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June 17, 2022"Where Your Treasure Is"
We’ve been in Chapter Six of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount since Wednesday, with tomorrow’s gospel passage finishing it up. It is the most memorable chapter of Matthew’s Sermon, containing the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father”), Jesus’ admonition to perform good works “in secret,” that is, not for vainglory, and the great “Lilies of the Field” passage at it’s end which we will hear tomorrow.
Today’s (seemingly slightly less memorable) passage has two distinct parts. The second, about the eye being the “lamp” of the body, is the more obscure. It can only be understood, again, if we understand it metaphorically. The Lord does not seem to be speaking of literally “seeing,” that is, what the organ of the eye may be said to “do.” In that sense, the eye simply sees what is before it. There is the age-old expression, “I saw it with my own eyes.” But metaphorically, we enter into an entirely new understanding of what we mean by “seeing.”
For we are well aware that people are entirely capable of “seeing” what they want to see. How often do we experience someone understanding something in a completely different way than we do? One person can see news reports as cataclysmic where another can see them as offering a reason to hope. We are all familiar with optimists verses pessimists. It all depends on how we “see” things. What is our attitude? Do we see the world as God’s gift to us that needs to be cherished and causes us to be immensely grateful or as a place of darkness (that “great” darkness Jesus speaks of today), pain and fear? Each way of “seeing” makes an enormous difference. It makes all the difference.
Finally, Jesus asks us where is our treasure? What do we value the most? It is a question that we ought to ponder very seriously, prayerfully and often. For Jesus tells us quite plainly, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If our hearts (again, always a metaphorical understanding of our deepest selves) are not somehow rooted in God’s Kingdom (which is a Kingdom of faith, hope and love), then they are rooted in false idols. And there is no life in idols.
The ancients worshiped idols of actual false gods, like Baal in the first readings from Second Kings this week. We moderns often can be found “worshiping” idols of a different nature. Idols such as success and security, power and influence, reputation, health, pleasure, self-will and of course, money. We would do well to ask ourselves, what do I believe I cannot live without? Those are idols. Do we believe that God can set us free from such vain beliefs and desires? Do we believe that God can replace the fear within us that is at the heart of all this “idol worship” we do, with the love of God? Not our love for God, but the one pure belief in God’s absolute love for us? For it is only a true faith in that love of God that can caste out all fear in us.
That is the great treasure Jesus speaks of both here in today’s gospel passage as well as elsewhere such as in the parables of the treasure buried in the field, of the pearl of great price and of the lost coin. It is the treasure of God’s love. In those parables, the finder sells everything they have to buy that treasure and the woman turns the house upside down seeking it. Are we at least willing to begin to let go of all those useless idols we think of as so valuable for the one thing necessary? It is to trust only in God, in God’s love. To do so would enable us to finally “see” with great clarity, the clarity of God’s Spirit, and to know with great assurance what perfect freedom is, the release from all our fears even as we walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death. If we only knew how great this treasure is, we would seek it and only it with all our hearts.
