“Hidden Treasure”

May 13,2007

Scripture Reading:  John 14:18ff

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

Who here ever watches the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow?”  If you don’t know what it is, the show has antique specialists go around the country.  People bring to them whatever they think might be some valuable antique and they get it assessed.  Now, the best thing about this show is when someone has found something in their attic, or basement, or at a yard sale, or in a garbage can, and it ends up being worth thousands of dollars.  Here are a few highlights.  A woman for Ogden Utah went to a Salvation Army 50% off sale.  Hidden in the back was a painting signed “Freemont Ellis” for $1.50.  It ended up being worth $15,000.  Then there is the toaster from 1939, a C TOAST-O-LATOR. The man found at a garage sale for $20 because he thought it was sort of interesting, and sold it on e-bay for $5,100.99!  Apparently there are avid toaster collectors out there.  Or, the lunch box with a picture of the first “Mercury” space flight that was behind the dirty paint brushes in the garage.  It was signed by Alan Shepherd. 

Before I go any further, this sermon, to say the least, serves also as a reminder for the upcoming yard sale!  Don’t miss it.  There might be an old Christmas mug lurking behind some old bathing suits that worth thousands!  If you come and help set up Friday evening you could be the first to spot it.  Secretly throw more bathing suits on top and a straw hat over them, and when we open Saturday morning, it’s yours for only $1.

Has anyone here every discovered something that ended up being worth a lot, or simple very interesting?  Anyone here a pack rat?

The stories on “Antiques Roadshow” or  anywhere that I love the best are when something has been hanging around a person’s house for years as junk and suddenly is found to be priceless.  These are items that not only have a monetary value, but are have family memories and generations of stories attached to it..  Like this story of a man’s grandfather’s chair, Michael from Rose New York.  When he was a young boy his grandfather was about to throw out this old Windsor chair made out of maple, willow and oak.  It was in pieces.  His mother rescued it and let it sit in her dining room for years.  It was too fragile for any one to sit in it.  And it was sticky from being next to his grandfather’s kerosene heater for over 50 years in his barn.  You felt like you were sitting on glue when you tried to get up from it.  So as a boy he re-glued the chair and carefully started cleaning off the grim.  That’s when he discovered the original off-white milk paint, the warn marks where people sat on it on the back and the feet.  When he cleaned the bottom of the chair a date appeared and the names of the makers:  Coe and Campbell 1758.  When he told his mother she said the Coe and Campbell were family names and relatives of hers.  She thought they may have come from Elmira New York.  It has not only been her father’s chair, but it had been her grandfather’s chair, her great grandfather and great great great grandfather’s chair.  Her grandfather remembered that when he was a little boy his grandfather would sit on that chair and tell the children stories.  One of the stories was that someone had accidentally been shot in the chair and the bullet fragments were still in it!   He never would think of selling that chair.  It was priceless!

I love these kinds of stories.  People pass by these things for years.  They don’t even notice them.  And the whole time a treasure was right under their nose.  I find there is something delightful about it.  He, maybe there is a treasure right around me somewhere!  It certainly makes me take a closer look at things.  The point is, there could be something extraordinary in the ordinary

This goes beyond the “Antiques Roadshow.”  There is a spiritual truth here.  I know people who go to India to study in an ashram on top of a remote mountain to find God.  I know people who go to Colorado monasteries to find God.   I know people who spend thousands of dollars to go to lectures by authors of how to books on spirituality. The irony is that they often travel a long way only to discover that God could be found at home. The winning megabucks ticket was on the kitchen table the whole time.   Even the most ordinary acts like cooking banana bread can be a channel of love. 

Let me share with you a wonderful Hasidic story.  There was a Rabbi named Eizik son of Yekel of Cracow.  After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone told him to look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace.  When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eizik Yekel prepared for the journey and set out for Prague.  But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging.  Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening.  Finally the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or somebody.  Rabbi Eizik Yekel told him of the dream that had brought him there from a faraway country. 

The captain laughed:  “And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here!  As for having faith in dreams, if I had ti, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew named Eizik, son of Yekel!  I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other Yekel!”  And the captain laughed again.  Rabbi Eizik bowed without saying a thing.  Then as fast as he could, he traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove.  And what did he do with the treasure?  He used it to build the House of Prayer which is called, “Rabbi Eizik’s Dream.”

