Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus told his followers to lay up ‘treasure in heaven’, not on earth; he told a rich, young ruler to give all his wealth to the poor, so that he might have ‘treasure in heaven’; he told a corrupt tax collector that he had found salvation when he pledged to give away most if not all his wealth by compensating the people he had cheated and giving generously to the poor. There are two key questions.
What is treasure in heaven? In two parables, recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, Jesus explained that this treasure is responsibility in the Kingdom of God: in both, a man going abroad gives resources to his servants and on his return rewards them with varying degrees of responsibility, based on what they did in his absence. In other passages, the other ways to accumulate treasure includes being treated as unjustly as the prophets and helping people become Jesus’ disciples; the treasure is also symbolised by traditional symbols like crowns, sceptres and thrones; Jesus’ earliest followers also referred to treasure as reward, true riches and receiving a prize.
Can ‘earthly’ money buy ‘heavenly’ treasure? While I can see that what Jesus said and his followers later wrote seems to imply this, a more subtle interpretation harmonises it all. Using money now as Jesus described does not purchase treasure in heaven but transforms people so they can be trusted with the treasure. The transformed people get the treasure they can cope with.
I think it was a pastor in the 17th Century who likened receiving a heavenly reward to jars being filled up. Each jar is filled to the brim and it is no use the smaller jars complaining that the bigger ones get more because each is filled to its capacity. The treasure is not something we can earn but people get the maximum treasure they can accommodate. This is how those who are faithful with money now will be faithful with true riches later; how those who use what is ‘another man’s’ wealth will receive their own. But when lives revolve around money, God will not be able to trust those people with true riches.
This is not just a ‘religious’ truth. When I taught financial capability in schools, I explained various reasons for giving to charity and other good causes. For example, because humans are wired for community, we are incomplete as people if we do not interact with others – not just with the people we count as friends but others in our community. Helping others to fulfil their potential therefore helps us to fulfil our own. Moreover, in a society that places so much emphasis on owning things, it is healthy to help others who are less fortunate than we are; if we can provide for all our own essential needs, we should offer help to people who lack the essentials rather than indulge our own wants. Jesus of Nazareth adds another dimension, an eternal perspective, from ‘outside the box’.
One of the main purposes of these Reflections is to explore right attitudes towards money: a better relationship with it. Would you agree that our relationship with money is more important that how we get and use it, because if our relationship is purified our behaviour is bound to improve?
_____________________________________________
You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .
Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.
You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.
