This week we’re continuing in this section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is laying out nine different ways in which we can be inwardly divided between performance and perfection. Last week we looked at the first three, and we talked about how giving, prayer, and fasting can become a performance if we do them in order to impress others with our piety, rather than doing them quietly and secretly within a personal relationship with God. Jesus challenges us to stop play-acting as religious people and become authentically engaged with God, seeking to please him only. These first three markers of division have to do with how we engage in a relationship with God.
In these next three, Jesus expands the discussion to our relationship with money and material things. If we are not single-minded in our spiritual devotion to God, seeking to please him only, says Jesus, then we will almost certainly not be single-minded in our dealing with material things. When we don’t put material things within the perspective of the kingdom of God, then we’re likely to worship them instead of God.
Look at these three points that Jesus gives us:
First, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” says Jesus, but “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust or moths or thieves can get to it.” Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Jesus seems to be saying that we have a tendency to try to bank our futures in two different directions – in earth and in heaven.
He adds to that in verses 22-23 by saying that we turn our eyes in different directions. We’re attracted by shiny things that lead to darkness, rather than turning toward the light of God’s kingdom.
Second, in verse 24, Jesus says “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. We have, in other words, a tendency to be loyal in two different directions – toward wealth and toward God.
And third, starting at verse 25, Jesus talks about worrying about possessions and food and drink. We have a tendency to be anxious in two different directions – toward the kingdom of physical wants and the kingdom of God.
Now, of all the things we’ve talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, these are the teachings that challenge many people the most, particularly as we live in a consumer culture. “Laying up treasure” is something we’ve been conditioned to do, and an initial reading would seem to indicate that what Jesus is advocating for here is getting rid of bank accounts, retirement funds, and institutional endowments, among other things. But there’s a key word in the text here that clarifies what Jesus is talking about. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Don’t lay up treasures on earth,” but rather, “don’t lay up for yourselves treasure on earth”—a subtle difference but an important one. It’s not the treasure that’s the problem, it’s what we intend to use it for.
The Bible talks about money and possessions more than 2,000 times—more than prayer and sex combined. Jesus himself addresses the topic all the time throughout the Gospels. Jesus assumes that money and possessions will be necessary parts of our lives, but he assumes that whatever we have isn’t really ours in the first place. We come into the world with nothing and we leave with nothing. Whatever we have ultimately belongs to God.
I’ve used this illustration before, but I think it bears repeating. It’s like the game Monopoly. You start out with nothing, you’re given some money to manage, you play the game, and no matter whether you win or lose, in the end everything goes back in the box and someone else will one day play with what is yours. Jesus understands the fundamental truth that we do not really own anything—we only manage it for a time. We are not owners, but stewards.
When we put up treasures for ourselves, we’re basically saying that God has no claim on God’s own creation and its resources. We somehow believe that the acquisition of wealth will make us happy and fulfilled, but to believe that is to believe a lie. In Luke 12, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool, who keeps building bigger barns to store all of his acquired goods as he hoards resources for himself. But God comes to collect what’s rightfully his. “You fool,” God says, “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” And Jesus adds, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
We’ve seen what the unrestrained acquisition of wealth can do to a whole society. There’s a ripple effect through the whole world from the greed that causes people to try to live beyond their means. We’ve seen the results of people trying to build bigger and bigger barns and houses and bank accounts at the expense of others. We’re watching the earthly treasure of housing values, stock markets, and debt loads become rusty and moth-eaten and stolen right before our eyes.
Everyone’s talking about how to fix the economy, to get it back to the way it was. I would argue, however, as I think Jesus is arguing here, that we need a different economy altogether—the economy of the kingdom of God, the only economy that will last.
To have treasure in heaven means that we manage those God-owned resources in ways that benefit God’s kingdom. The material becomes spiritual when we use it for the kingdom. As E. Stanley Jones so wonderfully puts it, “The material is taken up into [the disciple’s] life as a sculptor takes up a chisel, not as an end in itself, but as a means toward the end of a perfect statue.” To have treasure in heaven means that we invest resources in such a way that we begin to shape the future in ways that reflect the coming reality of God’s kingdom. We choose not to be owners, but stewards. We choose to use material things for spiritual purposes.
John Wesley summarized Jesus’ teaching with three rules for the use of money. Remember these? Rule 1: Gain all that you can – the idea is not unrestrained acquisition of wealth, but understanding that we are to acquire what we need through honest work. Some people have the gift of making money, but the point is to make money for the purpose of using it for spiritual ends. That leads to Rule #2: Save all you can. We save money so that we might keep from being in need ourselves. An emergency fund, a reasonable retirement fund—these are wise stewardship of money because they allow us to address immediate needs and not become a burden on others or be subject to the burden of debt. But that leads to Rule #3. We gain all we can and we save all we can so that we can give all that we can. This is the essence of having treasure in heaven—we recognize that we are stewards of God’s resources, so we give all that we can in ways that build up his kingdom.
And what do we give to? Well, the great Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones piggybacks on Wesley and explains that an investment in the kingdom is and investment in the lives of people.
“We have one great thing to invest—our lives. We may invest them in money, making it an end, but if we do, what happens? Money came up out of the earth and it will return to the earth. If our lives are invested in it, they will go to the dust with it. We may invest ourselves in buildings, but buildings come up out of the earth and they will crumble to the earth. If our lives are invested in them, they will go back to the earth with them. We may invest ourselves in physical pleasures, but the body is dust and to dust it shall return. If our lives are invested in the physical side of our nature, then they will go to dust with it. The only bank that will not break is the bank of human character. If we invest in people, then our investment is deathless. For you touch people, and they in turn touch others, and on it goes like the ripples of a pond to the utmost shores of eternity.”
