Australians are great gamblers and spend many dollars seeking fortune through lotteries and in casinos. Each hopes for the Jackpot which will make life different and better. Today's parables touch this within us, for one way or another we all seek happiness and good fortune. The winner of a Jackpot, however, will have to make choices leaving some aspects of his present life behind, to enjoy the new wealth.

Today’s parables are about more than wealth; they are about an invitation to a spiritual prize, to joy and fulfillment in the promised Kingdom of God.

The parables are short and seemingly easy to understand. The one who finds the treasure in the field just happens to come upon it. Maybe he is a hired labourer, ploughing or digging. He is lucky, but must follow through with sacrifices to buy that field.  Scholars* tell us that the way forward for that is complicated. There were many regulations about who owns the treasure, the finder or the original owner of the field.  The point in our parable of course, is that the seeker is enthusiastic and single-minded about buying the field, whatever is required.

The merchant is skilled in recognizing valuable items. He is jubilant when he finds the special pearl and determines to gain it. In Jesus’ time merchants were generally wealthy, not readily admired, for they often paid their divers poorly in comparison to gain.  Again the treasure is so attractive and compelling that sacrifices to gain it are not begrudged at all.

In both parables, finding the treasure is by chance not by calculated effort.  In the same way. the Kingdom is not something anyone deserves but is gratuitous.  The parable of the net brings this out, for all kinds of people are caught up in it—without seeking or digging.  A follower of Jesus is called upon to know all are invited to the Kingdom and the ‘sorting’  is not a human judgement.

Jesus addressed these parables specifically to the disciples, to show them that the Kingdom of God once hidden is being uncovered. A disciple needs wisdom or a discerning heart and mind to understand and to recognize the pearl that is there among them.

Matthew writes that the disciples answer that they do understand. Is he telling us something of his own story when he says the Scribe ‘brings forth from his storeroom old treasures and new?

*Barbara Reid, Parables for Preachers , the Gospel of Matthew., p 123