19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
A Kingdom’s Price
Magic Kingdom for Sale—SOLD! By Terry Brooks
· Chicago Lawyer Ben Holiday buys the magical kingdom of Landover
· Only 4 loyal subjects
· Other agree to serve him only if he help them in dangerous ways: defeat a dragon, rescue captives from trolls
· He does not receive his kingdom at an easy price
· Eventually he is able to win his subject’s loyalty
Christian find ourselves in a similar position
· We expect to receive the kingdom Christ promised, but it does not come at an easy price
· Jesus tells us our “Father is pleased to give [us] the kingdom.”
· But he adds immediately “Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven.”
· The kingdom does not come at an easy price
The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob found themselves in a similar position.
· “They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth.”
· None of them received full dominion over the promised land.
· Abraham had only one heir
· Isaac’s sons fought with each other
· Jacob’s life ended in Egypt while the Promised Land was in famine
· But they understood that their true homeland was in heaven
St. Cecilia showed this same attitude when she was martyred.
· According to tradition, she had it all: youth, beauty, wealth, and nobility
· But she gave it all up from Christ, knowing the kingdom could not be received at an easy price.
· Tradition tells us as she went to martyrdom she said: “This is not to lose my youth but to change it, this is to give clay and receive in return gold, to give a vile and miserable hovel and receive a palace most spacious, lofty, and magnificent, built of precious stones and gold” (in Lapide’s Luke page 307)
· She was willing to pay the price and obtain that money bag of which Jesus speaks that cannot wear out and is able to contain heavenly treasure
Ben Holiday’s magic kingdom did not come at an easy price, neither does the Kingdom of God.
But in his case and ours, because we labor to serve others in pursuit of this otherworldly kingdom, we appreciate its great value, and see our present life in its true context: only a land of sojourn on the way to our true heavenly homeland.
Rev. Eric Culler