Do not give what is sacred to dogs. Do not throw your pearls to the pigs. If you do, they will turn on you and tear you apart (Matthew 7:6).
This is no doubt the strangest of all the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount. It seems to come out of nowhere, like the Sermon would feel exactly the same with or without this verse. Faced with such an odd saying, we may want to go straight into decoding mode, finding the one-for-one allegorical meaning of a dog and a pearl and a pig. But we don’t have to do that. I suspect Jesus would rather us simply sit with the outrageous image and let it work on us in whatever way it wants to. Jesus is the master of telling a story or preaching a sermon with just a few simple images. Would you pass the plate in the Lord’s Supper to a dog? Would you put your finest, most expensive jewelry on a pig? Let these images sit and marinate. That so far is strange enough, but Jesus still adds a splash of unsettling color, because neither the dog nor the pig is a cute, docile, domesticated house pet. The dog is rabid, and the pig is wild. Get too close and there will be injuries.
So, since we’re not going to try to tie the picture down and burden it with some final (imagination-crushing) definition, perhaps the picture can get us asking some questions instead. What is this picture of dogs and pearls and pigs doing in me? Is there anything in my life that resonates with it? What are my “pearls,” the things I cherish most?
Here’s one: Who do I trust? With whom am I entrusting what is most valuable to me? With whom am I entrusting my very self? We might trust in a relationship to give us meaning and belonging. We might trust in our money and property to give us safety and security. We might trust in leaders and rulers to solve our world’s problems. In doing so, are we tossing our pearls to the wild pigs?
The Sermon has been inviting us into trust all along. Trust that God sees you (6:1-18). Trust that God is capable and willing to make you safe and secure (6:19-34). Trust that your neighbor is safe in God’s hands too (7:1-5). Do not trust the pigs with your pearls. There is a better way.
Ask, search, knock. “For everyone who asks receives. Everyone who searches finds. And all who knock will have the door opened (Mt 7:7-8).” Ask for daily bread, for forgiveness, for rescue. The answer is yes. Search for God’s will and you will, in time, find it. Knock on the Kingdom of Heaven’s door and God is right there ready to open and welcome you in.
Our God is not making himself hard to find. He is not dangling some fickle reward only to sometime snatch it away. He is the very love that brought us into being, and we are his children (Mt 5:44-45). We are so much safer and more secure than we realize. Our trust in relationships, property, and leaders turn out to be as silly as putting our nicest jewelry on a pig. Our trust in God will only be rewarded. This is why we immerse ourselves in practices of prayer, scripture, and Christ-centered community. Every Lord’s Prayer, every Lord’s Supper, every Lectio Divina is a deposit of trust in the God who deserves that trust, a pearl withheld from the pigs.