The Parable of the Treasure in the Field (Attic)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”
-Matthew 13:44-46
Have you ever tried to find buried treasure? When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time looking for buried treasure, but my treasure wasn’t gold or silver or jewels. My treasure was much more valuable (at least to me). I was on the hunt for fossils. Mainly dinosaur bones, but I wouldn’t say no to the occasional shark's tooth at the beach. I just knew without a doubt that my backyard was full of this buried fossilized treasure, just waiting for me to dig it up. There were plenty of times I thought I found something, but I never did find any dinosaur bones (although I did find plenty of shark’s teeth). I don’t think I knew what I would have done if I did find anything—like most kids with something they think is cool, I would probably simply spend hours looking at it.
In the extremely short parable of the Hidden Treasure, Jesus tells the story of a person finding buried treasure, just like I imagined so many times as a kid. And what is this person’s response? Well, naturally they sell everything they own to buy the field. I don’t know about you, but that probably wouldn’t have been my first thought upon finding buried treasure. Think about it—selling your house, car, TV, bed, books, pets, and whatever else you own to buy a field with some buried treasure. You have nothing but the field and the treasure—what are you going to do? Will you sell the treasure after going through all of that to get it? Or will you starve or freeze while you sit in your new empty field looking at your treasure?
When you think about it in those terms, it doesn’t make much sense. Yet, as we have seen in a lot of Jesus’ other parables, many of them don’t make a lot of practical sense—they do, however, invite us to ask some important questions. The most obvious question that comes to my mind with this parable is what is worth it for me to sell everything I own? The interesting thing is, everyone's answer to this question would probably be different. Someone who has little would probably envision a treasure very different from someone who has a lot. One of the most common interpretations positions the treasure as the kingdom of heaven, with the parable teaching followers of Jesus that they must hold the kingdom of heaven higher than any and all of their possessions. While I don’t believe Jesus is instructing all of us to sell our possessions to follow him, I do think as followers of Christ we should all strive to be able to say that the kingdom of heaven is more important than anything we could possibly own.
Another common interpretation understands the treasure as all of humanity, and the purchaser is Christ. This interpretation speaks to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, purchasing us from our sins. For the original hearers of the parable, this would be an impossible interpretation since Christ’s sacrifice had yet to happen. But for us today, this interpretation can speak to the core of the gospel—that we all are so loved by God that he would purchase us through the blood of his one and only son.
These are two great ways to interpret this parable, and each way invites us to ask ourselves some different questions. However, these aren’t the only ways to understand this parable. What happens when you think about the ethics of the person who found the treasure? When the treasure is found, the current owner of the field is the rightful owner (even if they don’t know it). Is it dishonest of the finder to re-hide the treasure and buy the field as if it wasn’t even there? If so, maybe this parable speaks to how one could lose something important if they aren’t careful, or to the importance of cultivating what we have so we know what we have been given.
In order to re-imagine this parable, I imagined a person finding hidden treasure in a house, and similarly selling everything they have in order to purchase the house. When I first imagined this, I saw the house as old and rundown, pretty much unusable for living. However, when I thought about the field in the original parable I realized that the field could have been just as usable as any other field—it just so happened that the focus of the story was the treasure and not the field.
What would you do if you found a treasure in someone’s attic? What would the treasure be? Would you tell them, or would you re-hide the treasure, buy the house, and pretend you had no knowledge of it? What if you moved and found out someone found a great treasure in the house you just sold?
I may not go out looking for dinosaur bones anymore, but I do believe there is treasure to be found in each of the parables Jesus told. All Jesus asks us to do is to keep looking.