Sharing the Treasure

Gospel:  Matthew 6: 19-23

What is this heavenly treasure of which Jesus speaks?  The context of this passage makes it clear that the treasure is the mercy of God, the very topic that preceded this passage.  This treasure we can not earn or achieve; it is something freely given to us by God.  Its value cannot be measured by any human standard or monetary specie.  For without this mercy we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We can not know peace within ourselves and among one another.  

So often we are told that this heavenly treasure is "merit" or indulgences, both of which are foreign concepts to the New Testament.  Yet we create such things because we have control over them.  They are things we can earn.  They are also things we have for ourselves and not to be shared.  But the mercy of God is not to be kept to ourselves.  It is a treasure meant to be shared with others, given away freely to everyone we encounter.  

When we discover this pearl of great price, we sell all that we have, i.e. material possessions lose their importance for us.  We have all received this treasure of mercy; the task of the spiritual life is for us to be aware of this gift, to have a spirit of gratitude for it, and to set about sharing this gift with everyone we meet through the works of mercy.  The example of the Lord Jesus provides us the Way in which to carry out this life of mercy in the world.   

The Words Jesus Gave Us

Gospel: Matthew 6: 7-15

A Christian would never admit that they pray like pagans.  After all, we pray in Jesus' name and in the Spirit!  Yes, well, leaving that aside, the words of Jesus today indicate otherwise.  Jesus gives us a simple prayer, around which sacramental Christians have constructed elaborate liturgy with endless prayers, and non-sacramental Christians have adorned with the rambles of spontaneous prayer and a sermon series on the book of Judges.  How often Christians compete on length of service as if that were the criterion for worship and Christian life.

Jesus tells us to pray simply and briefly.  The essence of our prayer is to be the one thing necessary - mercy.  We are in need of God's mercy for our sins, and we ourselves need to be merciful as the sole criterion to receive mercy and for being a Christian at all.  For, if we have mercy in both senses we have all that we need.  We have the burden of our sins lifted, and we have the peace of God's kingdom within our own hearts as people of mercy directed to all.  

If mercy be not the center of our prayer life and moral striving, ours is then a false Christianity, one that is of bloodlust and power.  But mercy was the entire ministry of Jesus, who came to be the incarnation of God's mercy in the world, the one who invites and anoints others to be the mercy of God in the world.  So, today we pray to be merciful not only so that mercy might be shown to us, but because it is the first of the Beatitudes, the way to peace in the world, the essence of God's very life among us.   

Dropping the Selfie

Gospel: Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

In our modern age we cannot even have dinner without taking a selfie and posting it to social media to show everyone what we are eating.  Why we think this is important is elusive to reason, but we persist in the practice.  The modern age is one of omnipresent media and self-promotion.  Social media gives us the opportunity to create an array of personae, all of them false, to display to the world.  We become a vast array of AI identities that are ironically self-created.  

So come we now to the core Christian activities of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Public prayer is itself a competitive sport, with categories for length, cadence, and eloquence, not to mention the vast array of religious costume to accompany it.  Ash Wednesday did not occur if we did not post a selfie with ashes and an account of our Lenten fasts.  And who can resist a photo with a big check showing how much we gave to a cause or raised for our parish?  We are awash in self promotion in the very things we ought not.  

Here again we have convinced ourselves that Jesus is talking about other people and not us.  And herein lies a subtle Anti-Semitism for the other people we think Jesus is talking about are Jewish.  Not us Christians.  We think what we do above doesn't apply.  But it does.  Today is a day for us to do away with the selfie, with the self-promotion, and the need to be seen.  Today is a day for us to do the work of the kingdom solely because it is good and not for self-gain or our egos.