the treasure and the fool–a parable retold

I confessed to my friend Jon last week that the very brief parables of Jesus, about the treasure hid in a field and the pearl of great price, don’t seem to me to make much sense if you try to think about them logically.  I had wrestled with the limitations of parables a couple of years ago, and decided that as metaphors for giving up everything in order to have the Kingdom of God, these extremely brief statements work.  I guess.  It’s just that my mind keeps on asking more hard questions:  Whose treasure was  in the field?  Are there ethical concerns there?  Did the merchant pay fair market value for the pearl?  If he had to give up all he owned in order to purchase it, I picture him standing there with nothing but the pearl, thinking, “Now what?”

It reminded me of the auction scene in Oklahoma!, where the cowboy Curly sells his gun and his horse in order to keep Jud Fry from winning Laurey’s picnic hamper.  At the end of the night, all he has is the hamper…and Laurey.  And that seems to be enough.  As I continued to think about the foolishness of this picture, a new thought began to form in my mind.  I wonder if this is what Jesus intended all along.  Here’s my parable remix:

Shlomo the merchant walked quickly through the marketplace.  His rapid pace and his impressive bearing both hurried lesser folks out of his way. But he could always hear the whispers in his wake, as if the breeze he created with his robes stirred up the old rumors every time.

Such a prosperous man, nu?  Well he may appear that way…but what I’ve heard is that, his parents…?  They were slaves.  No, it’s truth!  As I live and breathe…

Outwardly serene, even cold, the merchant heaved an inward sigh.  Yes, his poor parents: they worked to earn their own freedom, then slaved on to earn his…and to pay for him to be educated in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. “Fools,” they were called. Lavishing the fruit of so many years’ hardship on their only child.  But they ignored those voices.  Then it was time to apprentice him to a trade, another expense.   Shlomo was intended to be a jeweler, a craftsman in gold, silver and precious gems.  Early on it was obvious he had the eye: keen and discerning, seeing every flaw in every stone.   He could have made diadems for princes, become a legend of artistry.  But Shlomo knew one thing:  never would he earn enough to buy one of the gorgeous pieces that he could make for kings.  Nor would he be able to set his parents in the kind of comfort they deserved.

So, quietly, he began to horde every shekel and to talk in corners with other craftsmen.  Would you like to sell your work in other cities?  Would you like someone to get you better quality stones?  When his apprenticeship ended, he astonished his master and his family by announcing an entirely new profession.

Shlomo chuckled to himself, remember their reaction. “What are you thinking? You’re a fool!  You can’t just decide to become what you are not…”

But foolish or not, he set out on his first buying trip.  And returned successful. And went again.  He prospered, in fact.  His reputation grew, and more and more those who knew of Shlomo would buy gems only from him.  Craftsmen with fine work to sell would sidle up to him, hoping to please him with their wares enough that he would condescend to buy from them…and resell at a profit to himself.

His wealth increased alongside his fame.  His parents lived, and died, in luxurys they never would have dreamed of for themselves.  But Shlomo still pressed on, driven to achieve something that no one could quite put a finger on.  It was obvious that he was not content.  But what more could he possibly want?

Shlomo knew what he wanted.  What he dreamed of, night after restless night. He wanted to find and possess a single blood-red gem without a flaw.  He’d heard street talk, tall tales about jewels of enormous size and exquisite beauty.  He took dusty side-trips on his journeys, miles of discomfort out of his way, to talk to dealers in stones who were reputed to handle “only the best.”  Every time, Shlomo found a flaw.  Some defect, however small, which marred the perfection of the stone.  Had there never been any perfect gem?

So Shlomo persevered, his hopes fading with the years, although his eyes were still as keen.  And then, on a common day, in a common back-alley souk, with heat and smells and voices all around him, he found it:  a perfect blood red gem.  He stood and stared at it, turning it over and over in his fingers, holding it to the light again and again, afraid to believe in what he saw.

“How much for this?”  he asked the dealer, who was smiling quietly, patiently on his bench.

“Ah, respected sir, I don’t know whether you, even you, have wealth enough to purchase that stone…though I have held it back from other eyes so that you could see it first.”

“I thank you for the honor…but the price?”

