Treasure - 9th Sunday after Pentecost

Treasure - 9th Sunday after Pentecost

Author: Pastor Scott Schul
August 10, 2025

Where is your treasure?  That’s the question Jesus poses to us in today’s Gospel lesson.  It’s an important question, because he says that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.  Many centuries ago, a man named Lawrence had to wrestle with this question.  He was born in the early 200s, in Spain, and was a believer in Jesus.  He made his way to Rome and made many friends there, including a man who would become Pope Sixtus the Second.  The Pope appointed Lawrence as chief deacon.  As such, his task was to help bishops and pastors by collecting and managing alms and distributing those resources to the poor and needy.

Sounds like Lawrence had it made, right?  Personal friend of the pope, a position of influence, living in a beautiful region of the world… There was just one problem.  The Roman Emperor Valerian hated Christians because their primary allegiance was to Jesus, not him.  And so on August 4, 258, the emperor ordered his troops to seize Pope Sixtus, Lawrence, and the Church’s other officials.  The emperor executed all of them on the spot except Lawrence.  Why was he spared?  Because as chief deacon, he would know where all the church’s money could be found.

After a few days, they dragged Lawrence before the Empire’s officials and ordered him to turn over all the Church’s wealth.  He said he needed time, so they granted him three days.  During those three days, Lawrence gave away all the Church’s material wealth to the poor.  On that third day, August 10, 258, exactly 1,767 years ago today, Lawrence appeared again before the emperor’s officials.  “Where are the Church’s treasures?” they asked.  Lawrence responded by calling forward all of Rome’s poor, the outcasts, the sick, the disabled, orphans, widows, and lepers.  Calmly, but with conviction, Lawrence said, “These are the treasures of the Church.”

As you can imagine, the emperor was not amused.  He ordered that Lawrence be placed on a gridiron over a blazing fire and burned to death.  Tradition tells us he never lost his faith or sense of humor, because midway through his execution, he said, “You can turn me over; I’m done on this side.”  And so every August 10 the Church remembers Lawrence, deacon and martyr,¹ because he reminds us that we are Jesus’s treasures.  Jesus doesn’t seek worldly wealth or power; in his loving eyes, we are his treasures, his heart’s sole desire, despite our shortcomings and fickle faith.

But do we view Jesus with the same eyes of love?  Where is your treasure?  Is it stored away in a bank, a lockbox, or a stock portfolio?  Is it parked in your garage?  Is it your Nittany Lion football season tickets or your vacation home?  The First Commandment states that we shall have no other gods.  In the Small Catechism, Luther teaches us that this means we are to “fear, love, and trust God above all things.”²  He expands on this teaching in the Large Catechism, writing that, “Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”³ 

500 years ago Luther listed some of the false gods we all tend to embrace: learning, wisdom, prestige, family, honor, superstitions, power, and even pious works, when we offer those works to God not in praise but as a sort of invoice.  “Here God; now you owe me.”⁴  Nowadays we might add additional false gods, like our hobbies; our favorite sports teams; and the politicians and celebrities we devotedly follow.  Are they our treasure?  Look, these things aren’t inherently bad, until they lose their proper place in our lives and we make them a higher priority than Jesus.  Because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  Where is your treasure? 

Once again, in his marvelous Large Catechism, Luther tells us why this question is so important.  He writes, “If the heart is right with God and will keep this [first] commandment, all the rest [of the commandments] will follow on their own.”⁵  In other words, if you want an easy way to evaluate the health of your faith, honestly consider Jesus’s question.  Is he your treasure, or is it something or someone else?

The truth is that all of us, without exception, cling to some degree to our favorite false gods, even though we know better.  Why?  Well partly it’s biology.  God created us to experience life through our senses.  For example, we don’t consume food just to stay alive.  We savor the smell and the taste.  We rejoice in the beauty of a well-prepared dish.  Even the sound of food draws us in.  In our family we used to joke that the only way to get Emilio out of bed was to start frying bacon.  Between the smell and the sound, it shot him out of bed faster than any threat from dear old dad!

And so it’s natural for us to put our trust in things we can see, smell, touch, hear, and taste.  God, on the other hand, is intangible, often far beyond anything we can sense or experience.  Jesus recognized this limitation in us, which is why the Church’s sacraments (baptism and Holy Communion) use water, wheat, and wine to tangibly transmit our Lord’s intangible presence and promises.

So when we’re asked to place our faith in someone we cannot see or a promise we cannot fully control, we get anxious and scared and run elsewhere for security and comfort.  That’s why in today’s Gospel Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”  Fear turns us toward false gods by paralyzing us in place and preventing us from growing and becoming all God intended for us.  Look, I’m a lousy swimmer because as a little boy I was scared of drowning in the big school pool in Kane.  Fear kept my hands attached to the sides of the pool, and if you’re always holding on to a wall, you’re surely not going to learn how to swim.  It’s the same with our spiritual lives.

So what’s the solution?  Our usual response is to “work ourselves holy” by trying harder and doing more.  The bookshops are overflowing with spiritual self-help books filled with prayer formulas, Bible reading schedules, and devotional practices that promise to whip you into a saint in 40 days.  But that’s not how it works.  God’s Law is incredibly effective at revealing our spiritual illness, but it isn’t our cure.  Good intentions and good works will not heal us of our addiction to false gods.  That’s why our New Year’s Resolutions don’t normally last into February.   Trying harder, doing more, and being better are laudable goals, but we are sinners, and we will never be able to work ourselves into perfection and holiness. 

But here is what we can do.  Stay close to Jesus.  Cling to Jesus.  Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.  It sounds simple, but every day is full of unholy distractions aimed at sidetracking us from our Lord.  That’s why each night it’s helpful to assess what we’ve clung to during the day, and ask Jesus to recalibrate us that he might again be our heart’s sole desire.  We cannot fix this problem no matter how hard we work.  Only Jesus can.

But the Good News is that we are his treasure, and he wants to forgive us, save us, heal us, and give us the kingdom.  It’s his love for us which drew him to the cross.  Only by his grace can we ever hope to shed the barnacles of false gods that seek to slow us and divert us from him.  So ask Jesus to help you to cling only to him, and then all the fruits of prayer and good works can spring from that holy root.  That’s how it was for Lawrence, the deacon martyr we celebrate today.  It wasn’t his pious works that made him special; only his single-minded devotion to Jesus enabled him to bravely love God and his neighbors, regardless of the price.  That’s our calling as Christians too.  So Lord, we pray: preserve us from distractions and fears.  Turn us to you.  Keep us close.  Daily, re-form us so that you, and you alone, are our treasure.  Amen.

Citations
¹ See More Days for Praise by Gail Ramshaw (© 2016 Augsburg Fortress), pp. 188-189; New Book of Festivals & Commemorations by Philip. H. Pfatteicher (© 2008 Fortress Press), pp.382-383; Celebrating the Saints by Williams C. Weedon (© 2016 Concordia Pub. House), pp. 138-139.
² Luther’s Small Catechism, explanation to the First Commandment, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (© 2006 ELCA), p. 1160.
³ Luther’s Large Catechism, in the Book of Concord (© 2000 Augsburg Fortress), p. 386.
⁴ Ibid., pp. 387-389.
⁵ Ibid., p. 392.

© 2025 Rev. Scott E. Schul, all rights reserved

Gospel: Luke 12:32-40

[Jesus said:] ³² “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³ Sell
your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

³⁵ “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; ³⁶ be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. ³⁷ Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. ³⁸ If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed
are those slaves.

³⁹ “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰ You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

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