My last blog as a Cambridge student. (About treasure.)

Last weekend I got invited to give a little talk at a treasure trail (that’s right, I said a treasure trail) that the Selwyn Christian Collective put on for the rest of college. We decided that we would stick with the treasure theme, and have a look at one of the tiniest parables Jesus ever told – it’s just one verse I think in Matthew’s biography – and I thought it would be fun to blog something along the lines of what I said! So here’s the mini-parable:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

So this guy is digging in someone else’s field for whatever reason (is he working? is he treasure hunting?) and his shovel hits something and he sees that it’s this immense thing of treasure! So then, cheekily, he covers it back up with dirt – and he runs home to sell everything he has! And then with only the shirt on his back left he takes his money and, grinning all the way, he goes to the guy who owns this field and offers to buy it from him. And then once it’s his he goes and digs up the treasure and it’s worth a thousand times what he sold to get it!

This is classic Jesus, because he is, as usual, making an outrageous claim about himself. Because the kingdom he’s talking about is what happens when he is the King – when people love him and follow him. So he’s basically saying: “I am so valuable, so precious – knowing me, loving me, following me is so glorious – that you would be right to drop everything else in your life to get me. With a massive grin on your face. I’m worth that much.” It’s times like this when it doesn’t seem so surprising that people had a tendency to throw rocks at him.

But he said this kind of thing all the time – somewhere else he puts it like this:

“Whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me, will save it.”

Hold onto your life for yourself and it’ll slip through your fingers. But lose everything for his sake, and then you’ll really start living. Then you’ll discover what you were really made for, you’ll find out what ‘life’ really feels like. Like he said another time, “I have come so that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

But there’s a problem for us when we hear this. I think we have a problem because there are loads of people making that claim these days. In this time and this place, we are in a literally global market of people selling us different things, all claiming that they are going to give us ‘real life’, fulfilment, peace, joy, security, meaning. Saying ‘buy this product’ or ‘take this job’ (OK, this one doesn’t actually happen to English students that much but my friends tell me it’s a thing) or ‘join this cause’ or ‘follow this pathway’ and it will make you feel really alive. A thousand different ideologies and religions: right wing or left wing, Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, spiritual practices and pathways, meditation and mindfulness and a thousand other things: and all of them saying “this is where you’ll find real life”.

But how on earth are we supposed to know who to believe? How are we supposed to know who to trust?

As I thought about this it occurred to me that surely the most popular solution to this problem throughout history, by far, has been this:

Choose whatever is most normal.

Cast your mind back to 500 years ago in this country. The average person is a Christian, basically because it’s normal. It’s the worldview which is socially acceptable and widely held around them. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t thinking, “I only believe this because it’s normal”, not at all. But the normalness of it means that to them it just seems obvious, sensible, good – and when they encounter other belief systems they seem just quite implausible. Other moral systems might well seem downright outrageous, deeply wrong.

But just because Christianity was normal 500 years back didn’t make it automatically true. Those cultural inclinations to see other things as implausible or morally unacceptable are actually a really rubbish reason to believe in Christianity! You want to go back and shake them and say, ‘’Think about it!’

So then the pressing question for us is, what’s the ‘normal’ worldview right now, in early 21^st century Western Europe? And I think it’s a kind of agnostic atheism – something along the lines of ‘There might or might not be something out there, but we definitely don’t know anything much about it, so you should just be true to yourself, and respect everyone else and their beliefs.’ This is so normal that for most of us anything else seems quite implausible, or even immoral. But in the same way as with Christianity in the past, just because it’s normal doesn’t make it right. Just because it’s normal doesn’t make it real. Just because it’s the most natural way of thinking for us culturally doesn’t mean it’s the way we’ll actually find real life, real fulfilment.

And Jesus clearly seems to think that going for the most normal, most obvious, most convenient option isn’t the way to find real life. The man in the story is digging. The treasure was buried – it was hidden – it wasn’t obvious! We have to some digging – we have to investigate. In fact, imagine he bumps into a friend as he’s selling all of his possessions with a grin on his face. To everyone else this field just looks like any other field, just another patch of dirt – to them he must look absolutely crazy! It’s not normal at all. But Jesus is saying, ‘knowing me, loving me, following me – it’s not normal, it’s not convenient, but it’s worth it. Because it’s where you’ll find real life.’

So the question is then, if there are so many options, and Jesus is quite open about the fact that what he’s offering is neither obvious nor convenient, why would we listen to him at all?

There are a thousand reasons, but a big one I’d want to point out is that Jesus lived what he claimed. He actually lived it – he proved what he said with his life.

So for instance, there are plenty of people who’ll tell you that they care about you, or about people like you, but actually it’s all about their own fame or profit or power. (If you insist on an example, might I politely offer Boris Johnson.) But Jesus says ‘I love you’, ‘I care about you’ and then he actually goes and dies. He lets himself be arrested and killed for our sake – to make it possible for us to be reconciled with him. He lived it.

Or as I said, there are a thousand different things saying they can give you real life, life to the full. But only Jesus has actually defeated death. The historical evidence (and this is why I decided to be a Christian in the first place myself) points inescapably to the conclusion that he actually did die, and actually did come back from the dead and people saw him and spoke to him and touched him. And if this guy has punched a hole in death and come out the other side, surely he’s someone worth listening to about where we can find real life!

So please, do some digging. I think Jesus is worth literally everything – I don’t expect you to believe that yet – but I think it’s pretty clear that he is worth a second look. Read one of the biographies of his life. They are eyewitness accounts. Read Luke. It’ll literally take you 2 or 3 hours. Read about Jesus, see what he was like, see if you like him. See if he intrigues you. Or if you prefer people to books, please talk to me or another person you know who loves Jesus – we love to be asked about this stuff!

If you want to try and be fair and investigate other beliefs at the same time – fantastic, do it! I’m just asking you, whatever else you look at, look at this. I’m asking you to do that because I’m like the guy in the story: I’ve found following Jesus and it’s amazing. It is worth everything. To be loved relentlessly, to be forgiven and restored again and again, to be entrusted with work of genuinely eternal significance – it’s so good. I’ve dropped everything for it, and I’d do it again a thousand times.

So yeah, have a dig. At worst you’ve given a few hours of your life, but at best you might find that you discover a whole new level to what life really is. If you’re in Cambridge and you fancy a chat about it, I would several hundred percent love to buy you a flipping massive fancy coffee and a cake of some kind, and chat. Because this is worth all the cakes in the shop – and if you know me you’ll realise those are very serious words. And I’m leaving Cambridge in less than a week’s time! So message me. Or just read Luke or talk to someone else because ultimately it’s not about me in the slightest, it’s about someone unimaginably better.