Captain Jack Sparrow's Compass

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie came out in 2003, I was a bit skeptical.  How could you make a good movie based upon a ride at Disney World?  But, the movie was quite good, and led to a number of even decent sequels following (some better than others).

    One of the main characters is Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp), who is a pirate.  He always seems to get in and out of the oddest types of trouble through the strangest set of circumstances.  His goal, especially in the first movie, is to get back his beloved ship, the Black Pearl, of which he was mutinied when he was commanding.  To aid him, he has a strange compass, which doesn’t point north.  It’s not until later that we learn that this compass always points to what his heart desires most, which makes it a little complicated when he falls in love with one of the female leads, Elizabeth Swan (played by Keira Knightley). 
    Jesus today in the Gospel talks about the kingdom of heaven as a great treasure, or a pearl of great price.  Once a person finds it, they give up everything in order to have it.  To those in the parables, the compass would have pointed to heaven (if that were possible).  There is something about heaven that makes it worth everything else that we have. 
    And in some sense, we all probably can intellectually agree with that evaluation.  Heaven is eternal happiness with God.  We no longer experience pain, sorrow, death, or any of the fallen realities of this life.  We see God face to face, and God, who is love, surrounds us and embraces us eternally.  We worship God in His majesty with all those who are saints, whether canonized or known only to God.  That sounds pretty good.
    And yet, like Captain Jack Sparrow, the compasses that reflect the desires of our hearts, do not always point to heaven, but sometimes go every which way.  Perhaps we feel that no one else knows about the treasure in the field, so we figure we can do some other things before getting back to the treasure.  Or we tell the pearl merchant to hold the pearl on lay-away, and will come back some other time to pick-it up.  But we start to value other things ahead of heaven, and we chase after those these, even when we’re not sure what we will find, or if it’s even worth it.

    Part of our call as disciples is to ever-purify our desire for heaven.  I think the last time I preached on this Gospel I referenced the Kenny Chesney song that sings, “Everybody wants to go to heaven / but nobody wants to go now.”  Whether we’re parents training our kids, or simply training ourselves, we have an important role in making sure that we’re fixed on the trail of heaven, like a bloodhound seeking out an escaped convict, or Captain Jack Sparrow looking for his beloved ship. 
    Sometimes, the call to make sure that we’re on the road to heaven means ignoring the other sirens (Greek mythology, not emergency alerting devices) that call to us, and seem very attractive, but actually lead to destruction and death.  There are so many things that we, as followers of Christ, do not need to see or hear, because they lead us away from God.  Of course, we like to think that we are stronger than we are, that we can handle those sirens without being led astray.  But more often than not, we’re weak, and we will run headlong to destruction given the chance.
    At other times, we cannot avoid things that distract us from heaven, because they are all around us, and so we train ourselves to remember just how precious heaven is, or focus on other things that will not lead us astray.  I remember being in college seminary, which was on the campus of a small, Catholic, liberal arts co-ed campus.  As soon as it started to warm up in Minnesota, the college girls would bring out their towels and soak up the sun in the quad.  Our priests would sometimes remind us that, as we walked to class on those warm, sunny days, it was often good to examine just how beautiful the sidewalk could be, how many cracks were there, what weeds were popping up through the concrete, etc., just so that we wouldn’t be tempted to take that second, interested, lustful, sinful look. 
    Our hearts are often a mixed bag.  Age has a way of purifying that which we desire.  Older people tend to be quite serious about where they are going after they die.  But God doesn’t promise us that we will reach 80 or 90 years.  He promises to give us sufficient grace each day to say yes to heaven, and then we, in response, have to decide if we want to accept that grace or not.    Yes, at church, if we had Captain Jack Sparrow’s compass, our hearts would (hopefully) point to heaven.  But our goal is that the compass always points to heaven, not just for an hour on Sundays.  May we truly recognize how precious heaven is (and how sad and easy it can be to lose heaven), and have the strength to give up lesser realities and lesser desires for the eternal happiness of heaven.