I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “treasure,” I find it really hard not to go down a mental rabbit hole that is all about Treasure Island. I loved the classic coming-of-age adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson when I was a child and read it numerous times.
So even when it’s Holy Scripture itself talking about “where your 
treasure is, there your heart will be also,” I immediately start thinking about tropical islands and maps marked with an “X” and one-legged pirates with parrots on their shoulder and, of course, treasure chests. The book is responsible for creating almost all of our cultural archetypes about European pirates in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries (very few of them historically accurate), right up to the famous Disneyland ride and the wildly successful Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, and the idea of hiding and discovering secret buried treasure chests is at the heart of all of them.
Part of the problem is that nobody uses the word “treasure” in normal life. We do have treasurers, officers of non-profit organizations, who are responsible for overseeing the correct collection and use of money. We have a Department of the Treasury in the United States, which oversees the finances and taxes of the federal government. But nobody says, “I’m off to the ATM to find me treasure!” We talk about money, cash, investments, possessions, valuables…but not treasure.
“Treasure” sounds exotic and mysterious, something that is secretive and precious, something that you acquire and protect so that it cannot be lost, like those pirate’s chests bursting with gold and jewels that get locked up and hidden away so they cannot be lost.
And yet, most if not all of us do have treasure, or perhaps treasures, even if we don’t use that language. At some point you’ve probably played the old parlor game about what you would rescue from a burning house if you could only rescue one thing; that’s really a question about treasure. Think for a moment about what you would say [pause]. The most common answer has tended to be family photos. That’s less crucial for family photos from the last 15 years or so because of digital storage in the Cloud, but perhaps more crucial than ever for older, film-based photos because of the exact same thing.
Some of you may have said family heirlooms, which are by definition irreplaceable; for example, I have my great-great grandfather’s Presbyterian Book of Order from when he was ordained an Elder in the mid-19th century, so I may very well be the ONLY person on Earth who would choose to save the Book of Order in a fire! But you might have jewelry or paintings or silverware or some such things that cannot be replaced. Those of you who are more practically-minded might have said important documents that are difficult to replace like birth or marriage certificates or Social Security cards.
But I’m willing to bet that none of you said money, unless you happen to be one of those people who don’t believe in banks and hides all their money in cash throughout their house. We know that money is not the same thing as treasure, at least when we have some kind of clarifying question or predicament like what we could choose to save from a burning house.
Treasure is something valuable, to be sure, but more importantly it IS something that is precious, difficult-to-impossible to replace; it is often something that connects to our identity, particularly in terms of our family. My grandfather served in the 66th U.S. Infantry Division in World War II, which including occupation duty in Germany after the Nazi regime surrendered; my mother has a decorative cigar box that a German POW made for my grandfather in appreciation for his humane professionalism that now holds the letters my grandfather sent to my grandmother during the war.
That is something I would consider running into a burning house to rescue, not only because it is literally irreplaceable, but because being a soldier in a war to defend the world from evil and tyranny was so central to my grandfather’s identity, who in turn was so central to helping me develop mine. It is a priceless treasure, even though its monetary value is next to nothing.
Which is why of the most objectively true statements Jesus ever made was right here in this passage, which comes in the middle of the famous Sermon on the Mount: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Anything that has to do with treasure also has to do with our hearts. We treasure, store up, save and protect, that which is precious to us, which is always a reflection of where our hearts are.
In fact, Jesus could have just as easily said this the other way around: “where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.” Because what is valuable to our hearts, what we treasure, is a reflection of where our hearts are. The question, then, is whether our hearts are in the right place. And the reason that Jesus says it the way he did is, I think, because he recognized that the wrong kind of treasure can easily entice and capture our hearts if we aren’t careful.
So above all, we need to be sure that our hearts are in the right place, treasuring what is truly valuable. That’s what Jesus is really getting at here. The original Greek in this passage literally says, “Do not treasure for yourselves treasures upon the earth, but treasure for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Now, the word heaven is even trickier than the word treasure; it immediately conjures cultural images of clouds and golden harps and other nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with Biblical descriptions or understandings. We could have a whole other sermon on that topic, but for today, let’s just stick with the fact that the New Testament in general and Matthew’s Gospel in particular consistently talks about heaven as not simply God’s dwelling place, but as a reality that is ordered directly according to the will of God (it’s why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”).
