It’s a Wonder-full Life: Treasure
Matthew 6:19-24
October 20, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley
Where your treasure is, Jesus says, there will your heart also be. Where you put your money, that’s what you will value. If you buy an expensive piece of furniture, for example, you will value it, take care of it, protect it. I remember a formal sitting room in a friend’s house where we teenagers were not allowed. The carpet was not to be walked on, the furniture not to be sat upon – at least not by us. I expect that my friend’s parents put more money into furnishing that room that they had into the basement where we hung out, and it showed.
They treasured that room as place to entertain adult company. There is nothing wrong with taking good care of your possessions. Nothing wrong with having some things that get saved for special occasions or furniture that teenagers are not invited to use. I’m not making a moral judgment, but only trying to apply this saying, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” When you have invested hard-earned money in something, then you care for it. Whatever your put your money into, your heart will follow.
This is one of those sayings that can work in the opposite direction too. If we turn it around so that it says “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also,” it is also true. I think of collectors. Someone who loves art or guitars or cars or books. It doesn’t have to be a high end collection, but if you love something, you generally end up putting money into it. And often, if you have one of the things you love, you buy another one and another one. (Don’t ask me how many feminist theology books I own.) Where your heart is, there will your treasure be.
Here is a literal translation of verses 19-20 “Do not treasure up treasures on earth where moth and eaters can consume and thieves can dig through and steal. Rather treasure up treasure in heaven where these things cannot happen.”[1]
“Treasure up treasures…”Treasure is used as a noun and a verb. To treasure something is to value it, to consider it precious and valuable, to love it. And, of course, as a noun, treasure is something that is valued or protected or loved.
Jesus is saying that human beings are always going to treasure treasures, but not all treasures are equally worthy. Earthly treasures are temporary. They can be eaten by moths or rust or mold. They can be broken or stolen.
We know this. None of us in this room loves money for its own sake. We don’t love the paper and ink of dollar bills or even of $100 dollar bills. What we value about money is what it can purchase. Money can buy necessities, to keep us alive. Money can buy luxuries, things that make life more fun, more enjoyable. Money, given away, can provide unimagined possibilities for someone else. Our conflicts with money are generally about how to use it well, and that is a question of what to treasure.
Middle-class and upper-class people are taught certain ideas about money. We’re taught that responsible people store up money for the future. We save for retirement or for children to go to college or for some unforeseen crisis. All of which are good things, right? But remember, where your treasure is, there’s your heart. So, if you have a retirement fund or a college fund or a rainy day fund, your heart is there too.
Richistan is a book written about 12 years ago. In it, the Wall Street Journal columnist Robert Frank studied the lives of ultra-rich Americans. He interviewed them and learned that many of them were highly anxious, so much so that they had formed self-help support groups. When he pressed them about the source of their anxiety, he learned that these multimillionaires and billionaires couldn’t sleep at night because they were worried, worried about running out of money. [2]
In one study, these ultra-rich people were asked “how much money would you need to feel financially secure?” The results were very interesting. Those worth $1 million said they needed 2.4 million. Those worth $1.5 million said they needed $3 million. Those worth $10 million said they needed $18 million to feel secure. In every category, the answer was always about twice as much as they had. [3]
It is probably easy for us to think that these millionaires and billionaires are treasuring the wrong treasures. Easy for us to think that they have lost touch with reality. But, are we ordinary folks so very different from them? Haven’t most of us thought, at one time or another, that we would feel secure if we had just a little more? If there were just a little more in the rainy day fund, we would breathe easier. If there were just a little more put away for retirement, we wouldn’t worry so much.
Some of you have learned to be content with whatever you have, and good for you, but for those of us who haven’t learned that yet, it often seems that our heart follows our money. If we want to change something about our money, then perhaps the key is in changing our heart.
