“First Things First”

Matthew 6:19-34

November 12, 2006

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

For as long as I can remember, my dad has taken a yearly trip to New York City. Next year’s trip is scheduled for May. He began going when he was on the faculty at Lambuth College in my hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. My dad, who represented the Music department and Jesse Byrum, who represented the theater and drama department initiated the trip and they have been going now for more than thirty-five years.

Originally the trip was offered through the college, in what they called the January Term. January Term classes were a month long and happened between the Fall and Spring semesters. The New York trip didn’t last a month. It lasted a week, but it usually happened during the coldest month of the year. The trip was seven days and six nights of seeing the sights and hearing the sounds of the Big Apple. Every night there was a play to attend. During the day, there were trips to places like Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloister’s Museum. The tour guides, my dad and Jesse, even took groups on the Staten Island Ferry and out to see the Statue of Liberty. Some of those on the trip ventured out to other places of interest like China Town and to see the hallowed grounds known as Yankee Stadium.

So for this week, every January, my dad was gone, which was a strange thing for me. I was used to my dad being home when I woke up. I was accustomed to his tucking me in at night. So I remember his being gone. I also remember his coming home. Dad would fly into the airport at Memphis, look for his car, and then drive the seventy-six miles to Jackson. When he pulled up in the driveway, his wife, my mother, and his kids would meet him at the back door, help him with his suitcase, and cart it into our den. Now I would like to tell you that one of his three kids hugged him and said, “Daddy, we missed you so much.” That might have happened, but if it did, I can’t remember it. Here is what I remember. When dad was settled in his chair, our eyes would gaze over at the unopened suitcase. One of us, and most of the time it was me, would ask, “Daddy, did you bring me anything?” It was good to have him home. I missed him, but I also wanted to know what was in the suitcase for me! Daddy should have never started bringing home gifts if he didn’t want this reaction from his kids! I think it’s his fault!

It is funny what I can and can’t remember. I can remember these trips of his to New York City. I can remember his coming home, but I can’t remember a thing, not a single thing that he brought me home.

Just this week, I heard the story of a girl like me who hoped that her dad would bring her home something from one of his trips. As he was leaving, she said to him, “Daddy, I hope you’ll bring me something home.” She was his only child and wanted more than anything else to give her the world. He also wanted to give her what she wanted and so he asked what she really wanted. Now she was three years old. I suspect many things came through her mind. But she said this after only a minute of thinking about it, “Daddy, I hope you will bring me home something that will last.” I guess you could say that what she really wanted was a gift with staying power!

A gift with staying power. Maybe that is what Jesus has in mind when he says to

those listening to him as he preached his powerful sermon that we’ve come to call The Sermon on the Mount, “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.”

I don’t mind telling you that this sermon of Jesus overwhelms me. This sermon of his, which you can find in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew’s gospel, covers everything to what it means to truly be blessed to hard subjects such as adultery, divorce, judgment and how to pray. in fact, if you want Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, you will find it in this sermon of Jesus. You can read the sermon in less than ten minutes and in it are sermons that I’m too scared to preach. This sermon, above all else, I think, tries to tell us what God’s world should look like instead of what it now looks like.

In the part of the sermon that we read just a few moments ago, those two short verses, what Jesus is really after has to do with our hearts. Jesus had a way of getting to things in round about ways. He told parables and he offered teachings that make us think. This is a good example of that. I think it would have been easier for Jesus to look at his congregation that morning and say, “Be sure your hearts are in the right place.” If he had done that, and if he had opened it up to a time of witnessing, I’m sure he would have heard things like, “Jesus, I’d like to tell you where my heart is. My heart is where it should be. My heart is working out it’s relationship with God.” Maybe someone else would offer, “Jesus, you will be happy where my heart is. My heart is solidly behind making the world a better place.” Someone else might say, “Jesus, my heart is with the people I love the most, my friends and my family.”

We heard what Jesus said so we know that Jesus did not take that approach. His approach was different. Jesus asked his first hearers, and consequently those of us who read this sermon two thousand years later, “Tell me where your treasure is.”

