Our hearts don’t just follow our treasure. They’re linked. Which means the gospel demands we love and share with others.
Hiding our hearts from a gospel of love
Ash Wednesday | Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Right before I buckled down to write this sermon, I came across a headline that really appalled me. Deep in my bones level. It was an op-ed from 2014 in the Washington Post with the headline: “In the long run, wars make us safer and richer”. {Breathe, Drew}
Yeah, that’s what the Roman Empire said. Really, that’s what empires always say. As they get rich, destroy countless lives, and are eventually destroyed by another empire. Safer and richer. Until we’re not.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
So then I shut it down and brought up the gospel. And the words struck me with new force.
“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.”
Treasure. I always read this passage with generic eyes about my stuff. But in the midst of a moment in which the spoils of war are once more being talked about as beneficial to us…it lands differently, doesn’t it?
Growing rich off the suffering of others? Is that really where our heart is?
War is hell.
It brings the sin of hell into the countless lives of our neighbors…for what exactly? Well… treasure. And some would have us join in, not to end it, but because it would bring…treasure. Or to prevent the seizing of treasure by someone else.
We’ve been playing this song and dance for thousands of years, thinking we know better. Or that it is in our interest, because we treasure our country or our form of government. We treasure our wealth or standard of living. Or perhaps we treasure our church.
So that is where our heart is.
It is almost too easy, then, to justify impoverishing others for the sake of our country, community, or faith. Our heart is in our country. So we take from theirs. Oh, but it gets better, because we don’t call it taking so much as profiting from someone else’s war.
Of course, it isn’t just the war.
We’re still allowing Pfizer and Moderna to patent mRNA vaccines and profit from them. Our treasure into their chambers. Are our hearts with the billions still waiting for vaccines? No. While we are triple-dosed, we’re talking about logistics—but, of course, our war machine can have anything it wants.
Where your treasure is…Jesus says.
So often we take these words from Jesus and we internalize them so much. We apply them to our own question: What do I do?
And every year I make the simple joke that accompanies Ash Wednesday wherever we are. We come to this most physical of services and we have another human being smush ashes on our foreheads and tell us:
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
And we hear this gospel of giving in secret and not showing off. So we’re all sitting here with this perplexing question: Do I wipe or not?
If I leave it, I can remember. And maybe if others see it, they can remember too!
Oh, but if I leave it, am I not showing off? Isn’t Jesus telling us to wipe our foreheads?
Every year I remind us of this joke because it shows how immersed we get into the question of whether or not we’re doing the right thing. We’re willing to debate whether or not to wipe the ashes from our foreheads. Like that is the essence of the gospel.
We can do that…
But we can’t talk about our treasure.
And sometimes it seems like the more treasure we have, the more we like the idea of giving in secret. Unless, of course, we can get our name on a building. Then we don’t mind letting others see.
The game we play with our treasure is to pretend it is nothing or it is justified or it is our blessing or that we worked hard for it or our parents did or whatever. Always, always, a really good reason.
Something that hides where our heart is.
This is the crux of it. Our hearts and our treasure are tied together.
Which is why we try so hard to avoid hearing Jesus when he says to give away our treasure. Yes, because our hearts are tied up in possessing treasure. But also, because of what that means if we do what Jesus commands and turn that around. If we give away our treasure, we are giving our hearts to other people.
Like falling in love. With total strangers.
We give ourselves away. And allow ourselves to become vulnerable. Think of the words we use: we open our hearts to someone else.
In a world that would have us wear body armor like it’s a warm coat, when a bishop-elect has to wear a bulletproof vest under their alb because some Christians threaten to kill them because he is gay or she is a woman, when self-preservation is always the way. Giving our hearts away is an act of incredible sacrifice.
Jesus calls us to a life of vulnerability, generosity, and self-sacrifice.
And with that life, our hearts and our stuff are always tied up together. So they are in everything. Together.
We can’t hide our shame.
Just because we don’t want to face that our hearts are selfish or that we refuse to be generous, that doesn’t mean we are justified in avoiding it. It proves we’re human. Imperfect. Normal. And in need of God’s mercy and grace.
This teaching comes from the Sermon on the Mount. And like I always say, this sermon’s got something to upset everyone. If you read all three chapters and walk away feeling good, there is no way you are listening. None of us wants to be called out like this.
But Jesus isn’t striving for offense. He’s calling us to open our hearts up. To reject the cold, protective posture of benefit and accumulation.
There is one more image that might help us.
Pirates and buried treasure.
Kings, knights, and dragons; and pirates: these are the images treasure brings to mind.
Unlike kings, whose power is buffered by institutions and politics, pirates reveal the grotesque character of desire, accumulation, and hearts full of greed.
In pirate stories, treasure is looted and stolen; sought by unscrupulous adventurers. But pirates are only ever heroes when they give up the treasure, they sacrifice themselves, or seek redemption for their thieving and backstabbing. In Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Jack Sparrow does all three!
We intuit the move as from money to compassion, but love and treasure remain in it all! The move is actually the heart’s turn from self toward his new friends: from wealth to generosity. And in so doing, he makes himself vulnerable, and allows himself to be changed.
At the heart of Lent is this vulnerability.
Our willingness to accept that we must change. That we aren’t perfect. And we need to be forgiven for our mistakes. Because none of us is God.
Accepting change—that we are to change as individuals and that we are to change as a community—is the joyous byproduct of vulnerability. Because it means that others may find community here. People seeking other people find us and we become familiar.
And friends whom we haven’t seen? They too find us familiar.
Lastly, let us not forget those who have broken faith with us. Who have since confessed their sin and made amends. The ones that we’re prone to say “good riddance” about. We instead prepare ourselves to welcome them back. Changed. All of us. Already! And changed by this!
For we dare not call something love that isn’t generous. That isn’t about making someone else happy as we are.
And we dare not call ourselves loving when we refuse to be so generous.
So as I invite us to remember that we are dust and that we will return to the dust, let us reverse our polarities—to the fleetingness of treasure and the everlastingness of love.
And may our hearts be opened to evermore become God’s agents of love.