"Dangers of Double Vision"
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Text: Matthew 6:19-24
He had reached rock bottom, the absolute pit, the lowest place, and he didn't know how to get out of it. He had tried everything - the good life, alcohol and friends. He had lived in the highest social strata in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He had surrounded himself with the intelligentsia. He had tried to figure out the meaning of life through those who were wise, consulted friends of the university, sought a way out of his terrible dilemma and state of being, but it was getting him nowhere. In fact, the more he tried to understand the meaning of life, the more anxious he became. The more he came face-to-face with his own mortality and with death, the more depressed he became. His depression had reached such a state and was so overwhelming in his life that he was wondering whether he could even go on. He talked about his own demise, and possibly even taking his own life. There was this void, a void that couldn't be filled, and he saw no way out.
The man was Leo Tolstoy. Reaching this state of depression, an illness from which he suffered, and also anxiety that his life had no foundation or meaning, led him to ponder the really important things of life. Tolstoy, in the great work that he did on a confession wrote, “I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet.”
That is how distraught he was. But then he observed that the peasants, ordinary people who worked on the land, people who had no position, power, authority, worldly wisdom or wealth, seemed to have found a sense of meaning in their lives. And they found it in the Church and in their faith. Tolstoy, a great critic of the Church who was ostracized by the Church, still saw problems with the Church, but nevertheless saw in the hearts of ordinary people a faith worth embracing. After his search to find the meaning of life, all his endeavours to deal with anxiety and pending death, Tolstoy concluded that in the Christ these people had, he had found what he was looking for - he had discovered the foundation that had otherwise been shaking, and moving and letting him down.
Last Sunday, I addressed the whole issue of foundations from the point of view of the Apostle Paul. Paul wrote in Corinthians that, “You cannot lay a foundation other than that which has already been laid, which is Jesus Christ.” In Paul's search, for all that he had tried to do, for as good and righteous as he had been, it was in his encounter with Christ that he found the foundation, and he was reminding the Church he had helped build in Corinth, that it was that solid foundation on which they could stand, and on that foundation alone.
So, it seems to me, like Tolstoy and like Paul, now is the time for us to actually go to that foundation himself: Jesus. What did he say about foundations of life? Well, he says a lot. In today's passage there is an incredible statement that establishes how Jesus understood foundations, namely that the value that we place on things reveals our foundations. Now, by value, I don't mean moral and ethical standards: I mean the value that we apportion to things. Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon. Where the treasure is, there your heart will be also. You cannot serve two masters.” Jesus was clear that what you value determines what your foundation is, and what your foundation is determines what you value.
I know that the value of things is a highly subjective matter. This became clear in an article that I read in the beginning of January about a discovery in the town of Gosforth, which is just outside Newcastle in the northeast of England. When Dr. Carr, a surgeon, died his estate took over the things he had left behind. They went into his garage and there was this old, dust-covered, dirty, mouldy car. This car just looked terrible! Unbeknownst to them, they had found the Holy Grail - for those of us who love cars! The 1937 Buggati 57 S Atlante! Oh mercy, what a car that is! When other cars of the age went 50 mph, the Buggati went 130 mph. When every other car looked like three bricks stuck together, the Buggati had beautiful sweeping lines. It was just amazing! When they cleaned it up, they realized that it was in its original form. It was all there. There was this car that had sat in dust in a garage and had not been driven - that is a sin - since 1960, and it was now worth more than three million dollars. Staggering!
Here was a doctor who had a car, thought it was nice, put it in the garage, forgot about it, never looked after it and never saw its intrinsic value. But it was something that was profoundly valuable. Value is a subjective thing; it is often in the eye of the beholder. As Oscar Wilde once said, “A cynic might see the price of everything but the value of nothing.” Often, we do not know the value of things.
Jesus often talked about the value of things. He talked, for example, about the pearl of great price. He said that this was a pearl that was worth selling everything you had to get. Then, he said, the Kingdom of God is like this pearl - it is the most valuable thing you can possibly have.
When a woman came to place perfume on him and the disciples said, “Oh, you are spending a lot of money on really expensive perfumes!” Jesus said, “Do not stop her. Let her put that perfume on me. Let her anoint me. The poor you always have with you, but me, not so.” Jesus was aware that this woman was revealing how much she valued him, his life, his witness and what he was going to do. The perfume was a sign of the value she placed on him.
The same was true of the widow and her mite. When the wealthy were thrusting out their chests and showing off what they had given in terms of their alms and their gifts in the synagogue, the widow came with her mite and presented it. Jesus knew that the value of what she was giving, though small in earthly terms, in terms of the Kingdom was huge. What seemed to be worth nothing was, in fact, worth everything. It was the widow and her mite that Jesus acknowledged.