Changing hearts is super hard work. Jesus was all about that transformation, so what he says here is pivotal. He says, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” Today, we would say that the eye receives light, but in the ancient world, they thought the eye was like a lamp, an instrument that projects light onto objects so that they may be seen.[4]
All of that suggests to me that the way to change hearts, including our own, is to change what we look at, to change our vision. Presbyterian minister Tom Long says that the decision about which treasures to treasure is a question of vision and freedom. He says, “If a person see life as a gift from God, a bountiful outpouring of God’s providence, then that person is free to hold possessions with a light grasp and to be generous towards others. On the other hand, if life is seen as a competitive struggle between winners and losers over limited resources, then one [will be captive] to that struggle.[5]
Our vision, our outlook on life in general, affects our heart, but so does the specific stuff we look at.
Sometimes we have been looking at the same things for so long that we no longer recognize how they affect us. I remember a woman whose husband was seriously ill. Her life was a daily round of caring for him. Then one day, her parents asked for help with an urgent matter. She wanted to help them, but she was caught up attending to her husband, and so she told her parents she could not help. Later, after the crisis had passed, she realized that, at the time her parents needed here, her husband was in the hospital. He was being well cared for. She could have left for a few hours to tend to her parents. In the midst of it, she couldn’t see it, but later she said it was obvious. And she felt she had let her parents down when they needed her.
This is often how we make decisions about our time and our money. We are trying to do the best thing, but our tendency to see just what is right in front of us or what we have been attending to or what is familiar, that is the tendency that makes it hard to change our hearts.
If we really want to follow Jesus, in the matter of treasure, then I suggest, we have to take steps to change what we see. If we can change what we see, then our heart may change and our treasure will follow our heart.
For some of us, this shift in perspective has happened on mission trips. Seeing other people’s realities has helped us look at our own in a new light. For others of us, it has happened in crisis. A health crisis, a relationship crisis, a financial crisis – a major event that interrupted life as usual and helped us see with more clarity than ever before what was really most important. Some of us were blessed with parents or mentors who taught us from a young age about how to treasure what was truly important.
For different reasons, some of you have found ways to align your financial practices with your deepest values. On a regular basis, in at least some arena of life, you lead with heart and let the treasure follow.
Oseola McCarty was an African American woman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She left school after the sixth grade to care for a sick relative and she never went back. For seventy-five years, she washed and ironed and folded the laundry of the bankers, lawyers and doctors in town. She earned just pennies, but she tried to save what she could and eventually she started a little savings account. She lived a simple life. Her earthly treasures were few. *She lived in a modest house just blocks from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. She did not get an air conditioner until she was well into her 80’sand then she only turned it on when she had company. She never owned a car. She walked a mile each way to and from the grocery store. She went to the Friendship Baptist Church every Sunday, carrying a Bible held together with Scotch tape. When she was 87, Oseola retired.
In 1995, the development office of the University of Southern Mississippi received a phone call from a local bank. The bank had a check for the university from Oseola McCarty for $150,000. No one at the university had ever heard of Oseola McCarty. She had never set foot on campus. This washerwoman who had never been to high school, let alone college, gave away sixty percent of her life savings she had for a scholarship fund for minority students. (She also gave 10% of her net worth to her church, by the way.)
You’ve probably heard that story. It made national news. She was invited to the White House and received an honorary degree from Harvard. Today I’m wondering what Oseola saw. What did her life illumine for her? She saw people who had much more money than she did. Did she pay attention to what they treasured and whether those treasures increased their joy and love? She had ample opportunity to notice disparities between rich and poor, between those with the opportunity for education and those who lacked it. It seems like her heart was with those who didn’t have that opportunity, and her treasure followed her heart.
Shortly before she died, someone asked why she did not spend her hard-earned money on herself. She smiled and said, “I am spending it on myself.” [6]
Beloved ones, may we wonder at God’s gift of life so that we live in the freedom that enables generosity and our treasure resides with our hearts. Amen.
[1] Ben Witherington, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary: Matthew, (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2006), p. 149.
[2] Robert Frank, Richistan: A Journey through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich (New York: Crown Publishers, 2007), p. 203-218
[3] Robert Frank, Richistan, p. 50
[4] Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VII, Matthew, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 210.
[5] Tom Long, Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p 74.
[6] As told by Wallace W. Bubar in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013) p. 138.