So much. A price beyond his means, indeed.  Perhaps even a bit inflated?  But no,  for such a perfect stone, there was no question, that was a fair price.  What to do?

“How long will you be in this town? Will you stay awhile in my home, so that I may gather enough to buy this stone from you?”

The dealer agreed.  And the merchant went to work, not buying now, but selling, hurrying from place to place with the things he had amassed.  But as shrewd as Shlomo was at buying jewels, he was no con man when it came to selling his own goods.  His camels, his few personal jewels, all went for less than he’d have liked.  Frantically, he realized that it would take much more of his assets than he’d imagined.

Over their wine that evening, Shlomo and the dealer talked about the gem. “What would you say to taking all my household furnishings in exchange for the stone?”

“Where would I put such fine things, even to store and resell them? I deal in jewels because they’re small, sir. And–no offense, your home is very fine–but I’m not sure the value of your goods is equal to the stone.”

“No.  You’re right.  Well…what if I offered my house and the goods? My wardrobe, too…I have far more fine clothes than any man needs.  I have a servant. He would be yours also. What say you now?”

“Done!  That is an offer I think very fair.” And before the neighbors had time to do more than speculate as to where Shlomo could have gone with only the robe and tunic and cloak on his back, and long before they got the name of the new tenant in the fine house, Shlomo was gone, the beautiful red gem in his hand.  And nothing else.

He walked and walked, conscious only of possessing his heart’s desire.  Finally, he stopped and looked about him.  He’d left the town behind and night was coming down damply on his shoulders.  He had no home, no bed, no attendant. No money in his sack, no sack to put it in.  No livelihood because no stock in trade and no way to buy any new…except of course for IT.  He opened his hand and looked at it gleaming dully in the light of the rising moon.   No. He would never sell that.

So.  What was he then?  It came to him that perhaps he was a fool.  And all at once he laughed, and went on laughing as he walked on into the night.  When he came to another town, he’d hire himself to some prosperous citizen, as a worthy household slave.  Yes.  That would be fitting.  Clutching his treasure, Shlomo the fool walked on.

———————-

“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish…” – Phil. 3:8

“We are fools for Christ…” — I Cor. 4:10

John 20:24-29 A meditation

A piece I read elsewhere reminded me of this post I wrote two years ago on my old blog.

We’ve labelled him “the doubter.”  Written him off, in a way.  Less “spiritual.”  But how is he less spiritual than the other disciples?  They didn’t get it, either…saw the empty tomb, heard reports, recalled Jesus’ own words.  But they didn’t really believe it until they saw Him. 

Where was Thomas?  Was his grief so great that he’d withdrawn?  He’d been willing to go to Jerusalem and die with Jesus.  But he didn’t.  Seems as if he and Peter could have commiserated, but Thomas was absent. Maybe it was his turn to gather food for the group in hiding.  Or was he attending to the needs of family somewhere?  Whatever he was doing, wherever he’d gone, he missed Jesus’ visit.  So how did he feel when he heard about that?  Talk about being left out!  The inner circle only has 11 men in it to begin with…and he’s the odd man out.

I’d be bitter, personally.  Even if it was Jesus alive again, obviously I wasn’t important enough to wait for.  He didn’t care enough to see me.  Well, fine.  Maybe it hurts so much to have been excluded that Thomas decides it’s easier to pretend that they were all hallucinating.  It would be better to consign Jesus to the grave again, than to think He’d avoided seeing me on purpose.

Now it’s been eight days.  The others want to talk about the Master, compare notes, speculate, report other “sightings.”  But they can’t help seeing that Thomas grits his teeth and stares at the tabletop whenever the Lord is mentioned. So they clam up again.

Around dinnertime that day, with locked doors and everyone busy about his own task, there is Jesus.  He’s just–there.  And He heads straight for Thomas…slack-jawed, silent, barely-breathing Thomas.  “So–do you still want to see the scars?  Touch the nail holes?”  I think He’s smiling as He holds out His hands.  “Put your fingers where the spear went?”  He makes a gesture as if He’ll disrobe upon request, awkward as it would be.

