“Looking for and Recognizing Treasure”

(Some source material shared today is with modifications from dialogues of clergy & worship leaders in community on the net…special thanks to Joinhands.com & this Midrash community)

It’s the season for weddings. Actually, weddings make for a good place to consider faith and to explore your understanding of the presence of God.

One of the questions that folks consider who share in the pre-marital counselling sessions I participate in, asks the couple if they ‘have (#163) discussed and agree on ways to make their religious differences an enriching factor in their married life?’ 

We don’t often enough think of “difference” as a place to enrich…Too often “difference” is a place to polarize and to draw lines of separation. 

Consider, for a minute the story of Jacob. He was a sneaky kind of guy…the stories about him in the scriptures speak of his cunning and trickery.  In this particular story we glimpse how a trick was played on him by his uncle Laban. Unfortunately, in this drama of trick playing, it is really the daughters of Laban, Leah and Rachael that are the pawns in the drama. All of the dealing and mis-dealing happens around them. 

The different ideas held by Jacob and Laban served mostly to polarize. 

If you have ever wondered about the origins of the notion of giving away a bride to a groom as heard in some religious ceremonies (mostly on television) you needn’t look any further than the cultural norm assumed in this story. 

Of course there continues to be many cultures where woman are used as chattel for deal making or breaking. 

Today’s story is written with such cultural norms as the background. 

We know what the story says and we know a bit about the culture that makes such a story possible…but what does it mean? 

Does it mean that God thinks that playing tricks with people’s lives is a good thing? 

Does it mean that woman should be property to be traded and exchanged as any father or potential husband might wish? For some, the rationale is right there in scripture as a testimony to such thinking! 

Actually, the story ‘here’ is really just so much background…when we use such stories as examples for behaviour we do God a disservice, and, I believe we do ourselves a disservice by negating the potential that lies within us. 

When we act on our stuff, when we admit our feelings, our differences our passions and share those with another we create the atmosphere in which enrichment can take place. 

When we refuse to show the kind of vulnerability that can allow diversity to blossom into enrichment we are slaves to a kind of monotony a kind of stagnation that says, in essence, “The way I am is the way I will always be!” 

That is not living from a place of abundance…it is not the kind of gift that Jesus offers us…it is only the kind of stagnation that resolves to say “no construction zone here.”///

You have probably seen those maternity t-shirts that have an arrow pointing to the baby area…the ones that pronounce “under construction.”  I believe that God’s will for us is to have the kind of spirit that is willing to make that pronouncement whether we are male or female, pregnant or not, young or old… we are all under construction! 

The moment we stop being under construction we can not be living abundantly. We may be living with a memory of a time of abundant spiritual living but not actively living abundantly. 

So if there is a note in the reading from Genesis that is positive for me this morning it is that in the economy of God, gift often comes with surprise even if it doesn’t come easily. 

I don’t think for a moment that Jacob said, “great Uncle Laban, the last 7 years have just flown by and so shall the next 7 and what a wonderful family I will have with Rachel as I wait for Leah.”  

No, I think things would have got pretty heated. ////

But there is “gift in the surprise” and so it was for Jacob…how it was for Rachel or Leah might be something altogether different … but remember the culture from which the story is told is only a male culture and lessons were intended for the men.///

Fast forward a thousand years to the reading from the gospel. Treasure if the gospel is telling us anything, comes in a lot of different places. 

The nature of a parable is to make you think you know where it’s going and then it does a twist and goes someplace else. That’s a tricky kind of thing to catch your attention and cause you to look beyond what is most obvious.  

So with the yeast you’re not just looking at bread rising, you’re looking at how, in the kingdom of God, the unexpected happens and things are transformed.  

As I said, I think some of that was going on with Jacob too. ///

In the treasure hidden in the field there’s sneakiness about it. He’s working there, finds this treasure and reburies it, goes to the farmer and offers to buy the field, they make a bargain, and then he digs up the treasure. The farmer probably feels like he’s been taken. 

