Peter Walter and the Lost Hammer

Hoxne, England, November 16 1992 Peter Walter lost his hammer. It wasn’t just the loss of the hammer, it was the damage it could do to a harvester or other machinery, so he asked a friend with metal detector to come and help him look for it. His good friend Henry Lawes had been given a metal detector as a retirement gift.

As Henry swept it across the fields the detector began to give a strong signal. They both started digging. At first they unearthed a few shovelfuls of spoons and coins. They stopped digging and notified some archaeologists who subsequently unearthed 27kgs of stuff! There were 15,234 Roman coins plus spoons and 200 gold objects. Lawes got paid £1.75million which is about $Aus3,159,960. He split the money with Peter.

Later they found the hammer and it is now in a famous display called the, “Hoxne Hoard.” It is the largest discovery of Roman artifacts ever found in England. Archaeologists dated the hoard to the end of the Roman Empire in England, about 410 AD. This was a very unstable time in England and wealthy people often hid their wealth in the ground in the face of impending danger. Obviously, something happened, and they never returned for it.

Jesus told two stories about treasure – both of which represent the way people come into the Kingdom of God. The first was of a man who found treasure in a Field while ploughing. However, he did not own the field, so he sold everything he had in order to own the field. Matt 13:44 (There is Rembrandt painting of the event). The other (Matt 13:45) is of a man seeking ‘The Pearl of Great Price.’ One man looks and finds and the other stumbles upon the treasure and realizes what he has found. The first tells us that salvation is free but takes everything we have to keep it. In both stories we see that each man was willing to sacrifice everything they had to obtain the gift. This does not mean we can earn salvation, just that it is worth committing our whole life and everything we have to the quest for eternal life.