Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Parish, Decatur, Ga. (my sponsoring parish) for their Stewardship Kick-Off Sunday, October 30, 2011.

You knew it was coming. Fall is here, with all of its traditional trappings: football season, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, and, of course, the annual stewardship campaign.

Your stewardship committee, chaired by Steve and Ellen Bishop, have chosen Matthew 6:19-21 as the scriptural theme for this year’s canvass. Since we didn’t hear that passage in the lectionary this morning, let me refresh your memory.

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonishes his hearers against storing up worldly possessions for themselves, advocating instead that they should set their minds and resources on things heavenly. Jesus says,

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Until very recently, I thought this passage was about what you treasure in the sense of what you hold dear. I thought that Jesus was asking us to examine what it is that we treasure, because those things that we most value will be where our heart is. But that’s really a rather redundant observation, isn’t it? “Your heart will be with the things you care about?” By definition, the things you care about are the things that engage and move your heart!

Upon closer examination, it became clear to me that this passage is actually a lot more “in your face” than that. The Greek word for “treasure,” thesauros, means “what is deposited” or “a store of valuable things.” The word was used in other Greek texts from the biblical era to refer to state warehouses used to store government goods and for temple treasuries where offerings would be collected, in the Temple at Jerusalem and also in the temples of other religions. These religious “treasuries,” or “treasure chests,” if you will, provided a model for the development of private money boxes, places where people could store their personal finances.

In other words, the “treasure” Jesus is referring to here is not “those things you most value,” but your money! In Jesus’s world, it was storehouses of grain or flocks of sheep that people put away to “plan for the future,” but in 21^st century America, it’s often cold, hard cash that people “store up” for themselves on earth. That nest egg saved up for a rainy day, or the pile of bills you have stuffed under the mattress or collecting interest in the bank. That’s what Jesus is talking about when he says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” You become emotionally attached to the things you spend your money on.

I saw this verse illustrated powerfully by a pastor at a mega-church in South Carolina that I attended while I was visiting a friend. Allow me to share this very high-tech mega-church sermon illustration with you:

In this hand I have a nice pink heart. And in this hand I have a wad of cash. Jesus is telling us in this passage that where this (money) goes, this (heart) will follow. Not that if this (heart) is engaged with something, this (money) will follow, but the other way around. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Think about the ways you’ve seen this play out in the world. If your money goes toward an expensive new computer, your heart breaks when the computer breaks. If you invest your money in stocks and the market falls, your heart falls with it. If you give lots of money to your alma mater, your heart is suddenly a lot more affected by changes made to the campus or the curriculum, or the success of the football team.

When you invest your money in something, you become emotionally attached to it. We even use the financial word “investment” to describe our emotional attachments: “I’m invested in my child’s education” or  “I’m invested in the success of this new community initiative.” We may or may not be contributing financially towards these things, but we’re using a financial term to describe our emotional attachment. Perhaps this is due to this inherent link that Jesus points out between our financial investments and our emotional attachments.

If this is true, what does that say about how our financial giving to the church – or to other organizations that work to bring about the kingdom of God – affects our relationship with God? The mega-church pastor told his congregation that he was certain some members of his church had not fully given this (heart) to Jesus because they’d never given him this (money).

Now, when I first heard that, I recoiled. “What? You can’t love Jesus if you haven’t given him your money?” I scoffed to myself. “But surely ‘treasure’ in this passage means much more than just financial wealth. It sounds so crude to say that we have to give God a wad of cash to really give our hearts to God.”

But that statement stuck with me, and the more I investigated this passage, the more I’m convinced that that pastor was right. Because God demands all of our lives, not just some parts of them, and that includes even the areas of our lives we don’t like to talk about, like money.

We can’t compartmentalize which aspects of our lives we’re willing to give to God and which aspects we’re not. As the mega-church pastor put it, “If there’s anything in your life that if God said ‘give it to me,’ you’d say ‘no,’ that’s an idol.” And isn’t that so often our attitude towards our money when we feel that God is asking us to give it away? We’ll give our time and our talent all day long, but our money? Like the “rich fool” in the parable who builds bigger barns to be able to store more grain for himself for the future, we think that we can – and even that we must – store up treasures on earth so that we can provide for our futures.

It’s only responsible financial management to have a savings account, an IRA, an emergency fund, we say to ourselves, and to a certain extent this is true. But the problem comes when we think we are providing for ourselves, that we are ensuring our future financial success, forgetting that we are utterly dependent on the mercy and grace of God for our very being as well as all the material goods we have around us. We think that our money is ours to spend as we please, rather than a gift from God given to us to use for the service of God’s kingdom. Our hearts are focused on ourselves and our abilities rather than on God.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Where is your treasure? Where do invest your money? In paying the rent or mortgage? In fun outings with the kids or grandkids? In fast food? In attending theater or music concerts? In car payments? What does your bank or credit card statement tell you about where your heart is? Are you happy with what you find there?

Are there things that you want to value more, but you realize that other things have your heart? Maybe you wish you were more passionate about your faith or about church attendance. Maybe you wish you cared more about social injustices like discrimination or poverty. Maybe you wish you were more worried about the effects of warfare on children in other countries. Perhaps we should not just “put our money where our mouth is,” but put our money where we WANT our hearts to be.

In the same way that the Anglican tradition teaches that “praying shapes believing,” that through participating in worship and church life even when you don’t feel like it, you will live your way into the faith you hope to have, it is also true that “giving shapes caring.” What if instead of trying to will yourself to want to give or waiting until you felt called to give, you just gave? What if Jesus is right and your heart will follow your treasure? You might begin to care more about church, about God, and about working for the kingdom, because you would be invested – financially and thus emotionally – in those things.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

*The "mega-church" referred to in this sermon is NewSpring Church, founded in Anderson, S.C. but now with campuses in Greenville, Columbia, Florence, and Charleston, and with campuses "coming soon" in Spartanburg, Greenwood, Myrtle Beach. I attended the Charleston campus, and since the pastor, Perry Noble, is based at the Anderson campus, he was not even at the service, and the sermon was piped in on a live video feed. It's interesting how much of an impact his sermon illustration still made on me, even though I wasn't seeing it "in person." To watch the entire sermon, which was a "Frequently Asked Questions" about the church (the money/heart illustration was prompted by the question, "Why do you always teach on money?"), click here and choose "Frequently Asked Questions" (June 26, 2011).