I find myself in a bit of a fankle trying to ponder treasure from a devotional perspective.
It might have something to do with what I too regularly hear as a triumphalist use of “treasure” as a sign of God’s favor or a person’s righteousness.
I prefer, however, to imagine that I spent too many hours with young Jim Hawkins in Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island. My travels with young Jim hitched the idea of treasure to doubloon and the fiendish twinkle in ol’ Long John Silver’s greedy eye. As delightful as I still find Jim Hawkins’ swashbuckling adventure, reminiscing about the story actually reinforces my experience that conventional language of treasure runs perpendicular to a theological understanding.
Hence this devotional fankle.
Allow me, for a moment, to stretch treasure to its theological horizon. Upon stretching the idea it seems that there really is no such thing as treasure in terms of something someone that can be owned or bought or sold or buried on a remote tropical island or anywhere else. Breathing the economic air that we breathe, however, we are formed to negotiate the world with assumption that widgets and the people that make them have value based on the laws of supply and demand set by our market economy. Let me be clear, I’m not making a value judgment about the market economy. Let me also be clear, there is a dissonance in terms of valuation.
The catechetical and penitential pathway of Lent compels us to consciously rethink and reorient our perspective in relation to the Lenten destination: Christ’s crucifixion.
This pathway to the foot of the cross provides a different vantage from which to interpret value in the world. The self-emptying or kenosis (Phil 2.5f) of the Eternal Word incarnate completed at the cross places a question mark behind all of our attempts to assign value.
Supply and demand, you see, is built on the principle of scarcity. A widget’s value is tied to its availability in relation to consumer demand. At the risk of oversimplification as there are aspects of value (e.g., beauty, sentiment) not tied to demand, in general we absolutely do tie the value of a widget (and, by extension, the people who make widgets) to how many widgets there are and the consumer’s desire to possess them.
This is the economic world in which we live and breathe and work and function, but such valuation does not work theologically. In terms of who God reveals God’s self to be in Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, supply and demand valuation craps out.
Consider: “Behold I make all things new… Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true… It is complete! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.” (Rev. 21.5-6)
The economy of the Lamb undermines ol’ Long John Silver’s and our desire to own doubloon. The treasure of the Lamb does not behave in supply and demand terms, as the supply is infinite even as the demand is also infinite. God’s mercy and love are abundant beyond measure. All that the world (and we as operators in the world!) treasures is appropriately located between these two letters Alpha and Omega. From self to relationships to doubloon, everything and everyone exists between Alpha and Omega. In truth, we steward what is God’s. Consciously or not. Even our very breath and the beat of our heart is God’s.
God’s abundance breaks our economic assumptions. Supply and demand do not ultimately determine value. In this sense, the Triune God sucks at business. The water of life is abundant to overflowing, and there’s no charge.
The lovely fankles of Lent!
Rev. Samuel D. Giere, PhD
Professor of Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation
Wartburg Theological Seminary
