Stewardship of the Heart

Matt. 6:19-22

Nov. 12, 2006

The sermon title this morning is “Stewardship of the Heart,” and to be good stewards of our hearts it is good to acknowledge when they are hurting. I know many of our hearts are hurting this morning as a result of the passage of the marriage amendment last Tuesday. But as I said last Sunday, no result of a ballot measure – for better or for worse – is going to herald the coming of the kingdom. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Now sometimes it seems longer than others, and this is one of those times. But I assure you of this: our fundamental equality does not rise or fall on the result of any election, because each and every one of us is created equally in the image of a loving God.

Let our hearts be reassured by that unshakeable conviction, and let us tend to each other’s hearts with compassion.

Indeed, the care of the heart is the heart of the matter this morning, and Jesus knew something critical about that care.

Now my doctor believes that she knows something critical about the care of my heart, and I’m quite sure that she’s right about it, so I’ve been eating a lot of oatmeal lately. Trying to keep the cholesterol under control. Trying to keep the heart healthy.

“What are the numbers?” the doctor wants to know.

“Where is your treasure?” That’s what Jesus wants to know. Where is your treasure? Because Jesus knows your heart will be there, and that is, after all, the heart of the matter. All that Jesus cares about, in the end, is the condition of our hearts. So it’s important that we listen, especially when our hearts feel a bit bruised.

Of course, Jesus’ question is a whole lot more difficult to answer than the doctor’s inquiry. It’s a particularly difficult question to answer if we don’t first step back and ask ourselves, “what is our treasure?” So, what is it that we treasure? Money? Riches? Wealth? Fortune? Jewels? Gold? Those are just a few of the common and baser synonyms for treasure. Most of us claim that they are not what we really treasure. What do we really treasure? Most of us claim family and friends, meaningful work, good food and drink.

Heck, I made those claims to myself as I was writing this last week – on one of the three computers in my half-million dollar home in South Arlington, where I was comfortably hanging out in my $100 running shoes, keeping in contact with the world on my cell phone and preparing to drive up here in our new(-to-us) Honda with my $350 Trek bicycle on the back (so I could get in a nice ride on the wonderful bike trails that this incredibly affluent county provides) … but, no, surely I don’t treasure material things.

After all, as one of our children’s friends famously said of me some years ago, I’m a soul man! A minister of the word and sacrament. Taken up with holy things and spiritual matters. Surely, I don’t treasure material things.

Hm, let’s see … new Palm pilot – not that it’s important to me or anything; portable DVD player; digital camera; cell phones; flash drive; CDs; car keys.

The mirror of reality reflects disturbing pictures sometimes. Personally, that’s why I don’t look in it too often – unless I’m wearing my cashmere jacket, which just looks so fine that I can’t take my eyes off it!

Hm … where my treasure is, there will be my heart.

So, let’s talk a bit about money, shall we. Let’s squirm together – even more than if we were talking about sex. It’s funny – our American attitudes toward money, and how uncomfortable we all get when we talk about it. We may talk a good line about measuring life by yardsticks other than money, but our palpable discomfort in talking about it suggests that the relationship if far more complicated than we’d like to admit to ourselves.

But the great challenge and opportunity of stewardship time in a church lie precisely in the complicated relationship between our money and our hearts. So, for the health of our hearts, let’s see if we can be honest with ourselves, with one another, and with God when it comes to our money.

I start with a significant advantage in this effort, because all of you who pay any attention to the church budget know exactly how much I am paid – a tad less than $60,000 for 2006. It’s posted on the session bulletin board at the end of the main hall – about as public as it can be.

Now, to give that figure some context, let’s set it within a global pay scale. If we laid out global income on a line stretching the length of the sanctuary and put the poorest of the poor up front closest to the cross – you can choose your own symbolism there – and put the richest of the rich way back there by the last pew, then I’d be a good and proper Presbyterians sitting in the very back row – in the richest one percent of the global population. I’m not lonely back here, though. The median per-capita income in Virginia puts most all of us in the richest five percent.

Ah, but, of course, the money doesn’t really mean that much to me – or so I say to comfort myself and reassure myself of the health of my heart.

But do I live that way? What do I do with that money? Where do I spend it? What do I use if for? Where my treasure is, there also is my heart. In other words, check out my check book if you want to check on my heart.

One of the core convictions of Christian faith is simply that our hearts are most healthy when we are living close to Jesus. As Augustine suggested, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Christ.”

If we want our hearts to be healthy and whole, we need them to find rest there where he is. And where is that?

As I wrote on my blog last week, this question of healthy hearts is, in fact the heart of an authentic theology of incarnation. While classical Reformed understandings of the incarnation focus on the challenge of holding God and the human person, Jesus, in creative and saving relationship, incarnation is actually an unfolding reality in the world.
That forces us to think about location: if the love of God is incarnate in the world through the living Christ of faith, then where does this Jesus stand? More to the point: where do we stand?

Taking the gospels seriously -- especially Matthew 25 -- makes it clear that Jesus stands with the outcasts and oppressed, the poor and the sick, those seeking peace and justice. If we want to stand with him, if we feel any desire to know him and be known by him, we have to go where he is. If we want our hearts healed by his love and grace, our hearts must be where he is.

So the question becomes: is our treasure there?

It’s not so much a question of putting our money where our mouths are as it is of acknowledging that our hearts are where our money is – no matter where our mouths are.

That is to say, a stewardship of the heart is about walking the walk and is not so concerned with talking the talk.

So this month – stewardship season at CPC – do a heart checkup. It’s a bit more complicated than a cholesterol check – although it doesn’t involve needles or blood! It can, however, involve some straightforward numbers.

Are you striving for a Biblical tithe – at least 10 percent of your income going to those places where we know Jesus is – there with the hungry, the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, those working for peace and justice?

In our household, it works out to some $9,000 to give away to the church and to other worthy programs, projects and political causes that advance the work of justice and peace. We’re not there yet, but each year we get closer and the effort drives our lives closer and closer to conformity with our core values.

You see, in the end, a stewardship of the heart is a mere matter of seeing where your treasure actually is, and judging whether or not it’s where you really want it to be. For where your treasure is, there also will be your heart.

As Studs Terkel observed, “action engenders hope.” No action creates more hope than the act of giving. It moves mountains; it heals hearts.

I am utterly convinced that the more of our treasure we give to help others, the healthier our hearts become, and the freer our lives become. So as you consider your finances this fall, and the gift you bring to Christ’s work at Clarendon, liberate your hearts and put your treasure there where Jesus is already at work in the world tending to broken hearts in an often broken world. Amen.

Rev. Dr. David Ensign