Lester Start’s Works

1Where Your Treasure Is

L. J. Start

October 14, 1979

First Baptist, Kalamazoo

This is Stewardship Sunday. Today we meet as a congregation after worship to discuss the planned budget for next year, and prepare to express our support for the continuing operational expenses of our church.

Jesus tells us in the text for today, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” And my message this morning is simple and straightforward. It follows the theme of the bulletin. If we really treasure Christ, if our heart is in Christ, then we treasure the Church of Christ. We can show this by the way in which we live in the Spirit of Christ, work in the Spirit of Christ for His kingdom, and give in the Spirit of Christ to help to achieve that great goal, “till Christ shall dwell in human hearts.”

First let us look at the text again, the text from the Gospel. [Read versus 19 - 21].

These familiar verses have been discussed often, and variously interpreted. I’ve even heard it suggested that Jesus was giving prudential advice about not hoarding goods that might perish, but rather selling them and putting money in the bank or in securities! Where moth or rust or thieves have no effect.

Well, Jesus is advising us to put our treasure into things that will last. And it is simple wisdom to buy or put our money into things that will last - so far as our economy of planned obsolescence will allow. But Jesus in talking about the usual sources of wealth familiar to the people of his day, warns that all of them are impermanent.

Part of a man’s wealth in those days consisted of fine and elaborate clothes, especially festal garments made of fine wool. But such things stored away can be destroyed by moths. Such possessions won’t last.

Part of a man’s wealth might consist of corn and grain stored away. Remember the parable of the man who built ever bigger barns to hold his wealth? But such wealth is eaten away - that’s what the word translated “rust” means. And we can see the threat to grain by mice and rats eating it away. Or perhaps indeed reference might be made to a fungus rust or rot that could develop and destroy its value. Rusting iron objects are probably not meant. Stored grain is hardly a permanent treasure either.

Treasures of coins, gold and silver, were kept in Biblical times, too, of course. The problem was then as now, that if one did have a little treasure store in his house, a collection of coins, thieves could literally dig through the flimsy walls of baked clay that many houses were built of - and steal the treasure away. Such treasure was precarious, too, not exactly permanent.

Jesus is not so clear about the nature of treasure in heaven. But his audience was familiar with the phrase. And it meant among other things (first of all) acts of mercy and love.

The Jews had a story about a certain king who became a convert to Judaism. When a famine came in the land he gave all his treasures to feed the poor. His brothers were angry and said, “Your fathers gathered treasures, and added to those of their fathers, but you have dispersed yours and theirs.” He said to them, “My fathers gathered treasure for below, I have gathered treasures for above; they stored treasure where the hand of man rules, but I have stored treasure where man cannot rule; my fathers gathered treasure which bear no interest, I have gathered treasure which bears interest; my fathers gathered treasures of money, I have gathered treasures in souls; my fathers gathered treasures in this world, I have gathered treasures for the world to come.” Jewish rabbis as well as Jesus knew that what is hoarded selfishly is lost, and what is given away generously brings treasure in heaven. So Jesus teaches in the parable of the talents - what is used and extended to others grows - what is hidden away does not. So that even that which one has can be taken away. And it is clear that for Jesus acts of love to others is what brings treasure in heaven, which assures entrance into heaven. “Inasmuch as you have done unto one of the least of these my brethren,” says Jesus, “you have done it unto me.” - feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty drink, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, going to him who is imprisoned. Acts of love and mercy are the stepping stones to the presence of God.

Treasure in heaven meant also the character of one who loves God and follows his commandment. When a certain rabbi was asked if he would consent to serve in a heathen city if he were paid great treasure, he replied that he would live only in a city of the Law. “Because,” he said, “in the hour of a man’s departure neither silver or gold nor precious stones accompany him, but only his knowledge of the Law, his good works, his love of God.” As a grim Spanish proverb has it, “There are no pockets in a shroud.”

Jesus does not tell us what treasures in heaven are, but we know what he meant; it is loving God with all one’s heart, soul, strength and mind and one’s neighbors as oneself. Love is the heavenly treasure - where this treasure is, is where the heart is, also.

The Gospel lesson goes on: [read verses 22 - 23].

Here is another example of a parable compressed into a verse. The eye is like a window. Just as a window lets light into a room, the eye lets light into the body. If the window is obscured, dirty, discolored, the light will be hindered. So, says Jesus, the spiritual light that gets into a man’s heart or soul, depends on the spiritual state of the eye through which it passes.

If the eye is single - the Greek word can also mean - if the eye is sound, open - our life is full of light. The noun form of the same word means generosity, as when Paul reminds the Corinthian Church of the generosity of the churches in Macedonia. Jesus is commending here the open, generous, spiritual eye.

This view is strengthened if we look at the word translated as “evil”. The Greek B@<ZD@l means indeed evil or wicked. But it can mean diseased or grudging and niggardly. So Jesus is saying something like this, I think: an open, generous spirit can give a clear undistorted picture of life and people, but a grudging, ungenerous spirit distorts the world as we see it, and lets little spiritual light into the chambers of our souls.

