Rev’d Jonathan Gale
Psalm 139: 12 – 18
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end*—I am still with you.
2 Corinthians 4: 1 – 2, 6 – 7
Treasure in Clay Jars
Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practise cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.
6For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
Mark 1: 29 – 39
Jesus Heals Many at Simon’s House
29 As soon as they* left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
32 That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
A Preaching Tour in Galilee
35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ 38He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ 39And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
You should all have received a piece of sea glass as you came in. Hang on to it. At some point in the service there will be something for you to do with it.
Your piece of glass may well, in the past, have been part of a bottle that either got washed overboard on a boat or was abandoned on the beach. It was smashed as was rolled about by the waves and had all the sharp edges ground off until it washed up on beach. A broken piece of glass, after a process of change became someone’s treasure.
When we were children the idea of finding treasure was genuinely exciting. We would imagine shiny jewels or gold in a treasure-chest sparkling away as our eyes shone with delight. How often did you not, as a child, see a rainbow and wonder if there wasn’t perhaps gold buried at the end of that beautiful arc of refracted light in the sky.
The reality of discovering anything lost for a long time is a bit different. It is often mouldy, sometimes broken and very frequently not like it was when it was buried at all.
I was sent away to boarding school at the age of five, and in the hostel I lived in was a long line of trees along the boundary of the property that had living in them what we called blue-headed lizards. Agama Atra (according to Wikipedia) grows up to about 25 cm and has a thin dorsal crest that runs the length of its body. The males have big blue heads. They were, to put it bluntly, ugly. Not like the sleek brown common lizards one imagines at all. We rough little boys used to throw stones at them, but they were wily and scampered to the other side of the tree before you could let loose with a shot. One day I found one of these newly slain, lying on the ground. I dug a neat little rectangular grave for it about 3” deep, used a covering of sticks to prevent the earth from falling onto it and left it to rest in peace.
However, a few weeks later I couldn’t resist having a look. When I opened it up, to my surprise, it had been cleaned of all flesh by the ants and was a perfect skeleton. Treasure is seldom what you think it is when you dig it up. But here’s the thing, that perfect little skeleton, every bone in place, was beautiful. Sometimes what is hidden is transformed from the ugly to the beautiful.
Speaking of discovering the beautiful, a few weeks ago Fay and I attended the Clergy Conference where we heard an American, Martin Smith, speaking of an experience he had had in England as a young man. He was passionately fond of archaeology and was especially fascinated by the story of a Medieval well that had been a popular site of pilgrimage but that had been lost over the years. Many had searched for the well without success. Martin had a few months free between school and starting uni so he decided to use this time to look for the well. Having spent many an hour in libraries poring over manuscripts, he finally felt he had enough information to have a good crack at finding the well.
He tied his spade to his bike one day and set off. As Martin put it, “I spent an entire and fruitless day digging up a large field.” However just when he had decided to go home, he noticed that in the corner of the field was a tree and under the cover of its branches a few cows standing in the slush – a mixture of dung, urine and rainwater – but more dung and urine than anything else by the smell. He nudged the cows aside with the spade handle and dug into the mud. He got down, as I recall, to a depth of about 18” when suddenly he felt his spade hit a flat rock. He uncovered the rock and found a wooden plug in a round hole in the middle of the slab. When he knocked it out, up welled clear water. He had found the well! Sometimes the wonderful is hidden in the slush and we have to spend a little time looking for it.
The Psalmist notices that God often works in hidden places.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
God formed him says the Psalmist, in the hidden place of the womb. The treasure of new life is created in hidden places before it emerges.
As we heard last week and as we read today, Paul tells the church in Corinth that we are like clay jars, grubby and vulnerable, but who contain a treasure – the very presence of God.
6For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
Few clay jars, especially in the ancient world where firing methods were primitive, did not end up broken. In fact the very idea of a clay jar probably conjured up an image of brokenness, of imperfection, of temporary usefulness. Yet Paul says they contain treasure – the treasure of God.
Do you think you are perfect? I’m willing to bet, just the reverse. But God is often hidden away in the broken places – in jars of clay – like you and me. To find God we have to look, not in the smart, clean places, but in the smelly and muddy places to find him, places like you and me.
We are the clay jars, the urine and dung-filled slush that God graces with his presence, and here’s the thing – while God is the treasure – his transforming presence in us turns us into treasure.
Yes, God is depicted as treasure within us, but he is the one who desires to form his image in us, and it is we who are the treasure God is seeking!
Our Gospel reading tells the story of Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. It goes on to say 34And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
Jesus, the hidden Messiah, is less keen to be identified than he is to see himself identified within us – in all our brokenness, our faults, our quirks and quiddities.
We like sea glass, shattered, rolled around by the vicissitudes of life, are formed by God into the treasure he seeks. God is a treasure hunter who himself is the treasure hidden away in us, working constantly for our transformation, our acceptance – until we so identify with him that we reflect his beauty.
I want you to repeat something aloud after me, please..
I am God’s treasure!
He makes himself known in me!
Amen.