Have you ever had the experience of longing for something so desperately that you couldn’t think of anything else.  As a kid I remember walking past the music shop and seeing a Fender guitar that I so wanted and hoped one day would be mine.  I could imagine myself being a great guitarist; writing my own songs; joining the ranks of my heroes in folk rock and popular music.  Each time I walked past the shop the guitar would still be there and my hopes lived.  One day after a lucky quadrella my Dad presented me with the guitar.  I still have it.  I occasionally pick it up.  I was never Mark Knopfler, Don McLean, Bon Jovi (I’m dating myself).  I still can re-live that desire to play, compose and follow a dream as far as it would take me.

All of us, probably, can recount stories of how and when we have been caught by something in life that beckons us forward, opens up a new horizon, and stirs our hearts.  For some music, others sport, a love, a vocation, a call, a profession, the artists, a trade.

There is something of this experience being spoken of in Matthew’s Gospel today.  We are given two parables of the kingdom.  The kingdom is like a person who finds a treasure hidden in a field and goes and sells all s/he has and buys the field.  Or like a merchant who finds the pearl of great price and goes and sells all.  The common factor, Brendan Byrne tells us in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, is that neither the merchant nor the worker can gain immediate possession of that which s/he desires.  But the mere sight of what each so dearly longs to possess relativises the value of all else, giving each one the freedom to ‘sell all’.

The kingdom of God is something that we can glimpse, smell, taste, experience here and now and something that always sits ahead of us.  We know it already but not yet.  This does not mean that the kingdom of God is equated with the after-life.  If we believed that we would simply put up with anything in this life and just wait for a better one in the unknown but promise-filled future of life after death.  The kingdom of God, the reign of God, the culture of God touches us now but it is always and ultimately held out before us.  And it does not consist of us being great achievers nor in us amassing great possessions.  Ultimately, if we were pushed on what our hearts truly desire it is probably, to love and to be loved, to accept and be accepted, to know forgiveness, to see a future for our children; to see our world live in peace and plenty.

When we see these things and experience them, and when we experience them as the presence of our God at work in and around us, and in and around our world, it gives us the impetus to continue to long with hope, to work with purpose, to pick ourselves up and start again, to turn away from despair and hopelessness, to put ourselves behind what we recognise as things of the kingdom.

Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 13, gives us many images of the kingdom of God as an encouragement for us now, while we glimpse at what the fullness of the kingdom might mean.  It should give us the encouragement as individuals and as a Church to live in hope, to practice the art of hospitality; to learn patience with each other and our world; to look for signs of goodness, justice and mercy in our midst, and even to abandon some of the things to which we are attached in order to chase these things of the kingdom.

By Fr Brendan Reed