In Dickens’ Christmas Carol, we are told that a dog leading a blind man led him down on alley when he saw Scrooge approaching for he saw that Scrooge had an “evil eye.” The mean, squinting eye of Scrooge was the evil of his miserliness that blinded him to all the love and beauty he had lost his ghostly recollection of Christmas past. Nietzsche speaks of those whose souls squint - a nice image, I think, of the mean spirited person.

Jesus then seems to be saying, if the eye of our spirit is open, generous, sound, life is rich with promise; if it is grudging, ungenerous, a squinting eye, then how mean and cramped and poor our lives can become.

One more verse: [read verse 24].

Here is an either/or choice. We cannot serve God and mammon, says Jesus. But what is Mammon? And what does the verse mean? The word Mammon has an interesting history. It is a Hebrew word and it meant originally any property, possession that one found useful in life. It was a perfectly neutral term with no bad connotations of materialism or greed. Then it came to mean that property which a man entrusted to a banker or safe deposit of some kind. But as years passed Mammon came to mean not that which is entrusted, but rather that in which a man puts his trust.

And so it’s tends to be. Originally, one may think of possessions as merely providing a basis for the exciting possibilities of life. But then security, the need for some kind of insurance against the vicissitudes of life (which youth tend to ignore) looms up. And we pay more attention to entrusting some wealth for safekeeping. In the end, however, the temptation is to put all one’s trust in things and wealth; and they become the power in whom one trusts. Then the material things become one’s god, not just a material support. So Mammon comes to be written in caps.

We cannot worship things and God at the same time. The word for servant here really means slave. And a slave in those days spent full-time devotion to attention to his master. He could not serve two. And Jesus is saying we cannot serve, depend on, material interests primarily, and still relate to God. This does not mean we must reject material concerns - we must merely dethrone them, putting God first, and then seeing material concerns fall into place. The rest of the chapters suggest this where Jesus urges his hearers not to be overly concerned about what to eat, or drink, or wear, trusting in the Father Who knows we have need of these things. The culmination of his teaching is this (verse 33) “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness - and all these things shall be added unto you”. First things first - and God must come first in our lives, if we are to reap the rewards of the spirit and find the treasures of heaven.

What, then, should we conclude from all of this? The lesson, I think, is this: the spiritual problem Jesus is addressing, the problem that assails our times as much as His, is the problem of insecurity, the problem of anxiety as we face an uncertain future. And the problem with insecurity and anxiety is that we may very well never be able to avoid them completely. (As Professor Moltmann suggested in the last Armstrong lecture.) Fundamentally, they are rooted in a sense of separation. Psychologically considered, they may be as fundamental as the experience of separation experienced in the trauma of birth. This may be what insecurity and anxiety are all about. We feel separated from something that will give us a sense of stability and permanence. Perhaps, we need things to give a sense of reality to the moving flux of life itself; we need things to hang on to lest we perish into the nothingness that haunts our being.

And so we reach out for acquisitions - things to make us happy, give us a sense of worth, a sense of security. The trouble is, it doesn’t work. We cannot place a ceiling on our desires, we cannot feel really secure, ever - inflation is a specter of insecurity for almost all - and one is always anxious before the unknown events of the future. Anxiety cannot be cured by earthly treasure - we know it in our hearts, but we still act as if this is the way to security. Why?

We have not yet understood the lesson of the sermon on the Mount. Our anxiety, our insecurity is rooted in our sense of separation from God. It is our spirits that feel adrift - it is our spirit that must be liberated from anxiety. And this liberation comes from a sense of a restored relation with God through His Son Jesus Christ.

The treasure in heaven is the promise of a new birth in Christ to restore our sense of belonging - to overcome separation from God. This comes through faith and trust - openness to the redeeming love of God. When Christ shall dwell in human hearts, the kingdom will be at hand - when love shall rule and peace shall be its reign. That is why we should aim to live in the spirit of Christ, work for His kingdom, and give in some measure in the same sacrificial spirit as His gift for us.

That is why we must rally in the support of our church as it faces an uncertain future. It is the church that has nourished us, taught our children the good news of the Gospel, sustained us in troubles - rejoiced with us in triumphs. Its merits and support in attendance at worship, in sharing in the work of the church, and above all now in giving money in its support.

There is no permanent security in things. The spirit is liberated from anxiety as we come into relationship with God through Christ in the life of his church.

That Jesus had some such connection in mind seems indicated by these next verses:

Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink etc.

This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together for great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

Almighty and eternal God - creator of the universe and Father of our spirits, we worship Thee. Give us to know that Thou art ever near; though the insensitivity of our own selves sometimes shuts Thee out. In this time, in this place, make us sensitive to Thy presence - descend upon our hearts. Spirit of God, strengthen our faith if it is flagging, steady our spirits if they are faltering - humble our self-conceit, if it is too lofty - fill us with a sense of Thy spirit as seen in Thy Son, so that we may go forth in a closer walk with Thee -

We pray in the spirit of Jesus Christ.