None of it is necessary now.  Thomas is on his knees, weeping, gasping for air to fill his lungs and calm his pounding heart.  He just wanted to know that Jesus hadn’t forgotten him, disowned him…wherever He’d gone.  And the words that tumble out of his mouth show us that Thomas believes–no doubt about it!

“My Lord!  My God!”  Words of worship; active, believing identification. 

“Do you believe because You’ve seen Me now?”  (Just like the others needed to see me? I hoped for more faith from you, Thomas…but it’s all right. I’m here now.)  Then, as if time had wrinkled and Jesus could look right into my room here in 2007, He mentions me, mentions us:  “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”  And suddenly I see a profound purpose in Thomas’ exclusion, and in his confession.

For 2,000 years people have read the good news with pounding hearts and gasped out, “My Lord and my God!”  And aren’t our confessions possible in part because of the role the disciples played?  These gritty, struggling, confused men are real people.  They really knew Jesus.  They questioned and doubted, and believed.  I think it’s their struggle to believe–especially Thomas’ struggle–that convinces me.  They didn’t hear a vague rumor and let wishful thinking fill in the blanks.  They saw the risen Lord–talked with Him, ate with Him, embraced Him.  He was real, and He is real to us today, thanks to Thomas and his companions.  Thomas with his bad rap as a doubter…sitting at Jesus’ feet, I’ll bet Thomas doesn’t even mind.

Frozen Memories, part one

Our poor birch tree, 12-20-08

I’ve been wishing for time to continue my Christmas reminiscences, and at last the gifts, the cards, the baking and mailing and other duties are all complete.  I have the leisure to skate back down memory lane again.  In honor of our current ice storm, I’m returning to another memorable Christmastime storm, the first year we were married.

It is December of 1983 and I have just come through my next to last semester of finals at Boston University.  I’ve also just survived my first really serious bout of flu since I’ve been away from home.  Realization of adulthood has hit home in a new way: Mom isn’t here to take care of me when I’m sick.

This year our newelywed present to each other is a train trip to visit Dennis’ family.  We’ve splurged on a sleeper from Boston to Bryan, Ohio, where my brother-in-law will pick us up.  We leave on Christmas Eve and arrive Christmas morning.  Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve morning, both of us are still working: he’s selling smoking pipes and tobacco at Ehrlich’s, one of the oldest businesses in Boston; I’m in Revolutionary costume (kind of) at The Boston Tea Party Museum, a tour guide with no tourists today, not even the intrepid Japanese who dutifully get off  the bus, snap a picture with me and ask “Please…why called ‘tea party’?”

A rare snow is falling over the city, which I have swept off the gangplank leading to the museum, which is a barge moored in Boston harbor.  I’ve brewed some hot tea for the non-existent customers, and now I’m huddled in the gift shop with the clerk.  I’m sitting on a tall stool reading Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend–both for pleasure and to get ahead for my lit class next semester.  Its setting on London’s Thames River, dirty, wet and cold, strikes the right chord as I shiver in this wooden structure perched over the harbor.

After a quiet hour or so, a visitor approaches the ticket window.  His coat is unzipped, his head bare on this windy, snowy day.  He gestures toward the replica ship floating below us, and says something we don’t quite catch.  He turns to look over the railing and all at once–he’s gone.   That didn’t compute…did he just…? We turn to one another and then, SPLASH! We hear him hit the surface of the icy harbor.  Without my coat, I run out the door of the shop and rush to the railing.  There is our “guest” treading water directly below me, yelling, “I’m free!  I’m free!”  Great.  A nut.

My colleague calls 911, I grab my coat and run down the gangplank and along the outside of the barge/museum to the back where our security guard’s houseboat is tied up.  I’m not sure what he can do, but it makes me feel useful in the face of this irrational act.  Was it a suicide attempt?  Was the guy just stoned?  Looking for a warm bed on Christmas Eve?  The police motor up in their official boat, scoop him up and take him away.  I hope he found what he was looking for.

So that singularly strange event frames my first married Christmas, and everything after,  no matter how surreal, doesn’t top that.