Well that part we don’t know.  

The point here is the great desire of the man to obtain the treasure, to get the kingdom.  

But somehow, from way back, Jacob the trickster was also tricked and was also blessed. Somehow God goes for that stuff in the stories we share from our ancient texts. Like when we say “yes” to that call to ministry, marriage, or having children…If we had known what was coming, we might not have gone for it. Yet we are also blessed by these things. 

Well Jacob was blinded by Rachel. But later in the story, if the ultimate goal of these unions was to produce sons, Leah surely was a better partner than Rachel.

Even though Jacob might have felt cheated with Leah, he and Leah and “the maids” provided ten of the twelve children for the tribes of Israel. This was a silk purse that was made out of what he thought was a sow’s ear.  

Look for the unexpected!///

When I met Jane I didn’t know that our friendship would blossom into a treasure that I would cherish for the past 20 years. Was it a surprise? Yes! But like the parable and ‘the Genesis story’ I’m still speaking about the treasure that we can find outside ourselves by being vulnerable and sharing our difference. 

I wouldn’t want to leave any discussion about finding treasure, however, without considering something else. 

I wonder about the treasure that is within all of us, & why so often we don't realise it's there - or are discouraged from looking for it.  From early childhood, it feels like we are encouraged to journey to other people's agendas - we are told 'you can't sing', 'you can't draw', etc.  And thus grow up to be not ourselves, but projections so often of what others or societal pressures think we should be.  

It is God’s gift that our personal treasure hunt may include a journey back to find the treasure that lies within! I believe it is part of being under construction. 

We are all so amazing, gifted & packed with possibility - filled with untapped potential.  I wonder if the hidden kingdom is partly about that which taps into & brings out those gifts which we ourselves don't recognise.///

A man who lived in Minsk had a strange but quite vivid dream. If he would go to Pinsk, he would find a treasure of wealth beyond his wildest imaginings.  The dream was so very vivid, so absolutely real, that the man did not hesitate; the next day he quit his job, shuttered up his home, and with his life savings headed to Pinsk.            

For three years he lived there, searching everywhere for the treasure, living in the worst hovel and eating only potato soup to stretch his money as far as it would go.  He dug up fields. He scoured back streets. He dragged nets along the bottom of ponds. Day and night for three long years he searched, pausing only to eat when he felt himself becoming faint and to sleep only when he was utterly fatigued.  

The dream continued to move him. Each night he fell asleep thinking that perhaps he would dream of the exact location of the money, but that did not happen. Nevertheless, the initial dream had been so very real that even when he was utterly fatigued it sustained him powerfully.            

After three years, however, his money was totally gone. Moving out of the small and dirty room he had inhabited for three years, he spent one more day searching, under a bridge to which he had felt strongly drawn.    

But, there was no treasure there, either.  And at last he lay down beneath the bridge to sleep.            

It was as he slept beneath the bridge that very night that he dreamed another dream, as vivid and real as the first: the treasure was not in Pinsk but back home in Minsk—under the floorboards of the house he had lived in there.          

When morning light came, without hesitation, he rose and began the journey back to Minsk, where upon arriving, he tore up the floorboards of his house and found the treasure, exactly as he had dreamed it.            

The next day he met an old friend and shared with him the story of his dream, his treasure hunt, and the outcome.            

“So,” the friend said when he had finished the story, “the treasure was in Minsk all along!”           

“Yes,” the man said. “It was in Minsk all along. But the knowledge of it was in Pinsk.”///

Sometimes we need to wrestle with the differences within ourselves, the differences in our relationships before we can experience the treasure that God has given us as gift to experience all along. 

We are all so amazing, gifted by God & packed with possibility—filled with untapped potential. Again, I wonder if the hidden kingdom is partly about that which taps into & brings out those gifts which we ourselves don't recognize in ourselves or in others? Amen.