In the house there’s an old wooden chest. It was a bit paint-splashed and unloved when I found it, but we cleaned it up with wire wool and wax and now it sits in the centre of my sitting room upstairs room. Inside the chest are the following items:
Two cowboy hats, one black one shocking pink (the latter retrieved from the garage roof where it must have been thrown by a passing hen party)
One Venetian carnival mask
A box of sound effects: two coconut shells for horses hooves, a gazoo, a bicycle bell, various bird calls and animal noises, a train whistle a swany whistle and a contraption that simulates the sound of rumbling thunder.
A nativity star with a face sized hole in the centre
One very large sheep with detachable fleece on green background
Zacchaeus’s tree in felt (together with a miniature body)
A cut out figure of a WWF all-in-wrestler with movable mouth.

You could say that it’s my treasure chest. It’s a props cupboard. Some of its spoils come out regularly, maybe annually, whilst other productions are revived less frequently. I do take some pride in my treasure chest. This is pretty close, it seems to me, to the scribe described in the gospel: the scribe of the kingdom who is like the householder who brings out of his treasury things both old and new.

However, there are other things that I have in my house. There are a few prized pieces of furniture. These make the house look nice, classy, I like to think, and welcoming, of course. Yes, it’s not really for me, it’s to enable me to entertain well: the numerous visitors who come and stay in the presbytery, and home-sick students. Except that I wince when, at the end of a meal, the heavy framed, and now well-fed students lean back heavily, and the joints of the delicately made chairs groan in complaint. With Wall-E, my chairs make the rebuke of the inanimate to the over-consumption of humanity. Also, I inwardly seethe at a wet glass, or a hot mug placed on a polished wooden surface.

So there are things in my house that are at the disposal of others and at the disposal of the gospel, and there are things that are not, and a little inventory is not a bad exercise.

I’m highlighting this verse, and taking a break from my usual concentration on Paul, because it is such an important verse in Matthew’s gospel. All the scholars say if you want to understand Matthew, the gospel writer, forget the story about the tax-collector called from his tax booth: we have no real reason to think that has anything to do with the evangelist. The line that describes Matthew is this one: the scribe of the kingdom is like the householder who brings forth from his storeroom, his treasury, things both new and old. This, they say, is how Matthew understood himself and what he was doing. Matthew is the gospel writer who brings out the old to tell the new story of the good news of Jesus. It’s Matthew who uses the phrase, “All this happened to fulfil the words of the scriptures …” He pulls out the words of the Hebrew scriptures and brings them into the service of the gospel. It is in Matthew’s gospel that we hear the words of Jesus, “Not one jot, one iota of the law shall pass away until its purpose has been achieved.” Matthew is a Jewish Christian who sees the value of the old in telling the new story of the gospel.

I’ve always found the description of the scribe an important one for my vocation as a priest. At my ordination I lay face down on the floor in a symbolic gesture that signalled my desire to give my life to God, his people and his gospel. But how do I live that gesture? Well, partly by putting my life, in all its constituent parts at the service of God, his people and the gospel. Not just the physical items in my house, but my experiences, all the anecdotes, some old, some new, all the reading and learning that I have: all of it is in the service of, or at the disposal of the gospel and should be put to use in preaching the gospel message.

Lastly, there is more offered by this verse than an explanation of the evangelist and an explanation of your priest. At another point in his gospel, Matthew quotes Jesus, “When you pray go into your private room.” The word used is the same as the words used here for storehouse or treasury. Now that’s an interesting idea for all of us. When we pray we go into that same place, the place where our treasures are: the treasures of our most precious memories and experiences, and we pray out of them, we put all of that stuff at the disposal of our prayer and our relationship with God. In your prayer go into your treasury, your storehouse, and bring out things both new and old.