Readings of the day: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52
If you were able to ask for and receive anything you wanted, what would you ask for? Have we ever thought this about our prayer: What do we most frequently ask of God in prayer?
This is what happens to King Solomon in today’s reading from 1 Kings. God invites Solomon “in a dream” to ask him for anything he desires: “Ask what I should give you,” God says to Solomon. Imagine if God offered any ruler, public leader, or politician today to give that person anything they desired. What would that leader ask of God?
Here Solomon recognizes the significance of the choice before him. It is far from the first or only time in the Bible when God communicates with somebody important in a dream—think of the two Josephs, one in the Old and one in the New Testament; Jacob’s Ladder vision and the dreams Daniel interprets in the Old Testament. And this is far from the first or only time in the Bible when somebody significant is overwhelmed, like “a little child” before this kind of encounter with God. I think of Jeremiah, who is “only a boy” when God calls him to be a prophet.
These two frequent biblical motifs occur together at the beginning of Solomon’s reign in 1 Kings: First, God speaks to Solomon in a dream. And, second, Solomon, “only a little child” who does “not know how to go out or come in” (a Hebrew expression for complete ignorance), is overwhelmed that God should invite him, “Ask what I should give you.”
What is not so frequent is God inviting somebody, even somebody important, to ask for anything that person desires. More often God tells us what it is acceptable or not to pray for. I think of Jesus’ introduction to the Our Father with, “This is how you are to pray.” Jesus says to his disciples in the Gospels, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” Yet not even Jesus’ prayers are always accepted. In the depths of his passion, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, “If it be your will, let this cup pass from me.” Yet Jesus will suffer and die on the cross for us anyway.
All this shows how important and well-regarded Solomon is in God’s eyes. Solomon is already wise before he asks God for wisdom, “an understanding mind to govern [God’s] people” Israel. It is as if God has given Solomon his greatest desire, wisdom, before he asks for it. God anticipates Solomon’s desire for understanding, wisdom for good governance, and all Solomon has to do to please God is to meet God halfway, in one sense, on this: Ask God not for “long life or riches,” but the wisdom for which God knows ahead of time Solomon will ask.
Long before the “kingdom of heaven” was ever a reality or even a concept in Scripture, as it is in Jesus’ parables we hear from the Gospel of Matthew today, the kings of ancient Israel knew that God was the true ruler of Israel. Kings like Solomon and his predecessor David knew that they were stand-ins for God, anointed by God to rule according to God’s will for the good of the people of Israel on earth.
Of course, Israel’s kings were sometimes far from perfect in ruling according to God’s will for Israel. Solomon seems to have learned from some of David’s mistakes when God invites him to ask of God anything he wishes. Solomon acknowledges that Israel is “a great people, so numerous that they cannot be numbered or counted.” One of King David’s greatest sins was to have the people of Israel counted in a census. (Censuses are common in many if not most countries and not at all sinful; we should understand David’s action, and Solomon’s reference to it today in 1 Kings, as an attempt to usurp God. Remember that God had promised Abraham that his descendants could not be numbered, so to try to number them would be both futile and sinful in the biblical imagination). Solomon wisely avoids a repeat of this sin of his father.
Solomon desires above all “an understanding mind” to rule Israel. His desire for “an understanding mind” at God’s invitation is really a desire for what he needs to rule, to inherit, to share in the reign of God, the reign or the kingdom that originates in heaven. This is why this is so significant that Solomon should ask for “an understanding mind”—for wisdom toward good governance—over “a long life or riches” or the lives of his enemies. Those other things for which Solomon could have asked God would not have been bad (the lives of his enemies maybe excepted); God would not have been displeased had Solomon asked for them. But Solomon would have been just an ordinary king: He might have been rich, or he might have lived a long life (which he did anyway; he matched the forty-year reign of his father David, the symbolic length of reign of a good king in Israel), but for what?
Solomon desires the kingdom of heaven. And to reign with God, he needs “an understanding and discerning mind.” He needs wisdom, first and foremost.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus encourages us at length to desire God’s kingdom of heaven above all else, much as King Solomon did. Other Gospels and writings in our Bible highlight the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven), and include Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God in parables or metaphors: “The kingdom of God is like”… But in Matthew’s Gospel, in Jesus’ teachings, there is an especially intense focus on “the kingdom of heaven” and what it is like, to encourage us to want it above all else.
Today is the third Sunday in a row at Mass in which we have heard from the same part of Matthew’s Gospel—Matthew, chapter 13—which is a long string of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven. Over these last three Sundays (in case anybody is counting) we have heard seven of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven from Matthew’s Gospel: The sower, the weeds among the wheat, the mustard seed, the yeast or leaven and, in just today’s Gospel reading, the “treasure hidden in a field,” the “pearl of great value,” and the net with many fish.
I think Jesus wants us to go to heaven, really badly! The question for us is: How intensely do we want to go to heaven, to inherit the kingdom of heaven God promises us in and through Jesus Christ? Do we want heaven, the kingdom of heaven, as much as God wants to offer it to us? A few minutes ago, I asked: If we were able to ask for and receive anything we wanted, what would we ask for? Maybe my questions should have been: Who here wants to go to heaven? And what are we willing to give to inherit a share in God’s reign, the kingdom of heaven?
I will presume wildly that all of us want to go to heaven. After all, we pray for heaven during every Mass and many times outside of Mass, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come.” So I will presume that God’s promise of heaven appeals to us.
And God’s promise of the kingdom of heaven to us is a free gift. It was a free gift to King Solomon: God invited him to ask for whatever he wanted: “Ask what I should give you.” God is inviting us to do the same as Solomon, as Jesus’ first disciples: “Ask what I should give you.”
Yet what are we willing to give for a share in the kingdom of heaven, a share in God’s reign over the universe everything in it? If we are shown a field with a treasure buried in it, will we sell all we have and buy that field? If “a merchant of fine pearls” shows us the pearl of greatest value, will we sell all we have and buy that pearl? Will we go fishing in the sea in which Jesus is telling us that the fish are of excellent quality, with only a few exceptions? That is, will we go out into our world, to our neighbours, to our workplaces, to our places of leisure, to our streets and attract still other people to the reign of heaven Jesus promises us by our joy and acts of kindness? (Because, let us face it, at the best of times fishing is unpredictable and even a little frustrating. So is evangelization, proclaiming and living God’s word, God’s invitation to us toward heaven, in a way that attracts still more disciples). Will we resist the temptation to be gatekeepers of who is worthy or not of heaven? Will we allow God and God’s angels, as our Gospel says today, to do the sorting of the good fish from the bad—and simply concentrate on and enjoy the fishing?
Sisters and brothers, we are here in the great divine showroom of the kingdom of heaven. Over here we have a field with a priceless treasure on sale for a real bargain, considering its worth. Over there we have somebody selling a pearl of unmatched value from an amazing pearl collection. And a little further over there we have somebody selling a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip, all expenses included. In fact, God is offering us the entire showroom and everything in it: The field with its treasure, the pearl of great value, the great catch of fish. No riches we have now compare with the value of all that, of the kingdom of heaven. So let us make the big purchase. Any “understanding and discerning” mind would.
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