If an intruder broke into my house, there are actually a few furniture items that I might help him carry out to his truck, like the bed and dresser in the guest room. I might suggest that he take not one, but two of the hand-me-down chairs I have accumulated. But if he glanced across the room and noticed the old ugly trunk in the corner, I would ask that he not take it, especially as worn out and homely as it is. What the intruder doesn’t know is what I know about the trunk: it holds some of my “treasures” in life. Folded up in that trunk is a picasso-like chalk drawing that I entered into the county fair one year ( I think I got honorable mention). There is a copy of the Snoopy Herald, a paper I helped edit in middle school. And there are some old letters and other personal belongings. He can have the lamps and tables, and even my TV and the clothes in my closet, but I would rather not he take the trunk because I know that inside that bulky box is a treasure.
I confess up front that I will not be altogether faithful to the precise context of our Scripture reading today. A more fundamentalist Christian might even say that I have committed exegetical terrorism by hijacking the passage to places it never wanted to go. And actually I usually do stay close to the text. But I found a couple phrases in these few verses that captured my attention, and I feel that what I will say is backed up by other parts of the Bible anyhow. So, let’s just relax about the text and let it speak to us where we are at. The word of God is powerful enough to do more for us than we even ask or think.
We know enough about the passage to realize that it concerns the topic of weakness and how we find God’s power in times of affliction. What I couldn’t get out of my mind, though, is the phrase, “We have this treasure in clay jars.” Nothing seems more important in our life of faith than discovering treasure--our own and that of others.
For nearly five years I led a little ministry in a section of Buffalo that is similar, on a much smaller scale, to New York’s Greenwich Village. I was just a teenager when we began that coffeehouse with the name of Jesus For You. A variety of people came into that ministry as we were located right on a major
street of this particular section of the city. Kids came by to make mischief and drunks were always welcome, as long as they were not belligerent. Older folks attended and we all shared holiday meals together and spent our evenings listening to music and having Bible studies.
It was our practice to sometimes pray for people during the worship services we conducted. One day Jimmy came up for prayer. Jimmy was a youth
who seemed to me to be rather lost in life. He skirted about the neighborhood and showed signs of ambition, but I had the sense that he had become
entangled in a lifestyle in which he was being physically used by others. To add to his uniqueness, one of his fingers had some condition to it that made it look like it had not healed properly after being severed at about the half way point.
So Jimmy came forward at Jesus For You during a service and I started to pray for him. And then something strange happened. If you are familiar with
laying hands on others when praying, you know that the standard method demands that the one doing the praying is the one with authority and the one being prayed for humbly awaits a blessing, a revelation, healing, or at least a little hope to make it through another day. Well, what happened was that, when I
was praying for Jimmy, I started to cry. Not loud crying, but embarrassingly noticeable to the group. Somehow I got through it and then fled to the restroom. “Dear Jesus, what was that all about?” I later tried to understand what was going on, but the one thought that makes the most sense to me in retrospect is that, as we prayed, God entered into that holy moment and was saying to Jimmy, “You
are a treasure to me.” At least for that day, Jimmy knew that someone cared about him and was not going to use him, or want anything from him. I was merely a conduit for the grace of God.
Tracing the steps of Jesus in the Gospels, I have the feeling that what was foremost in the mind of Christ was helping people discover the treasure that was within them. Now, I know that there are those who will claim just the opposite and proclaim that the work of Jesus was really about zooming in on sin in people’s lives so that they could be set free. Do you really think the Jimmy’s of this world need lessons about their unworthiness? Some sinners are so hard on themselves that if you called them a sinner they might think it was a compliment!
Let me share with you a familiar Gospel story. Maybe in looking at it again we can, as one popular author terms it, “find Jesus again for the first time.” In the Gospel of John, chapter four, we read of Jesus resting at a well and a Samaritan woman approaches the well with her empty bucket. I am going to call her, Grace, because I trust she had a name, and her name wasn’t, “The Woman at the Well.”
