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I’d like to focus on just two lines from that gospel: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be,” (That speaks of our priorities.) and “Be prepared. The Son of Man will come at a time you do not expect.” (That has come to speak of the end of the world.) It will come when you do not expect it. Well, that may be but there sure are a lot of religious types who, over the centuries, have tried to predict exactly when to expect the end of the world, from Popes to Sir Isaac Newton to prominent preachers today. I love the cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine that showed a man with one of those sandwich signboards on him that said, “The end is near.” And a pedestrian is asking him, “Do I still have time for a cup of coffee?” We’d like to know exactly when it is so that we can squeeze in what we want to get done before it is too late, and so that we can shape up just in time, but not too early.

Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, predicted the end of the world would be in 1794. It didn’t happen. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, predicted the end of the world for 1832. It didn’t happen. The Jehovah Witnesses and the Watchtower Society has made almost a cottage industry out of predicting the end of the world and then revising it when we get to that date. They first predicted it in 1914 and then revised it to 1915, and then to 1920, and then to 1925, then to 1941, then to 1975, most recently to 1994. Reverend Moon, the founder of the Moonies, predicted the end of the world would take place in 1981. It didn’t happen. Pat Robertson predicted that it would happen in the Fall of 1982. Now, I notice his daily TV program is still on. So, it didn’t happen. Perhaps the most famous in our life times is Hal Lindsay who wrote “The Late Great Planet Earth,” and he said “one generation, forty years, after the establishment of the State of Israel, the world will end.” That would be 1988. And he convinced millions of that, or at least he convinced millions of us to buy his book. Then, the millennium came. It was going to be the year 2000 that would be the end of the world.

It’s interesting. Jesus says to all us religious types, “You know neither the day nor the hour.” But it seems an awful lot want to know the year and want to predict the exact year. What we do know for ourselves, if not for the world and if not for the whole universe, is that the end will come. There is no doubt that for each of us the end will come. And Jesus says, it’s not important that you know when it comes. It’s important who you are and that you’re prepared and faithful. And a good measuring rod of who you are and whether you are prepared and faithful is what do you treasure.

What do you treasure? Very often we get the feeling there is this criticism that you know what we all treasure. We all treasure our money. We all treasure our savings account. We all treasure our things. I don’t really think that is true of most people. I think, even though we act like that at times, deep down I think we treasure our children; we treasure our families; we treasure our health; we treasure a sense of security; we treasure our homes; we treasure our friends and friendships; we treasure our education; we treasure our faith; and we treasure our leisure. Very often, when I am preparing with a family after a death, for the funeral of the deceased, I will ask, “What were her or his favorite things? What did they treasure?” And the first answer almost always is “People.” It’s “Family.” And, after that, it is all kinds of things. “He treasured good books..... She loved good music. He liked dancing. They loved the outdoors..... She loved flowers and gardening.... She loved helping people.” I would say every one of those are good, good treasures and good places to put our hearts.

But how we hold the treasure, how we hold that, reveals our deepest priorities. And whether we hold those treasures, whatever they might be, in harmony with the values and the vision of Jesus. Now, last Thursday night, we had an evening on “What would Jesus do?” And I tried to shape what His values and vision were and, since we are in a political season, I made it a political profile. I asked, first of all, “What was Jesus’ campaign slogan?” Remember Bill Clinton had a campaign slogan when he ran against the elder George Bush: “It’s the economy, Stupid!” That was posted everywhere that he went: “It’s the economy.” The campaign slogan for Jesus is clearly, “It’s the kingdom of God.... The kingdom of God is near.... The kingdom of God is within.... The kingdom of God is at hand.” And it says to us that each day is a gift and an opportunity and it is the dawn of the reign of God. And we need to be aware of that and participate in the reign and the kingdom of God.

And then I went on to say, “Well that’s nice that’s there a slogan, but the Democrats have a platform and the Republicans have a platform. Did Jesus have a platform? And what were the planks in it? And I listed four. His first plank was a morality of the heart, an ethic of the heart. Remember how upset He got at formalism, at people just going through the motions, at rote ritualism, at putting the rules and regulations ahead of the values that the rules and regulations are supposed to be protecting. Living out of an attitude of heart and spirit, living from the heart. I would say that was the first plank in His platform. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the whole Beatitudes.

The second plank in His platform was a radical equality, letting everybody in, letting them in on our treasures, letting them into our lives. The way Jesus did it He went around with and stayed with and ate with the poor, whom no one wanted to touch, a different caste system, with those who were outsiders, the women in His society, the foreigners, the Gentiles. People different from ourselves, do we let them in on our treasure, because His second plank is radical equality.

The third plank of His platform is compassion. We see it in Jesus Himself. The leper moves Him to compassion. The widow of Naim, when she is mourning the loss of her son, it moves Him to compassion so He has to do something about it. The blind move Him to compassion, and when He sees the multitude hungry, He is moved to compassion. The heroes in His stories, the Good Samaritan, is moved with compassion. The father in the Prodigal Son, when he sees his son, is moved with compassion. And Jesus says, “You be compassionate as your Heavenly Father is compassionate.” And it doesn’t just mean being nice. It means feeling with those who are suffering and hurting, walking with those who are suffering and hurting, and trying to respond to those who are suffering and hurting.

And the last, fourth, plank that I describe as part of His platform is forgiveness. Remember He says if you are taking your gift to the altar, be sure to be reconciled with your brother or sister first, and if you aren’t, to go and take care of that first? How many times should I forgive? “Seventy times seven,” He says. And He even gives us the Our Father. I have a suspicion that the growing popularity of joining hands at the Our Father is to keep us from crossing our fingers when we get to “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” And I think that’s a good idea.

WHEN the end comes for us is not the important thing, but, rather, who we are. Are we prepared and are we faithful? Are we holding what we truly treasure, whatever it might be, with an inner spirit of morality of the heart, an attitude of the heart, with a sense of radical equality, with compassion and forgiveness? Let’s all of us at least try. And let us give thanks to the Lord Who is so good.