17th Sunday Year A - Homily 5 - 2023

Homily 5 - 2023

The more I have reflected on each of today’s brief parables, the more they have set me thinking.

In the light of the first one, I have been asking myself if there is something about God’s Kingdom that has me enthusiastically smiling to myself, so much so that it has led me to view my life differently and even to radically readjust my former priorities. What do I really agree with in the teaching and life of Jesus? What is it about that I might call “the Jesus project” that really makes profound sense to me?

I don’t know if you ever ask yourself questions like this? And, if you have, how you answer them. Perhaps today’s short parables might set you thinking once more, asking yourself if there is something perhaps that you are missing out on.

I don’t know if our world has changed all that much recently, but I have been struck by the general mood of discontent that seems so prevalent. There seems to be so much mutual hostility, criticism, even personal depression — wars and persecutions, on the one hand, increasing mental illness; and all sorts of “aggro” apparently expressing itself on social media.

Against a background like this, I hear with a new clarity the consistently repeated call of Jesus deliberately to discover the wonderful simple human dignity of ourselves, and equally of everyone else. I hear his invitation to us all to see and to treat each other as brothers and sisters. Of course, such appreciation will never simply just happen. It calls for radical and continuing conversion, and flourishes with mutual encouragement and support.

Would it not be wonderful if everyone would just change! Indeed, it would be. But everyone else does not need to change. It is enough for me to start to become like the person in today’s first parable, who discovered the secret that released the freedom to let go of the former familiarities, “went away happy”, and found the price of change to be more than “well worth it”.

In the story as Jesus told it, the lucky person’s motivation was sheer pragmatism. Is sheer pragmatism enough to motivate and sustain life-style change? Perhaps so. Or perhaps it could be called simple common sense.

The second parable may throw further light on the challenge. There, the merchant’s purchase of the “pearl of great value” could have been downright pragmatism. He may simply have recognised it as an opportunity to sell the pearl again later for an even greater price. Or perhaps the point of the parable was that the sheer beauty of the pearl was such that the sense of continuing wonder and appreciation that it generated was more than worth the expense.

This helps me to draw the conclusion that any practical appreciation of the “Jesus project” [and of the Kingdom of heaven in general] is stimulated enormously by discovering and developing a genuine relationship with and personal friendship and love for Jesus. That is the crucial difference between the practically useful “treasure hidden in a field” and the aesthetically up-lifting and spiritually sustaining “pearl of great price”.

Personally, my sense is that the undoubtedly discouraging effect of the present secular culture is so powerful that without such a personal friendship with Jesus and love for him people simply lose trust in him, or never really get round to developing much trust in the first place. Sadly, we are beginning to see the effects already.

True love and friendship do not just happen. They need to to be worked on.

The experience is wonderfully stimulating and worth all the effort it entails.