We are on this journey together this fall of “Becoming a Generous People.” You’ll notice in your bulletins that our working sermon title is “Follow the Money.” It is a classic journalistic statement that reporters use when attempting to get as close to the truth of a story a possible: Follow the Money. Jesus seems to understand that this journalistic truth is also true spiritually – In the passage of scripture that we are about to hear Jesus is clear – our hearts follow our money, so what we do with it matters, to God, to others, and to ourselves. May God open us to the wisdom of Jesus words so that we might receive the blessing of living a righteous and generous life.

Matthew 6:19-34 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. . “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Sermon: Becoming a Generous People: Follow the Money!

What do you treasure most? This is a basic question Jesus is asking us to consider if we want to become more generous—more righteous.

What do you treasure most? Jesus means to challenge us with this question in a way that forces us to examine how we value a human person’s worth – and our own worth.

Here are just a few examples of how human’s judged each other’s value and worth in Jesus day – based on what they treasured.

• Treasured clothing—a woman’s dowry, what somewhat paid to have her (own her) often consisted of incredibly expensive textiles (threads and yarns). This “treasure” of course was vulnerable to insects like moths.

• Wooden chests full of precious coins, indicating a person’s value because of wealth, were subject to destruction by rust,

• Other prized possessions like books, indicating one was learned and sophisticated religiously, could be stolen.

Today if Jesus were talking to us, it might sound something like, “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where you place your value and another person’s value on your financial portfolio’s only for the stock market can plunge, and experience “a once in lifetime tsunami.”

What Jesus is getting at here is this – where your treasure is, there your heart be also. If you assess your worth, or that of others, based on:

• what you have in your financial portfolio,
• or on the things you can acquire because of perceived wealth,

You are more vulnerable to the insecurity that comes when life as you think you know it changes – which inevitably it does.

If you want your heart to have security Jesus says “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” What does that mean? I’ve heard it all my life in church language– but never really understood in practical terms what it means! Well is about to Jesus tell us, “The eye,” he says, “is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full darkness.” What? Well that was helpful? What is Jesus getting at here?

• #1 The ancient mind regarding the eye as a lamp that projected light that enable one to grasp or see the external world. We view the eye more as a window through which light enters.

• #2 This truth of ancient understanding is simply used as rhetorical, literary device to tease us into a deeper truth.

Matthew uses a word not normally associate with an eye (healthy – hap-looce’) meant to convey that is simple, whole, good, fulfilling what it was designed for. Now Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, trying to convince that Jesus is the new way to life in God. Jewish literature was full of references to the “evil eye,” so Matthew is using good eye here in contrast to this Jewish image of “evil eye.” The “evil eye” in the Jewish mind was often used to refer to an envious, grudging or miserly spirit. So Matthews “good eye” – scholars believe — is explicitly used to convey the opposite spirit – as in “one who has a generous, compassionate attitude” for the other, not just for self.

Read this way, Jesus words penetrate the darkness that comes when a person’s focus is narrowly limited, on self-preservation, on what they have or don’t have. “Just as a blind person’s life is darkened by eye malfunction, so the miser’s life is darkened by failure of generosity and compassion.”

Part of storing up treasures in heaven then is assessing our worth and the worth of others on based on our treasured money economy, but on God’s economy. In God’s economy there is enough, there will be enough, for each of us if we are generous, and righteous, and kind to others, regardless of their perceived value that is based on an earthly treasure, or standard of earthly wealth.

In other words on this journey of becoming a generous people we are meant become extensions of God’s generosity, and kindness and righteousness. Literally we become God’s treasures of security and light in an insecure dark world that is afraid there won’t be enough.

Just as there are two kinds of treasures and two kinds of eyes, so there are two masters or Lords. Jesus says you can’t serve both – one will always end up winning over your heart.
• God
• Or your wealth.

And then Jesus gets to the core of why our wealth, our money, our possession matter so much to him. Jesus knows that the very things that grab our hearts and seduce us into believing that we are defined by – and our security comes from these economic treasures – actually rob us from living, in some way (there’s a paradox here) it makes us more insecure and more afraid.

Giving studies confirm that more that we get the less we give away percentage wise of our income and our possessions. The more we get, the more we have to lose, the more we have to lose, the more we want to protect ourselves against possible loss. I was a Cultivating Generosity workshop yesterday at the Presbytery, where I was reminded of this truth. Surveys of high net-worth individuals – those who make at least $5M dollars a year – show that there greatest fear is that they won’t have enough to maintain their living standard (style) during retirement. Only 36 percent of these multimillionaires feel financially secure. The median amount of financial security from those surveyed was $20M dollars a year –67 percent more than what they current wealth. The average amount of perceived financial security needed was higher at $45M—75 percent more that current wealth.

Jesus addresses our anxiety with some of the most beloved language about trust in God in all of scripture. He doesn’t really address the paradox, but does encourage us to pay careful attention to what is happening beyond us, around us, in wonders of the natural world.

Look up and around from the virtual reality world that you have created – and look at the real world,
• the color of lilies,
• the birds flying free in the air,
• the color of the green of grass,
• the leaves now that are changing in front of our eyes, in brilliant shades of orange and yellow and red,

And then make the connection between you and them and God who presides over, and cares for, not only their existence but also ours!

In closing I’d like to tell you a couple of stories from our current times. I think they stand alone in speaking truth to us in relationship to these words of Jesus about what we treasure, and about our anxieties that come when we define ourselves and others apart from being created by a loving God who cares for all of us.

The first one comes from Thomas Friedman of the NY Times. First written in December of 2003 it was entitled, Where Birds Don’t Fly. You can see why I thought of this, right? Jesus says consider the birds of the air. In a post 9-11 world where security became our greatest priority (treasure)— the U.S. built a new consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The old one used to be in the heart of the city, where average Turks could pop in for a visa or use the library.

For security reasons it was moved 45 minutes away to the outskirts of the city on a bluff overlooking the Istanbul Straight – surrounding by a tall wall. It looks like a maximum-security prison. The stone cold truth: U.S. diplomats are safe, probably alive today because they moved into this fortress. One of the captured terrorists involved in the Nov. 20 attack on the British Consulate in Istanbul in 2003, which is just a short walk from the old U.S. Consulate – reportedly told Turkish police that his group was interested in blowing up the new U.S. Consulate, but when they cased the place they found it was so secure ”they don’t let birds fly” there.

One U.S. diplomat says, ”The upside is we are more secure, the downside is we are losing the human contact and it makes it way harder to have interactions with people who are not part of the elite. [Some days] you might as well be in Cleveland, looking at the world through a bulletproof plate glass window.” A Turkish industrialist in tour van stopped in front of the US Embassy and asked a guide why they needed all the tanks around, and was told that within this American Embassy they have everything they need so they can survive without going outside . . .

The second story is about Billionaire Warren Buffet – who has had a reputation for being not just thrifty, but stingy. At one point in his life he said he didn’t want any of his money given away until after he died. But in a new book about his life, author Alice Schroeder writes about how she saw him change in the two years that she was with working on his book, he became more comfortable – these are her exact word – “with being generous.”

Why? “For one thing,” Schroeder says, “He lost his wife in 2004 – and he was very uncomfortable with illness and death. Once she was gone he began to understand that what matters is people. He had not been an attentive father, or attentive to others. He now says that the measure of success in life (what he now treasures) is the number of people you want to love you – who do love you. The way to be loved, he realizing, is be loveable. He is giving away some of his money now while he is still alive.

Follow the Money 10-26-2008 Matthew 61934