Jesus invested in his disciples. The disciples in turn invested in others. Someone invested their lives in us, or we wouldn’t be here. I know I wouldn’t be. I think today of the many people who invested their lives and resources in me—the parents who adopted me, the pastors and church members who shaped my understanding of God, the youth pastor who brought me to his house for dinner every Thursday night when things were tough at home and bought me shoes and groceries without being asked, the teachers and professors who took extra time with me, the people who gave to scholarship funds so that I could go to college and seminary, on and on it goes. An investment in people is an investment in the kingdom of God—an eternal investment that goes on and on from generation to generation. You want to put treasure in heaven? Invest in people.
I think that’s what God wants us to do individually and collectively as a church—to invest in people. Ultimately, that’s what a church is about—it’s about people, the people who are here to worship Christ and, even more so, the people who have yet to know him. When we give to the church, we are ultimately investing in people—people who may become disciples who will invest in other people. The church certainly isn’t the only means of investing in people, but the point is that disciples are about making other disciples. That’s how the Gospel of Matthew ends, with Jesus telling his disciples to go make disciples—in other words, to go invest in people!
To be able to do that, however, we have to first be all in with God. Jesus makes this clear in the second principle here. You can’t have two masters. You can’t serve both God and wealth. The King James says “mammon” which is a way of referring to property and wealth in general as though it were a god, which is precisely the way Jesus means it here. Ever hear of “the Almighty Dollar?” We know its power. Money can become our master, boss us around, be our ever-present, all-consuming thought and orientation. You’ve heard this one, too, “Money talks.” Yup. And what does it say? One comedian says, “Money talks and mostly what it says is, ‘goodbye.’”
But Jesus’ point here is that we can’t listen to money and obey its demands and listen to God at the same time. We can only have one master. There can only be one voice directing us. We can’t live inwardly divided by trying to serve God while, at the same time, trying to serve our own interests couched in the guise of money and possessions. If we are mastered by God, then we can begin to master money in ways that are life-giving and serve the kingdom.
In Matthew 19:16, Jesus encounters a rich young man and illustrates the point. The young man comes seeking “eternal life.” Jesus tells him that the way to enter life is to keep the commandments. All well and good, says the young man, I’ve kept all of the commandments. But what am I still lacking? It’s like he knew in his heart that there was still something missing. And Jesus tells him: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come and follow me.”
Notice the language. “If you wish to be perfect”—if you wish to be whole and complete and mature, if you wish to be my disciple, then you have to give up being mastered by your possessions, and instead, “give to the poor”—invest in people!—and then come and follow me. Matthew tells us that the young man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. He was always going to be their slave.
It’s not easy, Jesus goes on to say, for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom. Those who are mastered by their possessions have a hard time giving them up. But it’s the only way that leads to freedom and new life. Those who are able to hold things loosely and use them wisely, says Jesus, will never fail to have enough, including eternal life.
The rich young man couldn’t give up his possessions because his anxiety wouldn’t let him. See, those who are mastered by money can never have enough to feel completely secure. Jesus addresses this in the third principle. Look back at chapter 6 beginning at verse 25 (read through 34).
Jesus is saying, look, you’re anxious for the wrong things. If you seek the kingdom, if you invest in the kingdom, then everything falls into line according to the right priorities. God orders, owns, and controls everything. It all belongs to him, and he graciously supplies what we need. No, we don’t merely sit back and wait for it to fall out of the sky, but when we’re diligent about orienting our life and work to the kingdom and the will of the King, God supplies what we need—not necessarily what we want, but what we need.
Now, notice how that rounds out what we’ve already talked about. If we’re investing in people, then the end result is that someone is going to be invested in us. That’s the economy of the kingdom. To be a community of disciples is to be a sharing community. The Book of Acts tells us that the early church practiced this principle. Acts 2:44 – “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” No one needed to worry, because everyone was invested in people.
Now, some might want to call this socialism, but that would be wrong. Socialism is something that’s mandatory and enforced from the outside. What we’re talking about here is stewardship that comes from being subject to God and God’s Kingdom. We’re not talking about a political philosophy here. What we’re talking about is a rule of life. It’s something that arises out of us because we have chosen to follow Christ.
As we have been saying throughout this series, the reason this sermon matters is because it is embodied by Jesus; and one of the things that is most striking about Jesus is that he was basically a person who was happy and content no matter the circumstance. Yes, we see places where he had to deal with the raw reality of conflict and sin and death, but when he told his disciples to live without worrying about tomorrow it was pretty clear that he wasn’t worrying about it himself, though he had plenty of reason to do so. Jesus seemed to always be fully present, which allowed him to notice the people in front of him at any given moment. He understood hard work, but he also seemed to understand that God would supply his needs when necessary out of the riches of God’s good creation.
We’ve seen the results of an economy that serves mammon. We have nowhere to go but up. The answer to our anxiety isn’t going to be solved by an act of Congress or the recovery of the stock market—it’s only going to be ultimately changed by the adoption of a whole different economy altogether—the economy of the kingdom: an economy based on investment in people, and economy that is subject to God’s rule of justice and mercy and peace, and an economy in which anxiety is replaced by commitment to a different kingdom.
Are you all in?
