Matthew 6:19-24
Fourth Sunday in
Lent
One of the major themes running through
the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ concern for the integrity of the human heart;
it’s a steady current that runs through the entire sermon. We saw this last
week in our exploration of Jesus’ call to wholeness, not perfection. Jesus summons us to be whole, even as God is
whole. We also saw that Jesus, as a
teacher of wisdom and physician of the soul, is a kind of cardiologist: he wants
for us healthy hearts. More than an
organ that pumps blood or the seat of emotions, the heart was understood as the
totality of one’s self, the source of thought, emotion, and will or action. Jesus
understood the pain and destruction caused when hearts are divided, when we are
at war with ourselves, or when our outer life is not aligned with our interior
life. As we saw this morning in adult
education, Jesus came to heal our divided, broken hearts, to lead us toward
wholeness, toward a life that flourishes in the Kingdom, and that this healing,
this desire for wholeness is directly related to how we understand
salvation. “Flourishing are the pure in heart,” Jesus said, “because
they will see God” (Mt. 5:8).
These verses before us today put a spotlight on how
we move from the inner to the outer expression of our walk with Christ. He wants us to pay attention to the divisions
we carry within us and the way they get in the way of kingdom living. And often, our divided hearts come into focus
when we reflect upon the things that we treasure, whether we are serving God or
wealth. Instead of using a Greek word, Matthew uses an Aramaic word in the text,
mamona or “mammon,” which means
property, possessions, or money. Mammon
is difficult to translate into English. It refers to “physical money,” as well
as everything that money can buy, all the goods of the world, as well as
everything that one owns. Implicit to “mammon” is all the privilege and power
and security that then comes with having money.
Mammon is extremely seductive and wields an enormous influence over our
lives; even when we don’t consider ourselves especially materialistic, it has a
hold over us, we’re in its grip, just by living in a society such as ours that
worships mammon as a god. New Testament scholar, Jonathan T. Pennington reminds
us, “One cannot flirt with money as if it has nothing to do with one’s inner
person.”[1]
Did not Paul say, “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6:10)?
With this allusion to love we are brought back to
the heart. We can’t serve two masters. We might think we can. We might think we can hold our attitude
toward money and wealth apart from our hearts and what God requires of us, but
we can’t. That’s a lie. Jesus, who knows us better than we know
ourselves, knows that we can’t serve two masters, we can’t live a full, whole,
flourishing life with divided loyalties, for “we will either hate the one and
love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Mt. 6:24). We
can’t be both servants of money, wealth, property, and possessions and servants
of the Living God.
Jesus was enough of a realist to know that matters
of commerce, trade, wealth, and the desire for financial security come with
being human. What he’s concerned about
is the way our anxiety around these things, our proclivities to hoard and save,
worries about “having enough,” our greed, our obsession with wealth and money
and things as if they were gods—and our obsession and fascination with those
with lots of money and things, blitz and bling—are, together, unhealthy,
neurotic, and sick. Chief Sitting Bull
(c.1831-1890), the Lakota leader, said of the European settlers, said of most
Americans, in 1887, “…the love of possession is a disease with them. These
people have made many rules that the rich may break and the poor may not.”[2]
It’s a kind of disease that eats away our souls. In the end these “treasures”
will be taken away by moth and rust, or thieves, or, in the end, death
itself.
So, why not put your treasure in something of
ultimate value and worth? For the sake of your heart, put your treasure in the
things that make for life. Doesn’t that make more heart sense? Where you place your
treasure says something about who you really are in the core of your
being. What you treasure most tells the
tale of who you really are.
This is a tough teaching to hear. Jesus is intentionally turning up the heat here,
upping the ante. But Jesus offers this,
not to make our lives more difficult, but because he loves us and knows what’s
best for us. He knows what our hearts
require. He wants to help your inner
life to flow out, to shine out for the world to see. “Let your light shine before others,” Jesus
said, “so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in
heaven” (Mt. 5:16).
And to shine we need a good eye. Today, we know
that light enters the eye and allows us to see. In Jesus’ time, the eye was
understood as a kind of lamp or torch, and the light of the lamp flowed from
deep in the core of one’s being. The source of light was within. The science
might be all wrong in this text, but the spiritual and psychological truth is
as true as it ever was. We see with the
heart.