Christmas trees, part 3

So Dennis went out to K-mart’s after-Christmas sale with a mission: get the cheapest artificial tree available.  He came home with a slender tree, under six feet tall, which had set us back a whopping $18.  Wonderful! That should get us through a few holiday seasons.  We enjoyed filling it was a combination of snowflakes and Sunday school decorations, along with all the ornaments we received as gifts. With colored lights and gold tinsel, it was a lively hodge-podge.  Before too many years had passed, its small size meant we had decorations left over when the branches were all filled.

Fast forward ten years.  Our tree is getting a little tired. It has lived in four different houses, and it’s looking decidedly puny in our large living room.  Meanwhile, we’ve been home to Massachusetts in 1998 (about which, more in a later post) and we’ve seen the family tree again.  It’s been 13 years since I’ve been home at Christmas.

“Mom, what happened to the tree??”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone took all the bottom branches!”

“No, it’s always been like that.”

“No way! It looks like an umbrella.”  (Maybe this is not the tree I saw last time I was home. I’ve never seen anything so goofy.)

“It will look fine with all the presents under it.”

And with all of us home, it did.  In fact the presents for ten people not only filled the extensive space under the tree, but spilled out in a knee-deep pool at least ten feet toward the opposite wall.   The next year, however, without my family or my brother David’s, Mom finally decided she was sick of the umbrella tree.

Being a world-class shopper for high value and low price, it took Mom some time to find just the right replacement. But the next year she reported that the new tree was gorgeous, and promised to send pictures.  I think she even bought some new (red and gold) ornaments.

In September of 2001, America was jolted out of her complacency and life as we know it changed.  In October of 2001, my family was jolted personally. Our beautiful mother, who looked fully ten years younger than her 61 years, who exercised faithfully and glowed with health, was diagnosed with cancer.  Life as we knew it would never be the same.

Mom and Dad spent that winter in Florida while she received treatment. I visited them at home in Massachusetts in June. In October they returned to their winter home.  Mom left this world on November 11, 2002.

Christmas that year was sober, wistful.  I didn’t give much thought to our tree, except to think that it looked more tired than ever.  But to my jaundiced eye, everything seemed dull, cataract-cloudy.

In June we made our last trip to the family homestead in Lee, Massachusetts.  There we all helped Dad clean out the house and we divided up the things that he didn’t want or need.  There in its nearly-new box was the Christmas tree Mom had used once.  It was nearly seven feet tall, too big to be of use to my brothers with their smaller homes, so they graciously offered it to me, along with some of the ornaments.  Later that summer, Dad and David rented a truck and delivered furniture and boxes to all of us.  My new tree went into the basement to await the season.

Our tree, 2008

Every year since 2003 I have enjoyed putting our tree together (even though it has the prickliest artificial needles I’ve ever felt, and I need to wear gloves while putting the lights on).  I think of Mom, so carefully selecting this tree, not knowing she was choosing it for me.

In order to honor her (and, OK, to satisfy my own aesthetic sense at last), I decided to switch to all white lights, and to put away the children’s handmade ornaments.  Careful shopping of my own netted me some beautiful things…mostly gold, I noticed with amusement.  I discarded the old tinsel garland and made huge bows of wired fabric ribbon, and was pleased with the results.  I think Mom would approve of our tree, even if it’s not all red and gold.  Thinking of her at Christmas, as I look at the lighted tree, gives me one more reason to smile.

Christmas trees, part 2

If there was one thing I was adamant about, it was having a real Christmas tree when I had my own household. Having endured an artificial tree for over half my life, I was eager to return to the sincere and old-timey ambiance of a freshly-cut evergreen.

Our first married Christmas, 1983. No tree.  Not even I was ambitious enough to haul a Christmas evergreen up four steep flights of stairs.  1984 found us in the Berkshires with my parents, and in 1985 we moved to Los Angeles. Somehow we managed to swing the airfare to fly home…so again, no tree.

So it was not until 1986 that we could finally deck our own halls.  We were only one flight above ground, which was less daunting.  We had just returned from our first trans-Atlantic trip (our belated honeymoon in Great Britain) and the funds for frippery were rather low.  But I insisted that I’d waited for a real tree since 1971, and I was willing to string it with popcorn and cranberries, if that was all we could afford.  So Dennis and I went out in our ‘72 Vega wagon to look at trees.  Hmmm. A bit more expensive than I’d realized, but we found one we liked. Now to get it home.

