The summum bonum – the supreme good

Like most people in the UK you will probably have had enough of politics in these past few weeks and now be pleased that May 7 has come and gone. Did you try to make sense of the promised political pearls? Maybe you also looked at each political leader and wondered whether he or she – as a person - was a pearl – a person worthy of support, worthy to be followed?

Life is a journey, isn’t it? What am I doing as I make that journey along the road towards life’s end? Am I just accumulating and spending more and more stuff? Or am I looking to find something, someone, really good?

One of the oldest pieces of written literature in the world is the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible. The main Psalmist in that Book wrote his poems and songs almost 3,000 years ago. Here’s an extract. “There are many who say, ‘Who can show us any good?’ Lift up the light of your face upon us, O LORD.” It seems that he and others were in despair at finding anything, any person, of real good.

All the more reason therefore to go back in time to around AD 30 when Jesus was talking with his followers about the kingdom of heaven – about the heavenly realm – about heaven on earth. Here’s what he says. “In addition, the kingdom of heaven is like a person on a journey looking to find excellent pearls, who, on discovering one pearl of multiple preciousness, went and sold all that he had - and bought it.” [my translation – compare with bold above] All that he had….

Please notice that Jesus began this particular parable with the words “In addition…” He was adding to what he had just taught his disciples. He had just said that the kingdom of heaven was like a man who discovered treasure hidden in a field, who covered it over again, and who then sold all that he had to buy the field and redeem the treasure in it.

Last week’s Info for Islanders (Liberation for EU migrants) was about this. It was about Jesus and how he valued people – people hidden and unobserved in the field that is the world. He saw people as treasure. He gave his life for them – so that they might be totally restored and might even have the life of God within them.

Jesus wasn’t a politician. He didn’t come to this earthly field merely to make oral promises (let alone promises set in physical stone). He didn’t come to this earthly field to become a powerful and great leader. He came to purchase the people in this field through his death - to give his all – to relinquish his own life. He laid down his life at the hands of all the sinners who were against him.

He suffered all the sins that all guilty sinners could do – or persuade or pay others to do - to him. He gave all that he had so that people in this field – this unhappy world – could live for ever. Their value was hidden – but not to him.

Read again Jesus’ “In addition” parable - a separate parable from the one about the treasure hidden in the field. He said, “In addition, the kingdom of heaven is like a person on a journey looking to find excellent  pearls, who, on discovering one pearl of multiple preciousness, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

What does this parable actually mean? Could it possibly refer to a person in this field that is the world, a person journeying through life, yes, but searching all the time for something or some person of real good?  “There are many who say, ‘Who can show us any good?’

Could the person in the parable be looking for someone who not only promises that he will give his life for others – but who actually does it? Is this journeyman looking for a man, a pearl, of multiple preciousness - someone also neither self-seeking nor powerful? Someone who loves the unlovely? Someone who loves.

A Jersey person who, on his or her journey searching for real good, finds a pearl of multiple preciousness like that – an excellent man like that – might well sell all that he possesses so as to have that pearl, and to have that pearl within.