Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
What is the kingdom of heaven? Is it something worthwhile? What value does it have? Jesus uses the images of buried treasure and a valuable pearl to describe the kingdom.
The kingdom of God is God’s mysterious presence in our world. It involves us and, in a certain sense, it is us. We are part of this kingdom. When God sent Jesus into the world to inaugurate the kingdom, God sent the Son to us.
When the Son came to us he found us like a treasure in a field, like a valuable pearl in the marketplaces of the world. When he found us, he gave up everything he had. This includes the glory of heaven and his very human life. He bought us, not with money, but with his life’s blood. That is the value that God sees in us; this is the value we are supposed to see in ourselves.
God, then, sees in us the valuable treasure that we are. God loves us enough to make us, to remake us in God’s Son, and to rejoice in the goodness God has made us.
This is a challenge for us. Part of our lives is a struggle to see ourselves as good. For God, however, there is no struggle to us as good because God has made us good. God only loves the good; God does not make evil because evil is anti-good and anti-existence, while God is good and existing. If God loves us, then we must be good. Even if we have to struggle to see ourselves as good, we are good.
We are the buried treasure God came looking to find in the field. We are the valuable pearl God found in the marketplace. This is what the kingdom of heaven is like.