August 4, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

Treasure Map

Edwin Estevez
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Ecclesiastes 1 and 2 (selected verses)
Luke 12:13–21

If you needed to point to a book in the Bible that could be dubbed “philosophy,” this is it. The Preacher, as the writer of Ecclesiastes is sometimes referred to, is a philosopher who dwells on meaning and the seeming meaninglessness that surrounds us. A book attributed by some to King Solomon, considered the wisest man in all of Israel, its famous translation is often “Vanity!” One could say, all is meaningless! The Hebrews’ image for this, the word we translate as “vanity,” is vapor, vapor, all is vapor. Vapor dissipates and is no more. It is of little consequence, for a brief moment. Have you ever watched how quickly the dew on fresh morning grass is vaporized by the light of the sun?

After a hot shower, haven’t you seen the steam that fogged up the windows fade in a short amount of time? Vapor. Gone, just like that. This philosopher wants to tell us that much of what we chase after is illusory, short-lived, unnecessary, wasteful, and even meaningless.

In the passage we read about Jesus, our Lord tells us about what really matters, what gives us meaning in contrast to what we sometimes value and hold dear. He tells of a man squarely focused on himself—my, my, my, I , I, I. My things, my possessions, my crops, my barn, but unconcerned for others, for God. “You fool,” Jesus says, I imagine with a deep sense of sorrow, “your life will be taken from you this very day!” The Bible, and indeed all sorts of ancient literature, is sprinkled with powerful imagery that tells us about the truth of our days: We are like the grass, here today and gone tomorrow. The trees will outlive most of us. The sun, stars, and world have been around before us and will go on after us. We are like one breeze in the sea of the universe; we are like a tiny piece of dust, and to this dust we shall return.

Meaningless. Vanity. Vapor. We shall fade. One movie shows the meaningless chase after things we sometimes value over people—and sometimes even ourselves. Like many ’80s movies, The Goonies is a film about latchkey children coming of age in the midst of new and sometimes difficult family dynamics and pulling through with the help of friends. The movie draws us in when these children discover a treasure map that they are set on using. As they figure their way through the clues of the map, they are being chased by people intent on killing whomever is in their way in order to gain treasure, and along the way, they find the remains of pirates past, who had hoarded the treasure in vain.

To hoard: to store away, to find our identity and security in the things we accumulate. We need only watch an episode on TV from Hoarders to know how disturbing this can be. We want too much, it seems. We store and store. We can’t take it with us, not our lavish homes, our cars, our good or bad credit, our clothing. Vapor. It will fade.

Ernest Hemingway, in one of his most famous and enduring novels, The Sun Also Rises, borrows from the passage we read in Ecclesiastes. In it he writes the almost-biographical tales of jealousy, envy, violence, insecurity, loss of identity, pursuit of fame, pursuit of physical satisfaction. All of these scenes capture the mood of the so-called Lost Generation, who wandered on their way to some kind of meaning. In response to this kind of meaningless, religion has long held that we should kill off our desire, want nothing, chase after nothing, and simply live in constant repudiation of all of our earthly wants.

But what if the issue isn’t our desires after all? What if the issue isn’t that our hearts long for more? What if it isn’t that we want treasure, but that we have the wrong map? What is so intriguing about The Goonies movie is that it plays with the mythic story of the treasure map. This has long been treated in works of literature and even present-day video games—the idea of being caught up in adventure and being rewarded handsomely for it. But most treasure map stories end in tragedy or with the conclusion that the map was wrong or that the treasure never existed.

At the end of the movie, after chasing after treasure and even finding it, The Goonies realize that the treasure isn’t worth their lives or friendships. In the way that the antagonists had wasted time, energy, and resources trying to find it, they even let their morals get away from them—they lost their souls. As the ship sails away with what we might ordinarily call treasure, The Goonies are left with something they find more valuable: their relationships.

Jesus points us to a treasure map that leads to something of great value as well. “Don’t store treasure up for yourselves; be rich toward God.” Jesus is telling us that what we’ve stored and valued isn’t real treasure. He shows a treasure map to Nicodemus, to Peter, to Mary, and to Martha. Again and again he teaches his followers about The Way of the map: welcoming and helping the widow, the stranger, the orphan, the marginalized and ignored. He directs our attention to God first and to the things God is concerned about, so we can better navigate.

How society tells you to find value and to feel valuable isn’t the real map. Marketing will tell you what you think you need but might actually be unnecessary. Culture will tell you what you really want, which is actually so much less than what God offers. To reiterate a C. S. Lewis quote I often share: “It’s not that we want too much; it’s that we settle for too little.” Jesus wants more for us, so he offers us a map.

But we are busy mapping away the dreams we’ve been told are ours or have been sold. We want more because the entire world can only offer us so little. With wonderful introspection, Henri Nouwen writes, “We keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfill our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness . . . when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolute expectations.” We chase, we desire, we hoard, we store because we’re looking at the wrong map, searching for the wrong treasure. St Augustine—whose words we pronounced during the Prayer of Confession—would call it disordered loves: we are looking for love in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.

But what if we were to take up Jesus’ offer? What if we look at that map? What does it tell us? Be rich toward God. And what does that mean? To give ourselves over to the One that has given of God’s vey self to us. It is to trust, finally, that the Provider will provide. That the love we need and want we will find, not just through the people in our lives, but in the Source of Love, which never runs dry.

Like the antagonists in The Goonies, we too can get caught in the meaningless chase of things, wasting our time, energy and resources—even losing our souls. Then the philosopher of Ecclesiastes is right: all is meaningless, insignificant, and temporary like vapor. But what if we were to take God at God’s word: to trust that we don’t need to find our value, our identity, and security in the possessions we often call treasures, but we are, in fact, valuable because God loves us? What if we were to stand tall on solid ground, the Ground of our Being, and trust that we matter to God, that we have meaning? Well then, in the words of Augustine, our restless souls would finally come to rest in the God that offers us rest—rest from having to prove ourselves, rest from having to craft an identity that pleases others or has accolades to show, rest from the weary toil of seeking redemption and running from our past, and rest from the endless search for false treasure. We would find that the greatest treasure of all is God’s love and that we have it—that this is a treasure map that tells us that the treasure has already found us. If we let it, God’s love will shine much like gold does when it is refined. And unlike the pirates and the antagonists in The Goonies, we would want to share this treasure with the entire world. We would want to point to the map. All you do, everywhere you go, all you are only matters when you let the love of God, the treasure, shine in you.

So this week, I challenge you to take up the treasure map that Jesus is pointing to. It will lead you to adventure. The adventure includes risks of love—reaching out to your neighbor, praying for your enemy, welcoming the stranger, supporting the weak, lifting up the fainthearted, encouraging those who struggle, and forgiving—even yourself. It will be an adventure that will test your resolve and your courage, to speak up in the face of injustice, to defend the helpless, to honor all of God’s creation.

But it is the treasure map that reminds you of the true treasure that gives value to everything else. In the face of a seemingly vain world that will fade like vapor, God’s love gives us meaning. Sharing God’s love gives us purpose. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Amen.