It occurs to me that I have written myself to a point where you are anticipating a hilarious story…it’s cruel of me to set you up and then disappointment you, especially at Christmas. But such is life–we have such high expectations, and then they’re dashed.

I was sure that a real tree would restore all the magical lustre of the season for me, even in hot, smoggy, crowded, claustrophobic California. (Did I mention hot?)  But after wrestling the tree in and out of a small car, up a narrow flight of stairs, including a sharp turn, sawing the bottom to make it sit level, and then forgetting to water it several times…the bloom was off the rose, as it were.  I made crocheted snowflakes that year, and they were the nicest thing about the tree…somewhere I’d gotten some nylon thread, and so they floated on the surface of the branches like suspended animation.  I also found some little wooden curlicue ornaments in a gift shop, and they were country-ish and sweet.  For the rest, the popcorn refused to be threaded without breaking, and who can afford that many cranberries?  One bag made a pitifully short chain. What were our ancestors thinking?

In spite of my disillusionment, which I kept trying to squelch, we had real trees in 1987 and 1988 (the year we were expecting Paul’s imminent arrival).  In the fall of 1989 we moved back home to Indiana, and our little family of three could barely afford popcorn, much less a tree.  Just before Christmas we found a small one on sale.  On Christmas eve, I was putting Paul’s very first presents under the tree, and–shriek of intense pain!–impaled my open eye directly on a needle which felt like the sewing kind rather than the piney ones.  Later inspection of the dastardly shrub revealed that it had been spray-painted green by an unscrupulous tree lot.  The needles–all equally lethal–fell off and managed to get into every room, including the bathroom, and refused to leave for several months.

“That’s it!” I said. “We’re getting a fake tree.”  I hated to admit it, but my mom was right. Old-timey ambiance is over-rated.

Snow

Foster Park, 2008

It’s snowing tonight, the first of December. A lovely way to begin the Advent season.  So many Christmas memories seem to be tied to snow…snow we got, snow we wish we’d gotten…in this hemisphere, at least.

In one of my earliest memories, I am looking up, up, up at mountains of snow which stretch skyward on either side of me.  Snow falls in the haloed light of streetlamps as I glide along.

It is the still-famous blizzard of 1966 in upstate New York. Sixty inches of lake-effect snow fell in the Syracuse area in a day. Our little ranch house sat at the top of a steep hill, and the garage was on the basement level, the driveway slanting down into it from the road. When the garage door was lifted that morning, a wall of snow nearly to the top greeted my dad.

He took an appliance box (washer?dryer?) and nailed it to a sled. Then he and Mom pulled me down the hill and into our little town of Phoenix (population 6,000–tops).  I stayed there with my grandmother while Mom and Dad walked home and spent the next several days shovelling.

I’m sure my dad’s memories of that week involve bone-deep aches and pains, numbing cold.  Mom was worried about me, I’m sure–it was her number one job.  I don’t remember anything about my stay with Dad’s mother.  I only remember that endless white towering over me as I huddled in the bottom of a moving box.  I felt safe inside an enchanted castle, and I only remember the magic.

Isn’t that one of the great gifts of childhood?  Too young to bear the weight of events, we enjoy life without shadows and without guilt.  Learning to trust is learning to recover this old art: To sit in the magic circle of my Father’s protection and watch the snow with no worries…to become as a little child.

Playing at holiness

One of my favorite pastimes as a preschooler was to listen to records (LPs…those huge round things you have to put on a turntable, and listen to one side at a time). My mom bought many “spoken word” albums and I would act them out. But at Christmas, she would put stacks of records on the spindle and let them drop one by one…Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Robert Goulet.  Compilation albums with Diahann Carroll, Perry Como,  Eugene Ormandy’s orchestra, Julie Andrews singing “The Bells of Christmas”…

And what did I do while all this glorious music floated over my head?  What I remember doing is kneeling…a blanket draped on my head, my hands folded over my heart, I gazed down on a baby doll wrapped in flannel and lying on the red leather camel saddle/hassock my dad brought back from his Navy tour of duty in the Mediterranean.

