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

saintcolumbakent
Aug 7, 2016
6 min read

The Rev. Catharine Reid

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

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

Some years ago as part of a class on Benedictine spirituality one of the exercises we did was to make a pie chart illustrating the proportions of our time devoted to various areas of relationships – family, friends, work, church, the local community, etc.

In doing my own chart, I ended up with a segment comprising at least a third of the whole which I labeled family. As I looked at it, I realized that for the previous ten months only a tiny portion of that family segment represented time relating to my actual family members. The vast majority had been spent dealing with my sister’s house and stuff. Dispersing cherished items among family and friends, packing up and giving away clothing and household goods, making repairs, landscaping, dealing with broken pipes and fallen trees, having a mammoth garage sale, and taking multiple loads to the local thrift store. Not to mention filling part of my own basement with the things that I brought home.

Listening to the presenter speak of the Benedictine vows of stability, obedience and conversion of life, I was thinking back to my own years of monastic life under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and trying to relate the two. It seems to me the vow of poverty, which has as much, if not more, to do with how we relate to things than to how much extraneous stuff one accumulates, or questions of individual or communal ownership, relates well to conversion of life. While the original Latin, conversation morum, is most often translated as conversion of life, it seems to me it can be interpreted as well as a continuing willingness to see things in a new light. Or to see things in a new light.

As members of an incarnational faith we live sacramentally, recognizing the sacred in the mundane, the body of Christ in the bread and wine. We have an appreciation for the beauty, utility and associations of the things with which we surround ourselves in worship and in our homes; for artistry and craftsmanship; and for our natural surroundings. We speak eloquently about stewardship; we recycle, we may have water filters rather than buying bottled water, etc. But I find in myself still the need again and again to look at my own relationship with things, to ask myself whether things in my life – an attitude of acquisitiveness, of greed, of fear of not having enough or wanting the latest thing, the objects themselves or the time, attention and expense they require, the resources they use up, - do all of these keep me from being rich toward God, as last Sunday’s gospel expressed it?

I look around me in my home and wonder how I came to be surrounded by so many things after more than six years spent in community and of not personally having much more than my clothing and books. Yet even in monastic communities there is the continual work to see things in a new light, individually and collectively. To ask does what I, or we, have further the journey or hinder it. Is it produced or bought at the expense of someone else’s well-being, or their having time to focus their sight on more than just subsistence, on their own journey. Where truly is our treasure?

Last week in our gospel reading after refusing to arbitrate for a man at odds with his brother over an inheritance, Jesus told the parable of the man with the superabundant harvest who made plans to build bigger barns so that he could store his wealth and be at ease for years to come. But it turns out the man did not have years to look forward to – he had isolated himself and stored up possessions so that he was extremely wealthy, but had not become “rich toward God”.

He failed to recognize that our life takes its goodness from the action of God, who moves towards us; who “on our behalf holds our life together for us”. Jesus tells us not to be afraid, not to be fearful about the future, for it is our “Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.” Our dignity and worth are not earned but are gift – given to us as beloved sons and daughters of God. Everything we have is gift, and as recipients we are to live lives of sharing and activism.

A story collected from a social worker who worked in the hills of Appalachia shows what this kind of living might look like.

The Sheldons were a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. The help they received was not adequate, yet they managed their meager income with ingenuity -- and without complaint. One fall day I visited the Sheldons in the ramshackle rented house they lived in at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear which strayed into their yard once too often. The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for. There would be meat in their diet even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high. Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat. I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance firmly. "Now you just have to take this. We want you to have it. We don't have much, that's a fact; but we ain't poor!" I couldn't resist asking, "What's the difference?" His answer proved unforgettable. "When you can give something away, even when you don't have much, then you ain't poor. When you don't feel easy giving something away even if you got more'n you need, then you're poor, whether you know it or not." I accepted and enjoyed their gift and treasured that lesson in living. In time, I saw it as a spiritual lesson, too. Knowing that all we have is provided by the Father, it seems ungracious to doubt that our needs will be met without our clinging to every morsel. When I feel myself resisting an urge to share what's mine -- or when I see someone sharing freely from the little he has -- I remember Mr. Sheldon saying, "We ain't poor!" (1)

Not only are we to live lives rich toward God and others, but Jesus goes on to say we are to live ready - “dressed for action and with our lamps lit”, alert and watchful. We are invited to live lives that express the kingdom now. We prepare by living expectantly. We as Christians know Jesus is coming and we are to live as if he were already here: not building up wealth for ourselves, but giving of ourselves and our possessions, by showing mercy, all of which builds up a treasure in heaven that cannot be taken from us.

Part of that living the kingdom now and also preparing for the future coming of the Son of man is tied up with his present coming to us and serving us in Word and Sacraments. Being prepared for his future coming, means receiving his comings to us through these means in the present. In a sense, being prepared is to let him prepare us for the coming. When we come together on Sundays in our hearing the word and receiving the bread and wine, we are living the kingdom now. In our reading, Jesus describes the master of the alert slaves as one who “will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them”. Not what his hearers would have expected to hear – this reversal of roles; master serving slave. But that is the nature of the kingdom – for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom – freely given, not earned.

John Donne said it well in one of his poems. Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked any thing. A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: Love said, You shall be he. I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.