Now, I don’t know how it is for you, but there are some things in our house that I treasure. In my life, there is Susie. I treasure her. Across from our bedroom, in bedrooms of their own, are our two girls. I treasure them. In our den is a green cabinet. It’s the one that used to sit next to my Aunt Julia Lee’s front door. When I look over at it, I think of her. Downstairs in the bedroom that doubles as my home office is the bedroom suit that my grandfather once used.

Susie’s treasures are there also. In our bedroom are a couple of dressers that belonged to her grandmother. There is a table in the dining room that was once her’s, too. So we all have treasures.

When Jesus turned to the congregation and said, “Tell me where your treasure is” he knew that that question had to be answered before you could answer the one about where your heart is Because regardless of what we might say or think or do where our treasures are, our hearts are, too.

I’d like for you to think about it like this. Jesus is offering us a bit of a test. For sure his words have the feeling of a test. What Jesus was offering, really, was a way for us to look at the things we really, really, really care about. Once we looked at them, then came his advice, “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, things that can get eaten by the moths or deteriorate with the rust, or even things that can be taken from you.” Instead, said Jesus, “Store up for yourselves treasurers in heaven.”

But now I just have to ask Jesus what that means. My problem is simple. How do I know what a heavenly treasure is? How can I know that the things I have put my money and my time and my energy and my thoughts and my passions and my talents toward are really treasures in heaven?

Fred Craddock is a west Tennessean who spent much of his career preaching and teaching preachers at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia. He tells about a class mate of his who spent some time as a missionary in China. Part of his time there, his class mate was under house arrest. It lasted a long time. Finally, one unexpected day, a solider came to where his family was and told them that they were free to go home. While they were celebrating, this same solider told them that they could take things home with them, but all the things, combined, could only weigh two hundred pounds. There in front of the solider, the family argued about what they would take. he wife had a vase she was very fond of. The missionary wanted to take his new typewriter and some of his books. They weighed the important items and luckily it came out right to two hundred pounds. The solider came into the room and asked if they were ready. The missionary said that they were. The soldier asked, “Did you weigh everything?” They said they had. The solider looked at the children and he asked, “Did you weigh your children?” Weigh the children? They had not done that. In that moment the vase and the typewriter and the books all became less important.

Isn’t it that way it happens for us? Sometimes the things that we think are important, when something significant happens, aren’t so important any more. I can remember being at the hospital last year in December and then at my parents house after my sister’s death. Now you all are important to me, but in those hard moments, I didn’t ask, “Oh my gosh, what about the Christmas Eve service?” I never wondered if the office was open and functioning. I never asked if there was something happening in the church that I had to be there for. At the moment, those things seemed less important.

Think about the stories of what happened after Hurricane Katrina and Rita and the others last summer. Those storms took homes and lives and dignity and churches. But it didn’t take away hope. Many are still recovering; some never will. But in the moment of the storm, the things that used to be important now weren’t so important.

Sometimes wake up calls come and we try to answer them. At other times they don’t come and so Jesus’ question here about where our treasure is is an important one. You know, it’s just not a bad idea every once and a while to pull out the check book and to ask, “Where is my money going?” It is not a bad idea, every once and a while, to pull out our calendars and ask, “How am I spending my time? It is not a bad idea to close your eyes and to ask, “Where are my thoughts most of the time?” It is not a bad idea to look at the things God has made you good at, your talents. Look at them, and ask, “Am I using these things, or am I tucking them away?

A lot of preachers will use this passage on Sundays like today, Commitment Sundays. They will hone in on the twenty-fourth verse that reads, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” Now I’m not saying that they are wrong to do that because often God and money are two masters that compete with one another. But for me, where I find power in this passage is by asking these questions, “What do you treasure? What is important to you?”

At the end of the day or perhaps at the end of a lifetime, what is really important is that we matter and that we have stood for something good and right. What really matters is that we count to someone and to count for something. So I hope you will think about it this week, “What do I treasure? Where is my treasure? What is really important to me?”

(Special thanks to Thomas Long for his commentary thoughts on this passage. Special thanks to Rev. Jeanie Burton for an idea or two for this sermon).