Not only is her bucket empty but the emptiness of her daily life catches the attention of the Lord. “Grace, give me a drink.” A little arguing goes on. Wouldn’t it have been great to be able to argue with Jesus in person? Anyhow, Jesus acknowledges her desperate need. She is a woman who has been used by men. The passage says that she has been married five times and is currently living with another man. This poor woman has been given a “bad rap” by so many preachers who want to make her out to be loose and wayward. Wasn’t it the men who had the upper hand in that culture? Maybe all they saw in her was a body to be used; maybe that was the only treasure they were looking for.
Jesus says (and I am paraphrasing), “Grace, there can be a well inside of you. It is a spring of water gushing up even to eternal life. No one would ever think that there was a hint of the divine in you, but I see it.” This was awesome news to Grace, and it says in the text that she “left her water jar and went back to the city.” “We have this treasure in clay jars.” Grace could skip back to the city without her jar, but filled to the top of her head with a joyous new reality. A strange man, who knew what her life was all about, told her what her life could become. Perhaps for the first time in all her years, Grace knew that she was more than just a useable body, just a clay jar. She was a treasure.
Discovering our treasure and helping others discover theirs is a most likely place where we can trace the power of God in our world. It’s the location where God’s creative impulse and our desperate needs for new creation intersect. Why would we think that God is done creating? Sure, there was the day of rest following those six original grueling days, but God is still a creative God!
Our text in 2 Corinthians uses these words to describe the creative power of God: “that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us (verse 7).” What happened to Jimmy with me and what happened to Grace at the well with Jesus was a manifestation of the power of God to show that there was a valuable treasure that needed to be revealed within each of those persons who were blind to their treasure, their true value.
One of the greatest tragedies in life is the loss of people who could see no treasure in themselves. Do you realize that teen suicide is a major cause of death among that fragile segment of our population? It’s too late for some of them, but I wish someone had said to them, “Don’t you know that there is a treasure inside of you? If you could just get over your girlfriend ditching you... if you could see a little light at the end of the dark tunnel of your parent’s divorce...if you could brush off those ignorant insults hurled at you because you are Hispanic, or black, or gay, or the only white kid in your school....if you could just see what I see, and what Jesus sees, then even though you are carrying in your body the death of Jesus, in due time, the life of Jesus will be made visible.
We need treasure hunters in our world! Jesus was a treasure hunter. Where do you think Jesus would go if he had just one day to visit this city? I’m
not sure he’d make it up the hill to Colgate. If you met him on the street during his visit, what would you say to him? Would you tell him you have finally
mastered the Greek language? Would you ask him for his views on christology or eschatology? I imagine him responding, “You know, theology has never
interested me much.” And then he would be back to treasure hunting. He might have breakfast at the rescue mission, then visit some cancer and Aids patients at the hospital. For lunch he might show up at the worst public school in town and tell a few kids and teachers how special they are. By the end of the day, crowds would be gathered at the Hyatt or some other fine hotel, thinking to find him there, but what a shock it would be to find him instead resting on a park bench, urging a drug addict to get back on track. Nothing against churches, temples, or religious schools, but Jesus was on a mission during his three years here on earth, and Jesus is still on a mission. Is it the mission we are on?
Treasures are not always easy to find. We miss them because they are often housed in ordinary and sometimes unattractive covers, like clay jars. Even cleaning out sewer lines can produce treasures, as it did in March, 1995 in Watertown, Connecticut in a story I found. Here’s how it was reported: “In
addition to the usual materials one might find in a clogged sewer line, the three-man team found 61 rings, vintage coins, eyeglasses, and silverware...”
Perhaps you can recall someone who helped you discover your treasure. Teachers have a special opportunity to perform that service for their students. For me, it was my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cunningham. Of all the teachers at school, she was perhaps the one most out of place. Ours was an almost all-white environment and Mrs. Cunningham was of mixed race. She described her little boy to us as looking the color of a new penny. Fourth grade had been a boot camp for me so I soaked in all the earthy inspiration and kindness of Mrs. Cunningham. That year, I was convinced that I could one day even be president of the United States, thanks to a teacher who looked below the surface. “We have this treasure in jars of clay.”
Lynda Barry is an artist, novelist and playwright. In a Newsweek article titled, “Guardian Neighbor,” Lynda writes that she did not have an ideal upbringing. She recalls her neighborhood this way: “I grew up on the last street before a garbage ravine where people from other places drove up to dump refrigerators and mattresses and bodies of dogs and other trash.”
The beauty of her article, which I tore out and have stored in my file, is that in the midst of the trash of her young life, Lynda was sent an angel of a woman named Mrs. Yvonne Taylor. Mrs. Taylor’s treasure--her inner gifts and kind outreach to the children of her neighborhood--are evident in the story, and Mrs. Taylor was unique. Lynda Barry describes her like this: “She had dark hair in a bun and pointed glasses and she was married to a Negro man! A white woman married to a Negro man! With two kids to prove they really meant business!”
This short but wonderful article gives honor to a woman who knew how to make kids feel very important about themselves and by the end of the story, Lynda gives an account of her mother referring, in a hushed secretive manner, to Mrs. Taylor as an artist. Lynda Barry writes, “After that I looked at the different pictures on Mrs. Taylor’s walls thinking, ‘That one of the mill by the river. She painted that. That one of all those guys eating with Jesus.I bet she did that one too.” Among other achievements, Lynda herself became an artist. That is her treasure inside of her jar of clay. Mrs. Yvonne Taylor helped uncover that treasure.
We could go on an on with stories of uncovered treasures. Ordinary people who were crushed, afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. Then one day some treasure hunter came along and looked below the surface of all that despair and said to them, by word or action, that miraculous message: “You are a treasure.”
I wonder if we have our gift list for God mixed up sometimes. You know, how you can give a tie to someone who doesn’t wear ties or buy an umbrella for someone who has a stack of them? God wants a big gift from us, no doubt. We really shouldn’t be cheap about God’s gift! So then, what do you get someone
who has everything?
Do you remember the story of the wise men bearing gifts for the Christ child? The Gospel of Matthew, chapter two, says that when the men arrived to the place where the child was, “opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Forgive me for being sacrilegious, but what on earth is a baby to do with gold, frankincense and myrrh? Christmas will soon be here and we might dare to ask, “What will I bring to Jesus as a gift?” The best gift we can give the Lord is a commitment to unlock our treasure and help others discover their treasure.
It may be no exaggeration to claim that on most days, we encounter at least one person who needs to know that they are a treasure. I recently sent
what seemed like an overly encouraging card to a 61 year old man from a former church who had recently been placed in the care of Hospice. In the card I tried to tell him what a treasure he was to the church and to me. (Incidentally he was the church treasurer for many years). A family member e-mailed me and said that when the card was shared with him he replied, “Well, that sure is a good commendation.” How thankful I am that I took those few minutes and invested that 37 cent stamp to send the card. He was buried just last week. Everett died knowing he was a treasure!
One day when we meet Jesus, our earthly achievements will be left behind. All our academic degrees and the possessions we so highly valued will not be raptured into God’s presence. On that day, what will really matter is not how much material treasure we gathered, but how many human treasures we uncovered in our earthly sojourn. The Gospel of Matthew provides one synopsis of what might happen. Jesus will say, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” And then Jesus will go on to refer to the treasures that we found among the strangers, the naked and the imprisoned. He will say, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Discovering our own treasure and helping others discover theirs is nothing less than kingdom business. There is a Gospel parable that tells of a man who discovers a treasure in a field. It says, “then in his joy he goes and sells all that
he has and buys that field.” That’s how important finding a treasure is! The treasure might be hidden in a jar of clay, locked in a trunk, or perhaps even
disguised by a messed-up life, but it is there nonetheless. If we really want to see the power of God at work in our world-- and in our ministries-- then we should always carry keys with us to unlock the treasures hidden in the Jimmy’s of this world. We should keep one of those little hammers handy to break the clay jars that women like Grace have been enclosed in for so many years. What do you mean keys and hammers? Our keys are our words of encouragement and hope and our hammers are the unwavering acts of patience that guardian angels like Mrs. Taylor have used so naturally and effectively. “We have, and they
have, this treasure in jars of clay.”
