Stuff & Treasure

St. Alban's & St. Thomas', Monroe, La.

On the window sill over the sink in my kitchen is a treasure. It’s a little brown rock, about the size of a meatball—you know, the kind you see in chafing dishes at receptions. It’s a pretty ordinary looking rock, except…  It has a heart! 

Rock with a Heart

I don’t know how it came to be, but this plain brown rock has one kind of flat side and there on the flat side, if you tilt it at just the perfect angle, is a perfectly heart-shaped opening. A friend who knows that I collect treasures gave me “Rock with a Heart.” She found it lying on the ground, “in plain sight,” she said.

But… on the window sill, right next to Rock with a Heart, is… well, a bunch of stuff: A pill bottle with one or two expired pills in it. One of those joke half-mugs that cleverly declares, “You asked for half a cup of coffee.” That was a treasure—briefly. Now it’s a dust collector.

On a shelf above the TV is a couple of inches of armadillo tail, picked clean of tissue such that its intricate bony architecture is clearly revealed. Why so homely a critter requires such an extraordinary tail structure I don’t know. To me it’s an exuberant, over-the-top expression of its Creator—here just for the glory of it. A treasure.

But right next to it? More dust collectors: Things you thought you couldn’t live without.. for some brief moment in the distant past. Today? Meh.

We could continue. My house is strewn with treasures. Among the rocks, bones and shells, you will also find human-made treasures, like the glass ibis figurine my sister gave me when I admired it in her home.

But for every treasure... an equal or larger portion of stuff. How did I come to have… All. This. Stuff? Lately, my house full of stuff has come to feel burdensome, stifling, a huge distraction from the things that really matter. I took a stab at getting rid of stuff this summer, but, alas, I have far to go….

One of the things that struck me about the many people from New Orleans I spoke with post-Katrina is how losing everything made them leery of collecting stuff. One woman I interviewed told me that before the storm she had every kitchen device you could imagine. She loved to cook, and she had all the equipment and gadgets the world had to offer.

But she lived in the Upper 9^th Ward, and it allll ended up in a huge, smelly pile at the curb. Now, she said, I have one saucepan and one skillet and I don’t want any more. Now, she takes pleasure in figuring out to cook whatever she wants with one skillet and one saucepan.

Many people take today’s Gospel lesson to be about long-term planning. There’s that reference to “laying up treasures in heaven,” and so we want to make this teaching an evacuation plan for that next place we’ll go to someday after we die. ‘Be good now—moral, pious—and go to heaven later.’

I beg to disagree. Jesus tells us over and over throughout his ministry on earth: The kingdom is at hand. The kingdom is within and among you.

And today’s lesson: Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. (Luke 12:32-40, NRSV) 

That’s all present tense! I’m reminded of how my sister gave me that figurine. I was visiting her and noticed it sitting on her windowsill. And I told her the story of waking up one morning to a flock of ibises in my back yard feasting on crawfish brought up by a heavy rain.

The Glass Ibis

And my sister insisted on giving me the figurine. Right then. On the spot. She didn’t put it in her will, she picked it up and put it in my hands. And when I protested she said much the same thing Jesus says on this occasion: It is my pleasure to give it to you.

But here’s the tricky part. Yes, the glass ibis is a sort of treasure. But it’s not.. the real.. treasure. The glass ibis could get knocked off my windowsill to shatter on the floor today, and I’d still have the real treasure—my relationship with my sister and an act of solidarity between us that carried that relationship forward.

We humans easily confuse things, mementos, STUFF… with the real treasure—namely our relationships with each other, and with the natural world, and thereby.. with God.

That’s what I think today’s lesson is all about: Recognizing and cultivating the real treasure, our relationship with God manifested in the here and now in our relationships with people and God’s creation.

How, indeed, would we treat people if, at every moment, we were awake to the presence of God in them and viewed them as the Master coming to fasten his belt and have [us] sit down to eat? And, indeed, to serve us?

How’s that for a reversal! Let me say it again in a slightly different way. Our relationships with people are the real treasures. Our relationships are the Kingdom here and now, the gift of our God who is dying… well, already died! …to give it to us. Relationships with each other are the purses that will last. They are the medium of our relationship with God!

Now that is somewhat easy to see when it comes to family, as the story about the glass ibis and my sister illustrates. But we don’t need to be admonished to be ready and awake to accept the gift of family relationships. That kind of comes naturally.

Other folks, not so much. Other folks often appear to us as one more burdensome issue or problem we must deal with. And the more different from us they are, in terms of skin color, religion, social class, work ethic, values, ways of being in the world… the less likely we are to be ready and open to the fact that a relationship with them just might be a feast served by the Master himself.

But Jesus told us, you might have to leave your family behind. Jesus modeled for us a different way, a way contrary to our instincts, a reversal of our “natural attitude,” by inviting relationships with everyone he encountered.

And that is why Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith organizes around relationships—not issues, not “problems,” not ideologies, and especially not political parties! We organize around relationships. Building relationships across the boundaries that historically divide—like race, class, geography, religion—that is the most radical thing we do.

Amongst all the stuff I have to do this coming week, the faculty meetings I must go to, the state-mandated ethics training (Go figure!), the hobnobbing with other Episcopal clergy at our monthly clericus…

Amongst all that stuff is a treasure: I have an appointment with a young man who came to his first Interfaith meeting Friday. He found us and we him through Interfaith’s relationship with the Southside Community Involvement Association. He and I will talk one on one about what drives us and compels us to this work. We’ll develop a relationship.

And I already know, we’re going to do some Kingdom work together in this community. It’s going to be a feast served by the Master himself, because he and I were awake and ready when the opportunity came knocking.

So... what’s in your house this morning? Can you sort the treasure from the “stuff”? What’s on your calendar for the coming week? Of all the stuff you must do, which matters? Who will you encounter this week? Which person will be your opportunity for a life- and world-changing relationship? Are you open to the possibility that it might be the one who looks the least likely…?

My friends, God wants to give you the Kingdom. Here. Now. Are you ready?

AMEN