Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

God says to Solomon in the first reading today, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.”  Solomon asked for an understanding heart instead of long life or riches.  The Lord was pleased that Solomon made this request.  The Bible says that Solomon uttered 3,000 proverbs and wrote 1,005 songs.  He was not only married to the daughter of Pharaoh, but he had 699 more wives to make life interesting.  He owned 4,000 chariot horses.

For all his mighty accomplishments, like building the temple at Jerusalem, what we remember most about Solomon were his wise judgments in court, especially the famous case involving two women who claimed the same child.  In that case Solomon used not only his intellect but his heart.  He proposed slicing the child down the middle, giving each mother one half.  Solomon discovered the real mother, the woman who said she’d rather lose the case than hurt the child.

Wise judgments require not only brain but heart.  Of course, sitting judges are not the only people who must make wise decisions.  Every day, it seems, we have to choose between right and wrong, greed and selfishness, honesty and lies, people and things.  And once in a while we even have to choose between life and death.  Not only judges, but we too are challenged to discover our mighty hearts.

A mixed bag may be the best way to describe President Obama’s new rule, which extends nondiscrimination protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees who work for federal contractors.  It leaves intact an order signed by President Bush that gives religious groups who contract with the government the right to consult their beliefs when hiring and firing.  I characterize Obama’s executive order as “a split-the-baby solution.”

The church clearly distinguishes between homosexual persons and homosexual acts or inclinations.  I have problems with that distinction on other grounds, but think it bears on the issue at hand.  We all want to find a way to balance the rights of religious identity with the clear moral obligation to end discrimination based on orientation.  I remain hopeful that common ground between principle and practice may be found. 

That’s what Jesus is talking about in the two parables today, wise and costly decisions.  In the first parable we find a poor farmer having an ordinary day, doing what he’s been doing all of his life, plowing someone else’s field.  Suddenly his plow hits a clump and he thinks, “Oh brother, it’s going to be another one of those days.”  But the clump turns out to be a buried treasure.  He then makes a dramatic decision.  For the first time in his life, he throws caution to the wind.  He’s a poor man, but he sells everything he has to buy the field so that he can claim the treasure as his own.

Jesus’ second parable is about a different kind of a person.  His life is far from ordinary.  The merchant spends his entire life searching for more riches and better deals that will guarantee him lifelong happiness.  But it’s important to note that in both parables they stumble on a treasure they never knew existed.  All of his life the merchant was looking for fine pearls.  Note the plural: pearls.  But, lo and behold, one day he finds a treasure he never knew existed: a solitary pearl that is so magnificent that he too throws caution to the wind and sells all the riches he has accumulated in life to buy that one pearl.  In biblical times the pearl was a symbol of wisdom.

And so this parable is about making wise decisions.  Jesus says that this is the way it is with those seeking the reign of God.  Each day will bring new challenges to us as disciples of the Lord.  Some days what looks like a clump in our way can turn out to be a treasure.  There will even be a few days in our lives when we will find not only what we have been praying for, but what we never dreamed was possible.  And then we have to make the decision to accept the answer to our prayers.

In all these cases, Jesus invites us to “seize the moment” and make our decisions with a mighty heart.  Jesus also tells us in these parables that such decisions can cost us a lot.  But they can also bring us a joy that nobody can ever take away from us.

Rev. Paul A. Magnano

Pastor