Word to the Wise
Sunday, July 27, 2008 - Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52 or 44-46]Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong......
In Shakespeare's play, King Richard III, in the midst of a battle when all is crashing down about him, Richard III cries out, "A horse! A horse, my kingdom for a horse!" His kingdom had been acquired through cruelty and connivance and he was reduced to pleading only for a horse to run away! Jesus offers a "kingdom" that requires that we exercise the kind of wisdom or "understanding heart" to recognize what is truly of value. The treasure in the field and the pearl of great price require the sacrifice of everything else! This is not the choice of giving up a kingdom so that we can run away from bad choices, but seeing something so precious that everything else seems less in comparison. Neither is it a gamble. There is no question about the treasure or the pearl! What is important is the ability to recognize the treasure or pearl for what it is when we find it. Solomon's prayer in response to God's offer is not for a long life or riches, but for an "understanding heart" so that he can wisely judge the people whom God has given him. God gladly gives that gift. (The fact that later on Solomon squandered the gift is beside the point!) What Solomon received and what Jesus offers us is a set of values by which we are able to recognize treasures and pearls (and good fish in the dragnet). To receive the gift, however, we have to be willing to let go of whatever will keep us from accepting it. Ambition, greed, consumer items, substances - even some of the "good things of life" - can dull our senses and give rise to a complacency or spiritual mediocrity. If it seems that such things as the treasure or the pearl are rare things that only come to an elite group, we are mistaken. We simply have to accept the gift of wisdom which makes the choice of giving all for the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price much easier than it would otherwise seem to us. We don't have to be a King to receive the gift. We just need to be a wise householder! AMEN