Sermon 12/1/13
Matthew 6:19-24
Advent Conspiracy: Spend Less
This Advent, our theme for worship is Advent Conspiracy. The Advent Conspiracy is a
movement started by some pastors a few years ago who felt like they were
somehow missing Christmas – that the folks they served were missing Christmas –
that our whole culture was missing Christmas. They felt that the way we prepare
for Christmas would set us up for nothing but a giant letdown when Christmas
day arrived. And so they crafted their Advent Conspiracy. They said, “We all
want our Christmas to be a lot of things. Full of joy. Memories. Happiness.
Above all, we want it to be about Jesus. What we don't want is stress. Or debt.
Or feeling like we "missed the moment". Advent Conspiracy is a
movement designed to help us all slow down and experience a Christmas worth
remembering. But doing this means doing things a little differently. A little
creatively. It means turning Christmas upside down.” You’ve often heard me
describe Jesus as one who turns our world, our expectations, our assumptions
upside down. So it seems only right that we think about how Jesus wants to turn
our Christmas upside down too. (1) The Advent Conspiracy movement has four
themes that we’ll explore in the next week: Spend Less. Give More. Worship
Fully. Love All.
The word conspiracy
is something that can sound so sinister. We normally think of conspiring against. Two parties conspire against a third. But the broader meaning
of conspiracy is a “coming together” of things. In fact, literally, con-spire
means to “breathe with.” I really
like that. That’s what I hope we’re doing this season. We’re learning to
breathe with Advent. That’s our Advent Conspiracy.
We start with thinking about “Spending Less.” And to
focus us on this, we find ourselves in the gospel of Matthew, in the midst of
the Sermon on the Mount. We looked at the Sermon on the Mount this summer, but
we couldn’t cover everything, and we actually skipped right over these verses. Jesus
says, “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. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.” He talks about the eye being the lamp of the body, and needing that eye –
how we see the world around us –
being so important. And he says, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave
will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
“For
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” I’ve always loved
thinking about this verse, because I think it is a pretty verse that most of us
know – and because we’re so familiar with it, we forget to think about it
critically, and to think especially about what the verse doesn’t say. What it doesn’t say is: Where your heart is, that’s
where you treasure is. No, but where your treasure
is, there you will find what you really
love. I think the order matters. Jesus is telling us that it is the evidence that determines where our
hearts are, not whatever we pay lip service too. So, if we claim our hearts are
with our families, for example, but what we “store up,” what we spend our time
thinking about and worrying about and spend the bulk of our time doing is
making sure we have enough money and stuff – well, what we “treasure” is
actually where our heart is, no matter what we say, and not the other way
around. So what do you treasure?
When I
think about treasuring something, two images pop into my head: First, I think
of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, obsessed with, consumed by the One Ring – “my
precious.” That’s treasuring something – the ring is the only Master Gollum serves,
and indeed, his heart is with the ring, no matter how much he struggles to put
his heart elsewhere.
And then I think about my favorite line in the Christmas
story, the story of Jesus’ birth, the story we’re longing to hear and tell
already as we begin our season of waiting: When Jesus is born, and the
shepherds hear the angels and arrive to greet the baby and they tell Mary and
Joseph all that had happened to them, we read, “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” What
Mary treasures in that moment is every precious word and experience and part of
the process that has brought her child – God’s child – into the world. And so
indeed, because of what she treasures, her heart is full of love. What do you treasure?
We gather for worship a couple of days after the busiest
shopping day of the year. But whether you shopped on Friday or are shopping
some other time, probably most of us will be doing some spending on Christmas
presents in the days ahead. I love shopping for people – I love giving gifts –
but that’s next week’s sermon. But today, I want us to think about what we
spend – and what we’re thinking about when we spend our money. We spend year
round, of course. We buy things all the time. So when you’re spending, what is
it, actually, that you’re trying to buy? Sometimes we spend money, buy things,
because we have an actual need we’re trying to fulfill. We need food. We need
sneakers. We need school supplies. We need supplies to fix a repair at home.
But sometimes when we spend, we’re really trying to buy something else: a reprieve
from our loneliness. A break from the boredom. Trying to earn someone’s
affection or influence behavior. Trying to buy a bit of happiness, fill a bit
of emptiness.
Some of you might remember that last Lent I tried to
fast, as much as possible, from spending money. And I was amazed at how many
times I day I thought about buying something. It was kind of alarming. And I’d
bet much more than 50% of those impulses to buy had nothing to do with
something I “needed.” I often think of words from the prophet Isaiah: “Why do
you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
does not satisfy?” It seems silly, doesn’t it, that we would spend and spend on
things that don’t satisfy us or the people we’re buying for. When we’re
spending, this season, let’s think about this: What is it we’re trying to buy
really? And what is it that we’re treasuring?
Jesus says we can’t serve both God and stuff, God and
money. Of course we mean to serve God. But Jesus says we better make sure that
we’re taking a good look at what we actually treasure. Because that’s where we’ll
find our hearts. Let’s make sure our treasure is worth what we’re spending.
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