Treasure - 8/7/22
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. For me, it’s one of those needlepoint phrases, the ones you see on pillows in your grandma’s untouched sitting room. It’s a phrase so often connected with financial giving at church that it’s hard to look at it without baggage. Are we stewarding our resources well? Are we laying up treasures in heaven or are we worshipping the false gods of this age? I’ve heard it so regularly that, while I get it, I think it’s easy to overlook the challenge the phrase issues to disciples.
This kind of thinking is focused on the “what” question about treasure: What are we going to treasure? For example, I hear it in this moment where we’re questioning the good of social media (thanks for nothing Meta and the improvements we don’t want). Are we treasuring social media more than our friends and family? This question of what to treasure is deeply embedded in our consumer culture.
We’re told what you spend your money on defines you. What you buy identifies the kind of person you are. This what question about treasure also is a static question. It’s answerable one time, with one item. Our society tells us that we can obtain a once-and-for-all item that will mark us forever as treasured. The right car, the right house, the right career, or even the right person (person-as-item, which should immediately show us we’re on the wrong track) – this treasured right thing will guarantee our status.
Only, we all know it never works that way. The treasure falls apart. Or a new goal for measuring our worth is created. That static treasure never fulfills us the way we’re told it should.
Too often our thoughts stop there. We understand that we’re treasuring the wrong things; if we treasure better things, we’ll be better people. Give more, love Christ more. But we don’t actually see a change in our hearts.
The Church gifts us a deeper answer today by grouping these three readings. We need to ask not just about what treasure to seek, but the how of seeking it. In the reading from the book of Wisdom today we remember our Israelite ancestors, enslaved by the Egyptians, preparing for the original Passover. They knew that the Angel of Death was coming and they would have to start the long journey to the Promised Land. They believed that all that stood between them and destruction was the sacrifice of lamb’s blood which God had asked them to make. Their faith, the creeds they recited, their Passover sacrifice, their preparation for the journey – this is what gave them the courage to look that destruction in the face, according to the book of Wisdom. Courage came from their actions, not their items.
In the reading from the book of Hebrews, we recall stories of our ancestors from the Hebrew Scriptures, chiefly Abraham. This reading repeatedly reminds us that Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob died without ever obtaining the treasure they pursued and were promised. If we only apply to them the what question about treasure, then they failed. They were treasureless (without Christ). But this makes no sense and contradicts the very reason why Hebrews mentions our ancestors: their stories are valuable because they show us the more important question – how do we seek treasure.
This question of how we seek treasure is the dynamic question. It’s the harder question which is the ever-shifting way that we work out our salvation.
We don’t need to fear the dynamic cycle - the seeking, finding, and then the loss when the treasure fades. We know it will happen. We see it present in the stories of salvation history. Both of the readings from the book of Wisdom and Hebrews remind us that the treasure as the world sees it, the static things we work so hard for are never enough. All treasures fall short of Christ, the treasure He is pointing us to in the Gospel today.
It is the work, the how itself that is the true treasure. It is the dragging of our feet in the desert sand for just one more day that is the treasure given to us. It is there that we will find our manna, the Eucharist, and receive the courage for one more day and one more day and one more day until we finally rest of the Beatific Vision, the ultimate treasure.
Pray for your heart to search out the treasure of the how. Orient your life towards the finding of your feet on the narrow path. Convert yourself away from a life of clinging to the static treasures that fade and rot, and find your joy and courage in the present journey.