In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s
(1900-1944) classic children’s story The Little Prince, the fox says to the little prince, “It is
only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to
the eye.” We see with the heart.
To have a good eye means there is light
within. “A good eye is proof of inner
light…Inner light makes eyes shine.” In the Judaism of Jesus’ time, if someone
said, “You have a ‘bad eye,’” it meant that you’re selfish, covetous, that you
carry an evil or envious disposition, that you “see” with hate. If someone says,
“You have a ‘good eye,’” it meant that you were generous, you had an attitude
of giving, that selflessness flowed from the light of the heart.[3] Jesus wants us to have healthy eyes, or, better
translated, he wants us to have “whole” eyes.
Whole eyes produce generous eyes, and generous eyes lead to generous
lives.[4]
St. Augustine (354-430) knew the value of a whole
heart. And he knew that faith is born in the heart. In his journey to becoming
a Christian, as told in his Confessions,
Augustine came to a critical moment when he realized that his life didn’t
belong to him, he became conscious of just how anxious and confused and divided
his intentions were, his heart was “restless;” focusing here and there, following
one diversion then another. Then he came
to see that the human heart can only find its true home when it finally rests
in God. And so, he confessed, “You have
made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in
you.”
It’s difficult for a disordered, divided heart to
wholeheartedly serve God. But when our hearts are ordered, whole, they can then
be placed in service to something and someone larger than ourselves. Then the kingdom, God’s love and justice,
becomes our treasure, which we “invest” in with our hearts. We put our hearts
into it, put our hearts behind it. We place our hearts in service to the
kingdom, which is what Jesus did with his life, which is what Jesus calls us to
do with ours. Like John Calvin
(1509-1564), we can offer our hearts up to God, promptly and sincerely. Core meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere. (I offer you my heart, Lord, promptly and sincerely.)
This was his personal motto. And he came up
with an image, a symbol to go along with it: an upturned open palm holding a
heart. He offered
up his heart, a heart on fire, a heart alive to God. Isn’t this what we’re called to be as a
church?
Shortly, we will invite women and men, called by
this congregation, to be ordained and installed as Elders, Deacons, and
Trustees. The call to serve is a call to
offer one’s heart, promptly and sincerely, wholly and completely, to God and
God’s desire for this church. My prayer
is that you will lead this congregation from your hearts—may you serve with all
that you are, thought, feeling and will, the totality of your self, give it
your all. May you put your hearts into
this work and into this beloved people of God.
As we consider matters of the heart on this Lord’s
Day, it’s fitting for us to dedicate our new website. A lot of heart went into the creation of this
new site, our new online home on the internet: www.catonsvillepres.org. This website is a mirror that reflects back to us something of who we
are, it reminds us who we are. And this
website is also a window that allows our neighbors to look in and catch a
glimpse of who we are, to see something of our hearts, to see where our
treasure is, to see and even feel how we love one another and try to love this
hurting, troubling, yet beautiful world.
Something of our heart is there.
But, ultimately, the website is not about us, it’s
about the heart of God’s love pulsating with life and passion and joy through
us—and, to be honest, if we’re not reflecting the heart of God as a church,
then tell me, why are we here?
May our prayer be that whoever looks at us, whether
online or offline, sees something in us of the heart of God. May it
be so.
* * *
This sermon is part of a six-week Lenten series:
Following Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount
March 10: Are You Flourishing?
March 17: Becoming Salt and Light
March 24: Wholeness, Not Perfection
March 31: Matters of the Heart
* * *
This sermon is part of a six-week Lenten series:
Following Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount
March 10: Are You Flourishing?
March 17: Becoming Salt and Light
March 24: Wholeness, Not Perfection
March 31: Matters of the Heart
[1] Jonathan T.
Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and
Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2017),244
[2] Mark
Diederich, ed., Sitting Bull: The
Collected Speeches, (Coyote Books, 1998), 75.
[3] Dale C.
Allison, The Sermon on the Mount:
Inspiring the Moral Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 2016), 143.
[4] Pennington,
241.