In other words, it’s not something that we hope to escape to one day; it is something that is breaking into the world here and now. Jesus’ ministry began when he returned from 40 days in the wilderness to proclaim, “the kingdom of heaven has come near,” and it’s the same message he tells his disciples to share when he sends them out in pairs to minister to the towns and villages of Galilee later in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s also how he begins the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he says, kicking off the series of blessings known as the Beatitudes, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Is, not will be some day; it’s happening right now.
“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” But not everything can be stored in heaven; only the treasures of heaven can be the treasures in heaven. So, what are the treasures of heaven that can be stored there?
They are the currency of heaven, the things that are precious in heaven. They are the things that Jesus has been talking about in the whole Sermon on the Mount, the things that are precious to God: compassion, justice, mercy, peace; loving your enemies; caring for one another in community; practicing your personal piety for the pleasure of God rather than the recognition of others; and using your resources to serve God’s will and purpose; just a few verses after this, he declares that you cannot serve two masters, because you will inevitably love one and not the other: “you cannot serve God and Wealth,” he concludes just to make it clear.
If our treasure is our wealth, then that will inevitably be where our heart is, and we will serve it rather than the other way around. Francis Bacon famously said, “money is a good servant but a bad master,” and this is what he meant. Our wealth is meant to serve, not be served; it is to help build up true treasure, not become the treasure itself.
I think my favorite example of this is the story of Alfred Nobel. It’s a story in which some of the facts remain unverified, but the underlying truth of the story is too strong not to share. Alfred Nobel, as you may know, was a brilliant scientist and a prolific inventor with over 350 patents in his name, but the most famous of them is for inventing dynamite. Naturally, he made a considerable fortune off dynamite, and that’s not even including the revenues from his other inventions, so he was an incredibly wealthy man.
The story goes that Nobel took great satisfaction in both his inventions and his wealth until his brother died in 1888, and several French newspapers mistakenly believed it was Alfred Nobel who had died rather than his brother, and ran obituaries accordingly. As a result, Nobel was given the rare gift of seeing how people would remember him when he died while he was still alive, and he was horrified by what he learned. The headline of one ran, “The Merchant of Death is dead,” referring to the military application of his invention of dynamite as a stable explosive, and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
Nobel was determined that this would not be his legacy and set about trying to build a new one by rewriting his will to donate almost all of his fortune to a trust that would establish the “Nobel Prizes” as a means of encouraging and rewarding human excellence in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literary, and, of course, peace. In theb last century, Nobel’s prizes have helped advance human achievement in all kinds of constructive and even transformative ways, including peacebuilding. And it all happened because Nobel indubitably shifted his wealth from being his treasure to building up treasure for the benefit of others, placing it in the treasure chest of his estate; not to hide it away from others, but so that it could be opened and shared in a way that would make the world better.
One of most interesting things about Jesus’ teaching here is that he’s actually talking about the treasure chest, not the treasure itself, when he says “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The Greek word there is not a word that means money or gold or jewels; it is a word that means a receptacle for those things, a place to store them. So what he’s really saying is, “where your treasure chest is, there your heart will be also.” Where you keep the things that are most valuable to you, most precious to you, that is where your heart will be. Which makes sense since he’s just been contrasting earth and heaven as places to store up things that you value.
So, the question for all of us is, where is our treasure chest? I want to suggest that one of our most important ones is our church; this church is our common treasure chest. Now, I don’t mean the building; the church building and its surrounding property is part of the treasure, not the chest. I don’t mean your financial gifts; those are also part of the treasure, not the chest. And I don’t mean the people, each of us as followers of Christ and members of this community, we, too, are part of the treasure, not the chest.
I mean us as a community of faith, as a congregation. The very word, “congregation,” means “gathered together;” the congregation is what has been gathered together, stored up, treasured. And we treasure, we ourselves are treasured, gathered together, stored up, not in order to keep what has been gathered together secret and safe, but so that we can share and be shared in and with the world in ways that are constructive and even transformative in building up the kingdom of heaven, the reign and realm of Christ.
That is our purpose, and calling, and mission, as a congregation of faith, as a treasure chest of Christ. So on this Stewardship Dedication Sunday, let us bring our treasures; let us bring our hearts, let us bring ourselves into the treasure house of Christ, and see what God can and will do in the world, in us and through us, when we are opened up and poured out into this world that is starving for hope, love, joy, and peace.