“Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
It’s kind of begging for a stewardship sermon, isn’t it? Sell your possessions and give alms, and then you’ll have a purse in heaven full of treasure, and if your money is in heaven, then your heart is also. And having your heart in heaven is good--maybe because it can reserve a place for you for when you die? So it’s all about whether or not you will go to heaven when you die, is that it? Is that what Jesus was mostly concerned about?
I’m sensing some problems here. I think I took a wrong turn. Aren’t I supposed to be talking about how important it is to use your money in a way that is consistent with your priorities? Shouldn’t I be talking about tithing? Proportional giving, that is, deciding on a percentage of your income to give? About offering some of what God gives us back to God--not waiting to see what is left over, but offering some off the top? At the beginning of the month, or the budget cycle, rather than the end? But wait, is this really a stewardship sermon?
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Well, what we do with our money is important, isn’t it? It says something about our priorities, about who we are and what we care about. For example, I just learned something about the British people in the nineteenth century when I read Bishop Barry Beisner’s column in the diocesan newspaper. When the British acted to abolish slavery, it cost the British people approximately 1.8% of their national income over sixty years. Sixty years! That’s a lot of money! But it was abolishing slavery. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? They put their money where their hearts were, even though it cost them. When we talk about the Millennium Development Goals, about bringing extreme poverty to an end in our lifetimes, we might learn something from what the British were willing to do to end slavery.
But there’s much more to the idea of treasure, of course. I am now most of the way through reading the new Harry Potter book--for the second time. I promise not to give anything away. One interesting thing though, is that this line, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” is quoted in the book. You know, Harry Potter doesn’t care about money at all. Granted, he is privileged to have enough wizard gold that he isn’t lacking anything, but he also shows no interest in gaining money or any of the things that usually come along with it. What he is interested in is helping others and fighting evil. On the way, he reaches out to the second-class citizens of his world, like elves, goblins, and several part-human, part-something-else people. He treats them decently, unlike the way some wizards treat them. They are part of his treasure, part of where his heart is.
Our treasure, too, is much more than just our money. Our time and our attention, for example, are also part of our treasure. Just think about how many advertisers compete each day for a slice of our attention. Billboards, radio, TV, print advertising--they all are willing to pay good money for a chance at grabbing our attention, and a little of our time. Of course, they also hope that some money might be following that time and attention, but it’s the attention they want up front. So where do we give attention? Where, and to what, do we, in fact, pay attention? What about our time? Do our time and attention go to things we actually care about? Family, friends, community, work on behalf of others, things that bring us joy? Or do our time and attention go to television, email spam, activities that we find boring even while we are engaged in them? Where are we placing our hearts along with our time and attention?
Another part of our treasure, in addition to our time and attention, is our faith. We heard a lot about faith in this morning’s readings--how Abraham had faith and did all the things that God asked him to do, even though he had no evidence that what God promised would really come about. And then the reading from the letter to the Hebrews used Abraham’s faith as an example, commending it to those who read the letter. But for some of us, faith the way it is described in those two readings is kind of hard to deal with.
Once, during my ordination process, where you have to meet with various committees and individuals and talk about why you want to be a priest, someone asked me whether I believed in God. I was kind of surprised--after all, here I was trying to become a priest in the church, surely that question had been settled? But then I thought for a minute, and I said yes, and no, and yes.
What I meant was that during my day-to-day life, when everything is just kind of perking along and doing just fine, I do believe in God. But then there are some times when things go wrong, when some situation crops up, or maybe it’s a weird kind of mood, when God seems very improbable. I start thinking of things like “how can there really be a God when . . .” and fill in the blank. Or I’ll wonder, are we all just fooling ourselves so we’ll feel better, feel like we’re not alone in the universe? But then, somewhere underneath all that doubt and fear is a deep, deep certainty. I know that God exists. I know that God is good. I know that we can trust God. I don’t know how I know these things, I don’t try to rationalize them or base them on some kind of evidence--it’s just that deep, deep certainty.
I have noticed, though, that the way I spend my time and attention has an affect on my faith. Faith, like anything else that is alive, needs to be nurtured and developed, otherwise it may just shrivel where it sits. That’s one of the reasons we have church--to nurture our faith. Worshiping together helps develop our faith--as does hopefully all the other stuff we do around All Saints, whether it’s Bible study or serving at the St. John’s shelter or--maybe you have to look at it the right way--serving on the vestry or the finance committee.
And there are certainly other ways to nurture your faith besides things around All Saints! Maybe for you it’s taking a walk in the woods. Maybe it’s listening to music. Maybe it’s spending time in silent prayer, alone. Or journaling, or dancing, or meditating, or something else. The question isn’t so much what it is for you particularly, as whether or not you allow yourself to put some of your treasure--that is, your time and attention--into developing this part of your treasure--your faith.
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Where we give our time, attention, faith, and, yes, money, is important. It really matters, and it bears some thinking about. But we can also be reassured, we don’t need to be overly worried, because God wants the best for us. Remember, at the beginning of the Gospel we read this morning, Jesus told us: “Do not be afraid, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”