Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
– Matthew 6:19-24
One of the things we can say with much confidence about Jesus’ teaching ministry is that he had a diverse audience, and one of the facets of that diversity was the economic status of his hearers. Jesus had wealthy followers. He also had many who were dirt poor. I find it remarkable that his teaching was attractive to those at all points of the economic spectrum.
Let’s focus for a few moments on what we easily understand from the text. For instance, Jesus reminds us of the fragile nature of material possessions. Many of you have had things stolen from you. One of those occasions for my family was when we had a grill stolen. It was a fairly large stand-up grill we kept by a screened-in porch. Given its size and where it was located, the irritation of having my property taken from me was nearly surpassed by my astonishment that someone would be able to make off with it. In addition to the risk of having things stolen, we constantly observe the perishable nature of nearly all material things. In our modern society, we find ourselves caught in a tension. On the one hand we tirelessly strive to preserve the quality of our goods, and on the other hand we recognize that things don’t last and therefore treat everything as disposable.
Jesus’ analogy of serving two masters is also easily confirmed in our everyday experience. When a person is taking directives from two different people, it will take little time before those directives are in conflict. When that happens, obedience to one requires disobedience to the other. You can’t (for all practical purposes) serve both. Either the voices must come into agreement, or a choice must be made as to which voice will be authoritative. And when those voices operate under two completely different sets of values, you can bet they will never come into agreement.
These analogies regarding treasures and masters will help us understand the third analogy Jesus uses. Though it doesn’t translate as easily into our modern culture, people in Jesus’ day would have readily understood the analogy of the eye. You may recall the line of a children’s song that says, “Oh be careful little eyes what you see.” It was common in Jewish writing to treat the eye as a conduit to the inner person. As the heart is the ultimate depository of a person’s treasure, the eye was treated as something that determined what was deposited. If the eye was good (whole, single, able to fill its function effectively), the treasury would become filled with good things. If the eye was bad (evil, diseased, inclined to bring toils and pain), the treasury would become filled with bad things.
Putting the analogies together, it becomes clear that Jesus teaches me to select the things of God as treasures to store in my heart. In doing so, my treasure will naturally serve to keep my heart attuned to Christ’s lordship over my life. Such treasures will be safe, as they cannot be taken from me and they are imperishable in nature. If, however, I choose to make treasures out of worldly things (mammon/wealth), I will naturally put myself in a conflicted state of living, wanting to serve Christ but being enslaved to worldly desires and concerns. My treasures will bring a variety of heartache along the way, as I will have to exert great effort to protect them, and ultimately they will not satisfy my deepest longings.
When we consider this teaching of Jesus, we might ask if the message would be more appealing to the wealthy listener or to the poor. Interestingly, I think it is a compelling message to both. For the wealthy, Jesus’ words have the power to set one free. While Jesus did teach that it is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” (Matthew 19:24) he did not explicitly condemn having wealth. How freeing it would be to possess wealth and yet not treasure it in the heart! And the poor? It is true that poverty brings much hardship, and a natural mindset in that condition is to yearn for measures of wealth that would make life more bearable. But Jesus is honest about the reality that wealth is accompanied by its own challenges, not the least of which is the capacity to distance one’s heart from God. For an additional word to his audience—rich and poor—Jesus offers a word about anxiety. We will cover that in our next post.
So be careful little eyes what you see. Make sure you are discerning correctly what is truly valuable, that you may store in the heart eternal treasures.
See you along the Winding Path.
The Winding Path 