the Lord says you do. It’s mind-boggling, I know, but it’s true, nonetheless.
In your baptism, the value of Christ Jesus, God’s only Son, was ascribed to you. His eternal, heavenly value and worth became yours and as complexing a thing it is to say it and think it, your valueless, sinful, broken, rotten to the core life became His.
You see? That’s how much God treasures you. He treasures you so much that He’s willing to bury Himself in a tomb and die a sinner’s death to have you. He planted the Tree of Life in the Garden and we said, “blah, don’t want that, boring, I want something that stirs my soul and fills my stomach and gives me wisdom,”…and yet in His endless pursuit of His priceless treasure, He subjects the Tree of Life to the cross where He dies, only to bring the Tree of Life back to life on the 3rd Day so that life reigns for all. Of course I’m referring to Jesus who is our Tree of Life.
How can you respond to this with anything but thankfulness and praise? And how can you see that the food of life is right here, freely given – not a penny is charged for it – and yet still pursue your treasure elsewhere?
See, God IS for you because He gave His own Son for you. What is He NOT going to give you?? The devil can’t condemn you; the world can’t condemn you; death no longer reins over you, because in Christ you are a conqueror of these things, and even more than that.
But we must continue to remind ourselves and one another that our value is not in the flesh; that if we go back to living by the flesh and doing what the fleshy, worldly world does, we will die with this world. We were not set free just to become slaves again to the flesh and to the world. Our lives, how we live our lives, the choices we make, even the people we befriend and confide in, these things must be shaped by our faith, and only by the help of the Holy Spirit we’ve received by God’s promise.
This is why the call to repentance never ends. Dear children of the kingdom, beloved by God, treasures of priceless worth, repent of your pursuits of worthless treasure in the world and instead hold fast to He who never lets go of you. Embrace His gifts of Word and Sacrament, feel the cool and refreshing waters of your baptism wash away your sins, and drink fully of the blood of Christ which flows like an endless stream from this altar. For in and because of these things you are of priceless worth and eternal life is yours. Amen.
