16 `And when you fast, be ye not as the hypocrites, of sour countenances, for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men fasting; verily I say to you, that they have their reward.
17 `But you, fasting, anoint your head, and wash your face,
18 that you may not appear to men fasting, but to your Father who [is] in secret, and your Father, who is seeing in secret, shall reward you.
19 `Treasure not up to yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust disfigure, and where thieves break through and steal,
20 but treasure up to yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth disfigure, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,
21 for where your treasure is, there will be also your heart.
This part of the new Torah is not hard to understand. Just as in prayer one should not show off one’s piety before the world, so in the ancient self-discipline of fasting one should not do so either. The disfiguring of the face may have been an application of mud or a smearing with dust: an outward and visible sign of repentance was the covering of head and face with dust and ashes.
It might be useful here to think briefly about fasting, especially as the year moves closer to Lent. Fasting exists as a discipline in many religions: the most visible in today’s Western countries is the Muslims’ Ramadan, which prohibits the taking of any form of food or drink between sunrise and sunset for thirty days, and which is observed far more widely than the forty-day Christian Lent, which mostly leaves the form and intensity of the fast to the individual believer. It is not, of course, practiced for the sake of health or bodily elegance, but to discipline the body in order to subject it more completely to the mind and the soul. It is easier for those whom grief and contrariety put off their feed than for those who eat when depressed and feast when content. The more rigorous and orthodox Christians often make fun of those who “give up chocolate for Lent”; yet they are wrong, because every discipline is an art, and every art needs practice and begins with simple steps.
What Yeshua is telling us here is that, whether we are giving up chocolate or living on bread and water like Carthusians, we should keep it to ourselves: it is between us and the Father, and since we are doing it to be closer to Him, keeping it between us and Him is “the way it should be”, i.e. part of shalom. Moreover, this injunction clearly is part of the completed Torah’s emphasis on inwardness: avoid the outward and visible sign and concentrate on the inward and spiritual grace.
The second part of this text is about treasure. Man is not just a creature that transforms the world – all “work” transforms the world – but a creature that attaches importance to security. True, there are La Fontaine’s grasshoppers, who give never a care for the morrow and thus tend to fall back on their neighbours; but most people try to put away a little nest-egg, an “apple for thirst” as the Dutch say, whether it is in case one loses one’s job, or to put one’s children through college, or against illness or old age. And this impulse can go far, and result in large fortunes passed on, and increased, from generation to generation.
Yeshua warns against this. In a world where “treasure” was still what our childhood imagined, physically precious objects, whether fine silks, delicately-wrought metals, and gold coin, he reminds us that the silks can be disfigured by moth, the metals by the tinworm, and that the world is full of thieves cleverer than we are. Such treasures are vulnerable. In our modern world, treasure tends to be held either on the stock market or in real estate; yet a financial crash may wipe out the one, and fire and earthquake the other, while cybercriminals may easily make off with anyone’s bank or savings account. All earthly treasure is vulnerable.
So what does he suggest? Laying up treasure in heaven. We know this text so well that we often do not really think about it any more; and we feel superior to our medieval forefathers who took it very literally, for instance in the form of indulgences. Yet He speaks to us also; so we owe it to Him to think about it with what intelligence we can summon. How do we “lay up treasure in Heaven”? It displeases us to think of our spiritual life as a sort of divine bank-account; but let us try to think past the image. In contrast to devoting our surplus of time and effort (beyond our basic work in the world) to acquiring more money or objects, we should devote our surplus of time and effort to our life of faith: to our relation to the Father who loves and cherishes us, as much as we let Him.
And Yeshua finishes by at once giving us the reason for this injunction: where your treasure is, is where your heart is. And your heart is what matters. If I have a magnificent collection of classic cars, like Jay Leno’s or Ralph Lauren’s, I have to admit it would take up not only much of my time but much of what Keats called “the heart’s affections”; and each of us has only so much of those. If, on the other hand, I spend as much of my time and effort as I can, not on improving my virtue but on the loving bond I have with God and with my brothers and sisters, I may discover to my surprise that in strange and unexpected ways I have become richer, and freer from fear, than I ever thought possible.
Once again, I am taught the principle of this completed Torah: the heart is what matters.
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