Conversely, the Gospels reveal that Judas saw more value in 30 pieces of silver than in his relationship with his beloved friend, Jesus. He treasured that more than he treasured the coming Kingdom and the ministry of Jesus Christ. Throughout the Gospels there are numerous stories in which Jesus talks about value - the value of things, not in the worldly terms, but in terms of what is understood as value within the Kingdom. To be able to understand that value, you have to see things through the lens of God's own loving Spirit. Why? Because often, value is distorted.
I received a disturbing phone call this past week from a man who works as a front desk greeter for an organization. I have known him for nine years and admire him immensely. He is a very devout man. When we meet, we talk about coffee, cars, sports, life and politics. But this phone call was different. He said, “Andrew, more than anything in the whole world, I need today your prayers. My daughter has been in a car accident in Guelph, and she might lose her life. I am calling you now simply to ask you to do the most important thing. Would you pray for her?”
We had talked about many things; we valued many things; we treasured many things. But now, we talked about the most important thing. All of a sudden, what was truly important to him was brought into focus. We were discussing what was of the most value - his daughter's life! And the most valuable thing that I could give him were my prayers on her behalf. Is it not true in life that when we receive bad news of illness it hones and refines our values? Things we otherwise think are important become less so when we realize that health is in jeopardy. It gets us to see the value of things in life. Why? Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency to see the true value of things. So often our lives are distorted. That is what sin does! It carries us along on a wave of distorted values, and when we build on those distorted values, we lose sight of what is truly important.
A few years ago - because I am getting older - I had to move to progressive lenses in my glasses. When I first started to wear them, I walked around like an old man. I was running into things. I didn't know whether to smile properly. I felt that my face was distorted. It was all just wrong! If ever I looked at you strangely in the last few years, the problem was my glasses. But with one minor adjustment, everything fell into place. The glasses had been sitting too low on my face. All of a sudden, everything was clear.
You see, our sins do not necessarily have to be major sins like murder, rape or theft. They may be very simple parts of our lives, but they can still distort our sense of value. Mathew does a brilliant job in our text because he joins three comments that were made by Jesus, probably at different times in Jesus' ministry, and it becomes so clear what Jesus thinks about value. He says, “Where your treasure is, that it where your heart is. You cannot love both God and money.” He also says, “If your eyes are distorted then you only see darkness, but you need your eyes to be right in order to see the light.” Then he adds, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Mammon is a fascinating word, because when the rabbis used it originally, mammon meant material possessions that you could actually hand to somebody else in trust. But over time, mammon came to represent something else - material possessions in which you placed your trust. Jesus saw that mammon had become a god in whom people placed their trust, the foundation on which they built their lives, and he says that if you do that, you will distort all other values - you cannot serve both God and mammon.
This has often been exaggerated to mean that Jesus had no sense of the value or the importance of money - nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is not saying that money is inherently evil; he is not saying that the accumulation of wealth is a negative thing; he is not saying that making money for somebody else, as many of you do in your careers, is a bad thing. No, he doesn't say that! What he is saying is that when you come to trust in money and in material things, and build the foundation of your life on those things, the value of everything else becomes distorted and wrong. It is not money, it is the love of money which is the root of all evil, and when you place your foundation on those things, that is when you have trouble.
I think that we have gone through a time in the world's history, the western world in particular, in which we have been worshipping money and material things. People have built a foundation on those; they have sought after them. There are so many programs on the television that deal with the accumulation of money, and the problem is that when you do so at the expense of God and at the expense of the right foundation, your values become distorted. As Tolstoy said, “I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet.” Jesus says, “Where moth and rust corrupt, that is where you have your problems.”
But is Jesus just negative? Is he just simply denouncing mammon? No! He wants people to worship God. And if you have a right foundation, then you have right values. Conversely, if you have right values, that reflects the right foundation. That is what Jesus is getting at. The problem I have with atheists is not that I want to take them on or that I am angry or upset with them - I just think that they are misguided in that they assume that human beings, who very often distort things, can live a life of caring and compassion without a sense of God in their lives.
It may last for the exceptional few, but it is not real because we are bombarded with distortions all the time. We are encouraged to distort our values at times. It is not easy. It is hard for people and if you don't have the right foundation, then everything else crumbles. Jesus said, “Do you love God or do you love mammon? One or the other.” But he understood that if you love God, then you value things differently than those who worship mammon or nothingness.
I read a delightful story in a magazine that illustrates the dangers of getting carried away with materialism and lacking the right foundation in your life. It is a story about a group of men in the locker room of an exercise club. A cell phone rings and one of them swiftly picks it up an answers it. The conversation goes as follows:
“Hello?”
