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Less of sinful humanity, more of the Creator’s generous presence shining in the darkness.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, the audience interacts with Jesus’ view of reality. He’s painted a beautiful but haunting description of those who God is near to (the Beatitudes) and interacted with the formative power of the Torah’s commandments and misinterpretations. 

He then begins to really take issue with the idolatry that’s present in the lives of the people of God. 

Their idolatry was their relationship with God. 

Their prayer life. Their giving practices. Their spiritual elitism. 

For the people Jesus is addressing, and I’d say that it’s just as true today; we’re often fascinated by what we get in return for religion. 

Jesus, somewhat snarky, tells it like is.

You want people to see you giving money to the poor? 

Congratulations…they will!

Hah. 

It’s a spirituality reality that’s often missed.

You land where you aim. 

Jesus will go on to say it another way “where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”

And it doesn’t matter where you say your heart is, or where you think all of your petty giving and pretentious actions tell others your heart is… because those things are ultimately a load of crap. 

But for Jesus it’s not really about giving. Well, it is and it isn’t.

It’s about generosity. It’s about becoming more and more like the God-given image you were created to reflect. 

Jesus reveals that our generosity should be replacing more and more of the reliance on stuff and money that’s prevalent in our lives. That generosity defines us in such a way that we don’t even have to think about it (the whole “right hand, left hand” thing).

And that’s the reward.

The reward is that we’ll be more generous people. 

And the second reward closely follows—we’ll rely on earthly junk less and less. We’ll need less of it, care less about it, and spend less on it. 

We’re talking about freeing your souls from money and junk people.

Your. Souls.

It’s not just about dolla dolla bills anymore.

The Kingdom of God will be found where God is invading human souls and extinguishing the deep reliance on our money.

Humans, broken-yet-finding wholeness, will use their “blessings” less and less to secure a future for themselves and more to fight the living Hell that we’re often oblivious to.