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. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Mt 6:19–21)
Jon Guerra’s favorite track on his own recently released album, Jesus, happens to be mine as well. “Where Your Treasure Is” is a meditation on the passage quoted above that begins with Guerra quoting verse 19 verbatim, followed by his admission that he still wants a nest egg: “Stocks and bonds and real estate / Security beyond what I heard You say.”
I was impressed by a Christian artist referencing the bond market, but also caught off guard by his straightforward equation of owning financial assets with a lack of trust in God. Guerra seems like a man who has no interest in being provocative, left-wing, or bohemian, only in taking Jesus seriously.
I am a bond trader, and his gentle, contemplative assault on my livelihood pushed me to go back to this and related texts from the gospels.
In Luke, Jesus argues that it’s a foolish undertaking to store up wealth for yourself. You could die this very night, and all your dreams of enjoyment will come to naught (12:13–31). Here in Matthew, by contrast, Jesus draws attention to the ephemeral nature of the possessions themselves. Moth and rust destroy, thieves steal, markets crash, inflation skyrockets, and suddenly there’s nothing to show for all your effort.
All of which is fair enough — but, then again, this is hardly news. Anyone who checks their 401(k) regularly knows how quickly treasures on earth can evaporate. That’s why people hedge, diversify, rebalance portfolios, or in some cases strengthen physical security. We can never fully eliminate risk, of course, but we can usually mitigate it.
Moreover, the perishable nature of wealth doesn’t always render its acquisition pointless, even for those of us who believe in eternity. Whatever heaven may be like, life on earth necessarily bumps up against the reality of scarcity. If we think of wealth as distance from subsistence, then the greater that distance, the more time and energy are freed up for things other than merely staying alive. And that includes things of eternal importance, like generosity to the poor or the advancement of the gospel.
And so the common interpretation of this passage — that Jesus is not so much prohibiting saving money as warning his disciples against valuing the things of this world over the kingdom of God — seems eminently reasonable.
But also, I’ve come to realize, it’s just a little too easy. Maybe Guerra was right; maybe Jesus doesn’t really want to be interpreted here.
If we take Jesus at face value, verse 21 is less an exhortation to get our priorities straight, and more a sober description of spiritual and emotional reality [1]. Jesus is saying, quite bluntly, that if we save up money, and then spend a lot of time and effort trying to protect it, then it will anchor our hopes for a good future. Or, perhaps more accurately, it will inevitably shape our ideas of what a good future looks like.
In principle, I trust God to take care of me and my family. In practice, my ideas of what that looks like usually involve remaining in the middle class: a nice house, physical safety for my family, good educational opportunities for my children, visiting different parts of the world with my wife, having the free time and mental energy to write interesting stuff, etc.
The upshot is that I can’t really imagine a life outside of the middle class. We’re just not going to move to the kind of neighborhood that tens of thousands of St. Louisians live in. I’m not exposing myself or my wife or my kids to the chaos and limitations imposed by poverty or even financial insecurity. What God can call me and my family to must remain with a carefully circumscribed set of possibilities.
This is because I have a hard time imagining, much less trusting, that God can still give me and my family a hope and a future outside a middle-class lifestyle. Because I have a little money, where my treasure is, my heart is there also.
The church has largely decided to avoid taking Jesus’ words here literally (cf., “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out …”). This is probably wise. There are enormous practical difficulties involved in saving nothing in a world marked by scarcity and uncertainty. The reality is that there are very few who have this faith.
And yet, trying to make Jesus sound more reasonable seems like exactly the wrong move. Everyone already knew that you’re not supposed to value earthly possessions over God long before Jesus arrived on the scene. Jesus is doing something quite different. When he tells us not to build a nest egg or squirrel a tidy sum away for a rainy day, he exasperates us. Does Jesus have no understanding of how the real world works? Does he really think we can just plunge forward into an uncertain future without some kind of financial safety net?
Yeah, he really does (Mt 6:25f). And we really don’t. We do not fully trust God to take care of us and our loved ones. Jesus thereby exposes our hearts, which are as divided as ever.
But this, at least, is a very good thing to know about ourselves — so that we harbor no fond illusions about our own devotion to the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
[1] I’m indebted to Ulrich Luz’s commentary on Matthew for this insight.
Wow. Thanks for the punch!