Where is your treasure - Luke 12

Where is your treasure?

Tony E Dillon Hansen

Sermon based upon Luke 12: 32-40, Isaiah 1:16-17, and Hebrew 11:1-16

Opening prayer

There is a lot to unpack. We continue this week in Luke 12 after Jesus has just told people parables about a rich man that stored all his wealth, all his “treasures”, but forgot to have wealth in faith and in spirit. For all the so-called broken wealth we can muster in this life will not travel well into the next. 

This causes unnecessary stresses too. Thus when we do this, we worry about the wrong things. We worry about accumulating world prizes, measuring ourselves against those arbitrary ideas of success which are simply broken promises of our world. Instead Jesus reminds us that we have all that we need in God.

25 “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?”

I am reminded of the first summer I spent with St John, I visited the Lakota people in the reservation in South Dakota. That experience changed me in ways I could not imagine. It also illustrated what Jesus is saying in this lesson.

For all of the needs and poverty on the reservation, the people held onto culture and each other. They held onto visions of the spirit in themselves, in everyone and in all things around them. 

A poster hanging in the community center read, “Only after the last tree has been cut, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” This shows us how indigenous cultures value all of creation in the way God asked us, Christians, to steward this garden, our creation. 

To truly value the soil under our feet, the air we breath, the waters that quench our thirsts and realizing that money cannot be eaten or taken with us into the afterlife. 

I think that is what Jesus is saying with, “Where is your treasure is your heart is also.” That begs the question, where is your treasure?

What exactly is it?

Our broken world tells us to amass “treasures” for ourselves.  This stuff can and often does collect dust – and will not follow you into the afterlife. 

Maybe, we fear scarcity - not having enough or running out. Inversely, What do we leave behind in the store or on Amazon if we do not buy it? How much faith does that take?

Is this really how we measure personal worth?  Is that where our heart is?

It is amazing how giggly kid on my shoulders can bring a smile and open heart even when hiking up a large hill. 

As well, youth are amazing in resilience with ability to turn any situation into opportunities for fun. They have not etched their lives in the concrete of adulthood. 

Of this I can speak of my own experience. We did not have much, but I believed there was something more than where I was. I had faith, and with faith, I had hope. Love held our family together. That is real treasure beyond any worldly material. 

Hebrews tells us faith is the assurance of things hoped for and things not seen: a gift given to us by God.

What we do with the gifts/treasure we have?  St Paul says we are given 3 spiritual gifts of faith, hope and love. Do we value these as treasure?

When I think about the youth on reservation, I saw hope and possibilities. This gave me more hope for our wider global youth (not just those on the reservation) – that we can trust them – we can have faith in them. They just need some love to grow.

In fact, when I think about it; even when people seem resigned to calamity, people can and do find treasure through faith. Maybe, if we reach into our childhood for a glimpse of hope and love in our lives, faith is right alongside. 

My physical youth may be gone, but there is still a child inside. Maybe, that is the child in us older folks (perhaps healing) but has hope, with dreams of God’s promise and feeling loved. Maybe, that child in us who Jesus calls treasure.

Maybe, it was the child inside the elders and activists that show a determined faith in what they did as well as showed the people they are.  They want something more for the younger generations than what they had.  They were not concentrated on what they could see, but upon faith that things will get better .

They had faith in the Creator to give them that hope, to love that child. God gave them (and you) the promise.

Maybe, that is what we need today: A little faith in what we don’t see. Your faith breeds hope. That child inside you lives in hope and God’s promise of love. 

Where is your treasure?

Thanks be to God!