If you ask Jesus, money is a problem. Having it is so much more dangerous than we realize. Loving it too much is a sin we never seem to confess. Our world conditions us to find a great deal of security in it, and to accumulate as much of it as we think we need. But Jesus has brought us with him up the mountain and said to us, in no uncertain terms – do not accumulate. “Do not store up treasures on earth, but store up treasures in heaven. Where your treasure is, there’s your heart too. And if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is full of darkness (Matthew 6:19-23).”
There’s no need to announce what we value, what our true treasures are. Our treasures will announce themselves sooner or later. Whatever we spend money and time on, whatever gets us to put miles on the car, whatever we look at most, whatever we put the most planning into – there’s our treasure, and our heart.
Jesus has something to say about “the eye” three times in the Sermon, and none of if is positive. According to Jesus, the eye looks at people with unrestrained sexual desire (5:28-29). It gladly sees what is wrong in my neighbor but cannot see what is wrong in myself (7:1-5). And here in Matthew 6, it looks and looks and looks for things, for gratification, for pleasures and treasures. It’s always on the lookout for the new thing in which it thinks it can find security. It wants a new toy to play with. It wants the next hit of dopamine. It needs the TV on and the phone in hand. It needs something new to consume. The eye hungers to be constantly stimulated and satisfied (though it never stays satisfied for long).
There’s a moment in the book of Exodus in which Moses “entered into the thick darkness where God was (Ex 20:21).” We associate God with light, not darkness, but Moses is actually experiencing the presence of God here in the richest way. He is being pulled into something the eye cannot see, something that cannot be known by the body’s five senses. Moses finally sees God when he passes beyond his eyes’ ability to see, where there is no stimulation or satisfaction to be had in the first place. Our deepest calling as human beings is to see God in a way that is beyond images, to hear God in a way that is beyond words, to lay hold of that which cannot be grasped in our hands. Treasure in heaven.
This is addition by subtraction. To store up treasures in heaven is precisely the same as letting go of our treasures. And to make our eyes healthy is to close them and await what God has for us in the dark, in the lack. That’s where God is resting and waiting for us – in the dark, in the lack, in the secrecy. Our life in him is going to find us in the place where the eye loses its power and its hunger.
Jesus is giving us an invitation to the happy, unburdened life, free from the malicious eye that doesn’t know how to stop being hungry. But it is also something for us to wear like an itchy sweater, because the danger of loving our money and our treasures too much is a real danger. So let that discomfort create practices of generosity. Let that discomfort produce a greater and greater willingness to experience God in the dark, in the lack, in the secrecy. No treasures. No eyes to look and desire and judge. Just God.