 What’s the meaning of the story?   Martin Buber said, there is something that can only be found in one place.  It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfillment of existence.  The place this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands. 

I found out yesterday a very interesting fact.  Did you know that nearly half of women fear life as a bag lady?  (Homeletics, May-June 2007).   No kidding:  46 percent of women suffer from what is now called “Bag Lady Syndrome.”  They might have good salaries, money in their purses, decent savings and investments – but still they are afraid that they will wind up broke, forgotten and destitute.  – Bag ladies. 

According to The Washington Times (August 23, 2006), a recent survey of almost 2,000 women reveals that 90% of them feel financially insecure.  46% are troubled by a “tremendous fear of becoming a bag lady,” and this anxiety actually increases as incomes rise.  Among those with annual incomes of more than $100,000, 48% of women fear a life of destitution.  Lily Tomlin.  Gloria Steinem.  Shirley MacLaine, Katie Couric, “All admit to having a bag lady in their anxiety closet,” writes MSN money columnist Jay McDonald.  They all suffer from the bag lady nightmare. 

Today is Mother’s Day, so it’s tempting to address this sermon to the mothers of the church.  But such a focus would be misguided, since the bag lady nightmare afflicts more than just mothers -  in fact, it hits more than just women.  Each of us can have our won frightening vision of being wiped out financially, robbed of stability and security, and condemned to a life on the streets.  But, you have to wonder that this insecurity which so many people have  is about more than money.  One can guess that if they suddenly went to Prague because of a dream of a treasure under the bridge and the captain told them that he had a dream of a treasure under their floor at home, these people would say, “No, that dream certainly can’t be possible.  I have lived all my life in that house and surely there is no treasure under the stove.  I am not even going to bother to look.”   You see, the problem is not really about money.  The problem is about faith.   

Jesus says, “I will ask the father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  (john 14:16-17)  Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us.  We might seem ordinary on the outside but there is something extraordinary on the inside.  Instead of being bag ladies underneath, we are really queens and kings, a royal priesthood.  Let me tell you another one of my favorite stories:

The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again " they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, "the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"

"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic-- was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

On the “Antiques Roadshow” web site, Elizabeth from Osceola, Indiana tells about how she found her family Bible.  Her daughter had given her an old computer.  The first thing she did with it was to find lost family members.  She went on those ancestry Web sites and posted the name of her great-grandmother, and asked if anyone might have information about her.  For months there was nothing.  Then her son called and said that she had better check again because someone had answered her posting.  Shannon from Pageland South Carolina had her great-grandmother’s bible.  She collected old family bibles and had found this one in Columbia 5 years earlier. 

You see Elizabeth came from a very broken family.  When she received the bible in the mail it gave her roots.  All kinds of wonderful things were in it:  her great-grandmother’s wedding announcement from the newspaper, and in-between the pages, the pressed carnations that the article said she was carrying.  Also, many locks of hair!  The earliest date went back to 1867 on the family pages.  The original owner was six generations earlier! 

Ultimately the reason why Elizabeth was looking to find out about her relatives, was to find out about her own significance.  Where is my place in this world?  Why am I here?  Who am I?  I believe these are the real questions behind all genealogies.  It is a deep geneology   Furthermore, it is the same questions her great great grandmother had.  Why did she put a flower, a lock of hair, an article in the Bible?  Pressed between the pages of the Bible these ordinary things become a testament of a life.   There is extraordinary in the ordinary.   We were here.  Remember.  This is who we have been                           .   

Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  I am coming to you.  In a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you… (john 14:18-20)” 

  Jesus tells us that he is not going to leave us orphaned, but is going to send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.  Peace he leaves with us.  For Christians we don’t have to search the world over for the truth we can live in the truth because  the Truth lives in us.   Where can we find it?  It is right under the warm spot in our soul where love burns.  Could it be true tha one of us is the Messiah – or each of us?  Could it be true that there is a treasure buried under our stove, or our furnaces all along?  To say the least, and my last word today, you never ever know what you might find at our churches yard sale.  (Coming up sat June 9!)