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November 18, 2007

We Have This Treasure

Sermon: We Have this Treasure…
Matthew 6:19-33
2 Corinthians 4:7-15

Dr. Rachael Naomi Remen author of the National Bestseller, My Grandfather’s Blessings, tells this story…

The middle drawer of my mother’s dresser was filled with silk stockings, dozens of pairs in many exquisite colors, each wrapped in its original package from the store. They had never been worn.

I used to love to pull a chair up to the open drawer and touch them, counting the packages and admiring the beautiful colors. Once I asked my mother why she never wore them. She told me that they were too good to wear, if she wore them they would get torn or otherwise damaged and they could not be replaced. It was wartime, and all the silk in the US had been diverted into making parachutes. She was saving them, she said for a special time.

Each year in August we would go away to a little rented cottage on Long Island to escape the hottest part of the summer, leaving our apartment in Manhattan empty. One year when we came home we found that the apartment had been burglarized and ransacked. I remember walking through the rooms behind m parents, shocked to find many of our family’s things missing and others broken and thrown all over the floor. But the most shocking thing was in the bedroom. My mother’s dresser drawer hung open. The middle one, which held the silk stockings, was completely empty.

This was my first serious lesson about loss. At the time, I was always being scolded by my teachers for not taking better care of my things. But my mother had taken very good care of her stockings. She had never even used them. I puzzled about this for a long time.

This happening had a profound effect on us all. My father bought more locks for our doors, and every place we ever lived afterwards had at least three locks on every outside door. But this did not seem to answer my questions. Eventually I began to use everything I owned.
An elderly patient who outlived his entire family once told me that all we get to keep are our memories. Perhaps the only we get to keep anything may be to use it up. More than fifty years later, I still think about those stockings with regret. Perhaps we are all given many more blessings than we receive…

Rachel’s mother treasured these silk stockings and they were taken from her. We don’t know exactly how her mother responded, but her father responded by increasing security (pull arms in). Rachel eventually responded by using everything she owned.

The author of the book, Simple Abundance, encourages her women readers to use their best china and pretty linens often, not to save them for special occasions. I have a beautiful antique off-white tablecloth I purchased a number of years ago. I’ve not used it yet because I’m afraid it will get dirty. Like Rachel’s mother, I’m saving the tablecloth for a special time. What also happens to me is that I put something away for a special occasion and then when the time comes to use it I can’t find it. For you men, I wonder about your tools. Do you have a tool you purchased because you wanted to have one and have never used it? There it sits shiny and new in your garage or basement.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…No one can serve two masters, you cannot serve God and wealth…I tell you, do not worry…But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus instructs his disciples to put their focus on God, to invest in the things of God. Wealth can make our life easier. No doubt about it. But it can also distract us too. Our material possessions do not define us. They cannot ultimately protect us or make us truly happy.

God calls us to a deeper relationship with him. It is a hunger inside of us that cannot be filled with material possessions, other people, drugs or alcohol. The only thing that can fill this hunger is a relationship with God—a spiritual life with God. That’s easier said than done.

1) The world of the spirit is dynamic. God’s Spirit is continually challenging, changing, and maturing us. We can experience God on a personal level, but God is always larger than our personal, individual experience of Him.

2) Spiritual growth is essentially the work of God’s grace and we are invited to cooperate. God’s grace is actively calling, inviting us to a deeper relationship with God. Our willingness to be open to God is our part in our spiritual growth. When we willingly open ourselves to God then God can change us.

3) A spiritual life is not a set of tasks we achieve as we make ourselves “more spiritual.” Christian spirituality is initiated and sustained by God. For example, we cannot force God to conform to our agenda for the world; we cannot manipulate God with our prayers; and we cannot achieve spiritual growth through sheer grit and will power. This is why it is a matter of seeking—a spiritual life is illusive.

Richard Foster, in his classic book, Celebration of Discipline, a metaphor of a field to illustrate the purpose of spiritual disciplines. A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain. This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines--they are a way of sowing to the Spirit. Spiritual disciplines are, "a means of receiving God's grace. …[They] allow us to place ourselves before God so he can transform us."

Foster also likens spiritual disciplines to a narrow ridge with a sheer drop-off on either side: there is the abyss of trust in works on one side and the abyss of faith without deeds on the other. On the ridge there is a path, the disciplines of the spiritual life. …We must always remember that the path does not produce change; it only places us where the change can occur. The task for us, then is to cultivate our daily lives into fertile ground in which God can bring growth and change. This is what the spiritual disciplines are all about.

Last week I talked about sacrificial giving—giving beyond our comfort zone. Sacrificial Giving is a spiritual discipline. Other spiritual disciplines include various forms of prayer, reading the Bible, meditation, solicitude, discernment, and fasting. Spiritual disciplines are not a means into themselves. They are a way in which we can “practice the presence of God.” A spiritual life is not one part of our lives. We practice the presence of God in small intentional ways so that over time it will become like breathing. We will be practicing the presence of God in all areas of our life.

But experience teaches us that we don’t cooperate with God’s intentions for us easily. We struggle with our sinful natures, our character defects. They obscure and distort our ability to fully respond to this hunger for God. The material world holds us captive and we must work hard to become attuned to the non-material world of the Spirit.

Paul affirms this in his writing. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed—our physical bodies get sick but they heal and we are back at it; perplexed, but not driven to despair—things happen in life that are not logical or easy to understand; persecuted, but not forsaken—who hasn’t had experienced periods of their life when it felt as if everyone was out to get them. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal bodies...

But we have this treasure in clay jars…(smash jar) the clay jars represent our physical world, our physical selves. Our bodies will wear out, they will let us down. As a culture, we’re all about the outer shell—we focus on how we look. We work to keep our bodies in shape. That’s ok, we need to take care of our physical selves. But how much effort do we put into keeping our spiritual selves in shape?

It all begins with two simple steps—every morning invite God into your life. Pick up your Bible and read about Jesus. You will read about his work of the Spirit through various forms of prayer, fasting, solicitude, dialogue with God, and dependence on God. In 2008, we’ll have some opportunities for you to try various spiritual disciplines. Watch for it.

Being made in the image of God, God’s spirit is present in each and every one of us. Are we willing to put ourselves in God’s grace-filled hands and allow God to develop our spiritual selves so that we can be more like Jesus? Remember the silk stockings? Rachel’s mother’s was unable to receive the blessings of those silk stockings. She kept them locked up in the drawer. The choice is yours. Accept your human limitations and give yourself over to God’s guidance, direction, and love. Open yourself to the blessings that will come as the spiritual treasure inside of you grows and blossoms, spreading itself out into the world.

"The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived." -Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM