August 6, 2004
Treasure
Pentecost 10/14 (Gen 15.1-6; Lk 12.32-40)
Forever and ago during my naval aviation flight training days, a fellow cadet received a note from his girl friend back home. It said, simply, “Dear Treasure: Read Luke, chapter twelve, verse thirty-four.”
No one of us could call up just what that might be about. Most of us weren’t even all that sure what “Luke” was. Somebody thought it might be in the Bible, but nobody had one, so we had to scramble to finally turn one up in the chaplain’s office. Hurriedly, with his help, we found the reference. It said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
“Dear Treasure,” his friend had written. We not only thought he was a pretty lucky guy to get a cryptic love letter like that, but we also gained a new curiosity about what else we might find in that book.
Today’s lessons are about Abraham’s faith and God’s promise and about what they and we hold dear, but they turn on what Jesus said about treasure and heart. They are about where and what is our treasure, and about the reality that whatever is most valuable to us is always the place where our hearts will be, the place that will command our ultimately loyalty.
That this is only human is not to belittle it, but to put it precisely, I believe, where God wants it to be. God promises us the freedom to choose, and it is how and what and whom we choose that makes all the difference. Jesus tells his disciples — and, in turn, all those of us who promise to follow them — that it is God’s “good pleasure” to give us the kingdom, to offer us that intimate and healing relationship with her on which to build our lives. In turn, and if we would be stewards of that gift, Jesus reminds us that we must set our priorities straight, and that where that treasure is, there will be our hearts.
This says much about the place of the church in our lives. Is the church merely an association where we share a common interest, where our relations are largely external? Or is it a community where we share our common humanity, where our relations are largely internal? Is it simply one more denomination where faith is a system of doctrine to which we assent in order to be members? Or is it a corporate body where faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11.1) and with which we receive one another wherever we are in that on-again, off-again search?
In associations, in spite of the pleasure of like-minded and often self-serving interests, the members are not significantly changed by their relationship. And in associations, any leverage or influence we might have is simply sidetracked by the principalities and powers in our society.
On the other hand, in communities, traditions, language, and family customs mold the mind and strengthen the character of each member, renewing them as they mature, enriched by their uncommon interests. And through such communities there comes a security and subsequent authority not only to risk loving God and our neighbors, but also to stand firmly for justice and peace, to indict the principalities and powers in their tracks, and to give good and unswerving purchase for our presence.
The church is not about telling people how and judging the results, but about showing people how and rejoicing over the results, not about answering and providing neat solutions, but about creating an environment in which people can become and fulfill who they are and who they believe God wants them to be.
As Abraham discovered, we are born into such a relationship through promise. For us, our becoming is through the promise made in our baptism. Such a promise is a unique blend of covenant and hope. Its grammar is always not just of the doing, but of the being, not merely of a common mind, but of a common will.
Recall, if you will, how all the big covenant liturgies are community events with the congregation’s integral support always affirmed with a resounding “We will!” This promise, this unique blend of covenant and hope has not only place, but direction, not only a present phenomenon, but a future authenticity. And promise is always surrounded and embodied in an ambiance of purpose, of goal, of cause. We promise with one another, but we are always bound in the company of God by his promise and by ours.
Now that I think of it, had I begun this preachment with some salutation, I should have liked it to have been, “Dear Treasure…. “