A woman's voice says, “Hello dear, how are you?”
“I am fine,” the man replies.
She says, “Look, I just want to let you know that I am going to be passing the mall in a few minutes before I pick you up, and I have seen the most gorgeous coat in there. I have wanted it for a long time - it is only $1,500. Do you think that you could allow me to buy this coat? Would that be all right?”
He says, “Well, if you really want it, by all means, buy it.”
She says, “That's great! While I am talking about buying things, this morning I was at the Mercedes Benz dealership and I saw a magnificent silver car that I have always wanted, and the salesman will give it to me for $70,000. I am wondering whether it would be okay if I bought that?”
The man replied, “Well, as long as it is loaded, because it's got to be loaded at $70,000 - and you are sure it is a good deal?”
She says, “It's a wonderful deal!”
So, he says, “Then go ahead.”
She says, “Great! Earlier this morning, I went to a real estate agent and I found a condo on the waterfront that I have wanted for a very long time with a magnificent view of the harbour. They have dropped the price by $30,000, and for $900,000 we could buy the condo. It would be wonderful, but we need to put the deposit in before the end of the day in case somebody else comes along and gets it. What do you think?”
And he says, “Well, I think I would only offer $850,000. But, I suppose if you really want it you can go ahead and buy it.”
She says, “Wow! This is great! This is the best day of my life! Thank you very much!” Then she hangs up.
The man closes the phone and asks, “Who does this cell phone belong to?”
You see, the value of things was determined by the relationship. That man didn't care what she spent. It didn't matter at all - he didn't know her. But, if he had, his value would have been totally different - I would hope!
Isn't that true with life? What you value the most tells you about your foundations, but the value you apportion to things is based on your affection, commitment and faith.
This past week I went to hear Brian Stewart of the CBC speak. He gave a wonderful talk about all the things experienced in his years in journalism - covering the terrible famine in Ethiopia in 1984, various meetings with politicians and historical events - and he said what a privilege and honour it is to have been present when history is taking place and actually recording it. But he also talked about the current problems of the world - how quickly people have to make decisions, how rushed politicians are in having to make policy, how everything has to be instant and stories have to go out immediately, with such rapidity, that they lack depth.
He's very right. He said that this is a difficult world in a difficult time. But then he said,
You know, I am amazed that the good news that is going on in the world, even in the economic plight, is seen by those who are working with NGOs (non-government organizations), with people who are committing their lives and limbs to help others in need throughout the world, who are helping their fellow human beings even for no gain for themselves, and who are often putting themselves in places of danger for the sake of transforming the world.
He said that this is happening, not only in the places that first come to mind, such as Africa and South America, but also in China and Russia, where there are now 400,000 NGOs working to bring social change. Then he said, “The most amazing thing about this is that the vast majority are run by people of faith - by Christians and the Church. ”
My friends, that is what I am getting at when I say that if you build on a foundation that is strong - Jesus Christ - then the value that you apportion to things changes. The more you see the love and grace of Christ, the more you want that belief, that transformation to take place in the world that God loves, and then you value people and things in a different way. I think that the Church of Jesus Christ, and you and I, need to be committed people if we are going to say that we serve God and not mammon. In our hearts, lives and actions, we need to fulfill that very belief and place value in the things that really matter.
I don't want to hold up any one individual or group above others, but it was fascinating afterward when we talked about one particular cultural icon - Bono. Bono is heavily criticized for being a rock-n-roller and sometimes denouncing the Church. A lot of people think he is self-righteous because he tries to help people in the Third World, and often gives speeches and upsets politicians - and who is this man to be doing all this?
But in an interview recorded in an essay by David Kilgour, a former MP and a friend of mine, there is this incredible insight. Bono says, and this is really striking, “It is my faith that gives me the strength to get up every day and to put forth 100 per cent of my energy to help others.” He explains that he is immersed in his own world but he cannot break his gaze from the tragedy of the world. However, despite the earth's sufferings, he continues to believe in Jesus Christ as a transformer of the world's culture. Now, therein is commitment! For all his warts, Bono says that everything is based on grace. “Who am I to tell anyone what to do? It is all about grace.”
We Christians know it is all about grace; it is not about works. But if the grace is right, and the grace is predicated on a firm foundation, and that firm foundation is Jesus Christ, then the value of what you do, and who you are, and what you give, and how you love is established on a foundation that doesn't shake like the material things of this world, but is solid on the grace of Jesus Christ. Where your treasure is, you heart will be. “Open your eyes and you will see the light. You cannot serve two masters: You cannot serve both God and mammon.” So, this day, decide on which foundation you will build the rest of your life.
Amen.