JULY 24, 2005 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
I KGS 3:9-12; PS 119:129-136; ROMANS 8:26-39; MATT 13:31-33, 44-52
Pearls Before Pigs
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus’ reference to a pearl of great value in today’s Gospel lesson started me thinking about another quote from the Lord about pearls. Said the rabbi in Matthew 7:6 Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before pigs or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.
Last week, we talked about planting crops and dealing with weeds. Today I’m wondering, how many of you have spent any time around pigs (the four-hoofed kind, that is!)? Is it true that they might attack people?
Absolutely! That was one of the hard and fast rules when we town kids visited Grandpa and Grandma on the farm. On their homestead, we were free to go just about anywhere and do just about anything. But three rules were ironclad: Don’t scare the chickens. Don’t walk through the tall grass by the slough. Don’t play by the pig pen.
We weren’t supposed to scare the chickens because…then they wouldn’t lay eggs (but oh was it fun to run them into a corner and hear them squawk and watch their feathers fly in a frenzy!). The tall grass held no such temptation… because of the rattlesnakes. And, believe it or not, the threat of the pig pen was just as real. Those big boars just looked mean enough to attack, kill and maybe even eat us if we were to fall in the pen. We never tested that rule either.
Any ideas why Jesus told his hearers don’t throw your pearls at pigs?
Now, I know some people have pigs as pets; I loved Charlotte’s Web; I liked the movie Babe; heck, one summer Carolyn and I even bottle fed two little runts and named them Rocky and Nik. But be that as it may…
-Beautiful pearls don’t belong in a pig sty. Those smelly beasts would not appreciate their worth and charm.
-A gift of such great value would do nothing to change their hostile nature.
-In Jesus’ Jewish culture, pigs were most unfit because they were unclean.
No, as Jesus said in our Gospel lesson, a fine pearl is to be treasured, guarded, protected with a sense of passion. And given that today’s teaching is all about the Kingdom of Heaven…what does Jesus mean? How is the Kingdom of heaven like a fine pearl or buried treasure? Throw out some one-word descriptors of the Kingdom of Heaven:
forgiveness justice love hope grace faith
I think that a clue to our question can be found in the second lesson from Romans 8. In fact, I’d argue that these few verses hold a key to understanding the entire relationship of God with humanity. Two questions central of the whole human experience are:
1. Is God really out there? And
2. Does God care about us?
Now, the first one I don’t get too worried about. If a person is convinced that life is a godless accident, there’s not a whole lot we can do to change their mind. I refuse to get caught up in the evolution v. creationism debate. My personal philosophy is this: I couldn’t care less about the how: God could have snapped his fingers…used billions of years of evolution…or taken a wand filled with sparks and said, Bibbity Bobbity Boo! The how, I believe, is insignificant.
The Who, on the other hand, is absolutely important. And here is where the Church has something vital to offer.
Yes! we say with fundamental conviction, God really is out there…and in here (community) and in here (heart). And Yes! we say to the second part as well, God does care about us…so much so that the Apostle Paul is inspired by the Holy Spirit to set up and shoot down every possible barrier and enemy like so many clay pigeons.
Look on the back of your bulletin at the second lesson, Ro. 8:31… about in the middle of the paragraph. It starts, What then are we to say… Read that verse with me out loud…What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Starting in verse 35 he lists the human frustrations that often cause us to question God’s motives or goodness or love: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword… because those are times when we feel like sheep being led to the slaughter.
Then he moves to the big picture problems and knocks them off one by one. Read with me at verse 38, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, (oh, and did I forget anything?) NOR ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Here is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field that should make us sacrifice everything in order to hold it fast: God’s love that knows no limits, that sees no boundaries, that heeds no other authority than the One who came to give us love and forgiveness and hope and grace.
And to whom should this gift of fine pearls go? To us, because we’re not pigs!?!? Or to us in spite of the fact that we have many pork-like problems, passions and pursuits – because, indeed, nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. In fact, God bestows on us this pearl of love even as we wallow away our days in the sty and grunt and snort and snuffle our way to the trough. If God is for us, even we can’t be held against us. Amen