“The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (Mt 13:44-46).
One of St. Augustine’s favorite images for Christ is that of Christus mercator, “Christ the merchant.” The saint used this motif in more ways than one, but usually the idea was that Christ performed the one transaction that benefited us all when he traded in his divinity for our humanity (don’t ask if that passes muster with the Council of Chalcedon). One can see the appeal of the metaphor in a culture where Christianity spread along trade routes in and outside the Mediterranean, often in strange and illogical ways. Remember that monks were already roaming around Ireland before Augustine put pen to paper (quill to parchment?). Christianity was at first a religion of trade routes and port towns, and oftentimes the good news arrived on the lips of merchants like the latest commercial craze, especially in a place like Hippo, a Mediterranean port of no small consequence.
If you’re a preacher—Augustine used that image of Christus mercator in his sermons—it makes sense to employ images familiar to your audience to get across more complicated or nuanced ideas, through analogies, parables or convenient metaphors. Jesus used this tactic, too, which is why today’s Gospel features two economic analogies: the kingdom of heaven as buried treasure and the kingdom of heaven as the pearl of great price.
Jesus isn’t advocating monetary policy here, nor is he recommending household management tools. He’s asking us to imagine the greatest thing that could happen to them.
Not everyone is comfortable with money-friendly Jesus, or even using the language of commerce to talk about salvation, even those of us who pray every day that we be forgiven our debts as we forgive those who owe them to us (nothing about trespassing in that prayer, friend). But Jesus was comfortable using the desire for wealth as a way to communicate the value of the heavenly kingdom. The first analogy can be awkward if read in the context of a missionary culture, because the one who discovers hidden treasure hides it again until he can buy the field in which it was found. What about not hiding our lamp under a bushel? Similarly, the pearl-monger doesn’t find a pearl among dreck, but finds one “of great price” among other pearls. Is the kingdom of heaven just one among many? What about that first commandment?
But Jesus isn’t advocating monetary policy here, nor is he recommending household management tools. He’s asking his followers to imagine the greatest thing that could happen to them. You spend all day plowing a field owned by someone else? If so, buried treasure is one hell of a find. You spend your mornings shucking oysters by the boatload? That first nacreous glimmer of the pearl of great price would certainly brighten up a smelly and boring existence. And note what the discoverers do in both cases—they immediately decide to sell everything to make the desired objects their own.
How much greater than that—than unearned wealth or unmerited success or an end to drudgery—is the kingdom of heaven? That seems to me to be what Jesus is saying: Not telling us what the kingdom of heaven is like, but showing us just a few of the amazing discoveries that pale in comparison to one’s first glimpse of what God has planned for us.