When I was five, when I could convince Mom to cooperate, I’d kneel by the little seat cradling my conveniently-small baby brother, David. He was four months old, and far too fat to be the newborn King, but he was a live baby and too good a prop to pass up.

I’m sure there must have been more to my role playing than just the endless kneeling…but that’s all I remember.  Did I pretend to travel on camel back? Did I “cry” when the inn was full?   I’m positive I knew nothing about giving birth, so there was no delivery in my story.  I imagine the kings visited from time to time, and we received their gifts with dignity.  But what I recall is being on my knees, gazing downward, reverent.   A good way to spend some time today.

Christmas memories, part 1

My earliest Christmas memory: I am  perhaps three or four, stereotypically awake before dawn and tiptoe  into Mom and Dad’s room.  Mom is under the covers and I whisper to her,

“Is it time yet?”

“Not yet, Lor.  Climb in here with me…you wouldn’t want to let Santa know you’re up. He might not leave anything if he knows you’re awake.”

Breathless, I burrow down and cuddle up.  My little ears strain for the sound of harness bells or booted feet, and as I listen the white noise of sleep takes over.  When I wake again it’s full light, and the living room proves that Santa has indeed been here.

(What I don’t know for years and years is that Daddy went out looking for stuffed animals for me, and even then was wrapping, wrapping, wrapping…)

This memory always reminds me of the story Mom loved to tell, about her first Christmas memory.  Her Daddy took her to the tiny second-floor balcony and pointed to the hoof-prints of eight reindeer…how they could have landed on that postage-stamp space is a question Mom never thinks to ask.  She is enchanted, and so am I by the telling.

—————-

These memories leave me feeling ambivalent now.  My husband and I are not big fans of Santa Claus and find the magic of the season in a stable instead.  Our kids didn’t lie awake listening for sleigh bells or worry that the chimney was too small.  Did we cheat them?  We wanted to spare them the disillusionment of unmasking the untruth, and the skewed image of God with which we struggled for years before meeting Jesus personally.  We always made much of Advent, lighting candles, decorating and baking, counting down the days with a paper chain or a special calendar.  We always read them “The Night Before Christmas” before bed on the 24th, but it was just a beloved story (and the pop-up version my mom gave us still delights today).

Is there a Christmas memory for you which is bittersweet now?  What did you do differently than your parents did, and are you glad as you look back on that decision?  I wouldn’t change the way we celebrated Christmas when the boys were little.  I wonder how they feel about it now, both nearly grown, or if they care. I wonder what they remember as special, and I hope we’ll get a chance to talk about that…maybe this Christmas eve.

Sharing Stories

This morning Pastor Joe Snider preached on John 6, the passage I was meditating on in my last post. As he was talking about the difficult statement of Jesus (and he pointed out that Jesus makes lots of hard, sweeping statements) that we must eat His body and drink His blood, Pastor Joe shared this story from his own life. I hope he won’t mind my repeating it here.

As new parents of an infant daughter, living far from their extended family, Joe and Sally were alarmed to find that their five-month-old had turned orange. Not the sickly yellow cast of jaundice, but pumpkin orange. They rushed her to a “crusty old pediatrician” who seemed to enjoy diagnosis by Socratic method. “What do you think is wrong with her?” the doctor asked. “What do you think we should do about it?” “Well, we were favoring the ‘total freak-out’ approach, Doc,” Joe quipped, to much congregational laughter.

Finally the doctor asked the obvious question: “What has she been eating lately?” Sally explained that she’d recently begun to eat solid food, but that she didn’t seem to like anything except strained carrots. Bingo. The old man sighed and rolled his eyes. “You are what you eat, you know!”

And without a missing a beat, Pastor Joe looked at us. “And we’re supposed to eat His body and drink His blood.” Silence–the good kind–descended on the sanctuary as truth took hold. Ah, yes. Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Come to Him, believe in Him. Digest His words. Become more like Him. And live forever.

This is not only good preaching, it is an example of the value of parables from our own lives. What parables from your life could you share in such a way that a God-truth becomes clearer to those you tell? Which of your stories might be “borrowed” and told to others because they contain such power? Go and tell someone a story… maybe even this one.

And say “thanks for sharing” to Pastor Joe.