Treasure in Clay Jars

This morning at the Festival of Homiletics, Dr. Walter Brueggemann preached a sermon about treasure and clay jars.  Specifically the ways in which we confuse our treasure with the clay jars that hold them.

For some reason this seems painfully obvious.

Is it painful because it's true?

Do we confuse our churches for the Gospel that is preached there?
Do we confuse the number of people in our pews for the size of the Body of Christ?

Or perhaps, the better question is why are we doing these things?

Why are these clay jars, fragile vessels that are meant to be broken and smashed to let the contents flow freely, so protected?

Why are we afraid to be broken in order for true healing to occur?

It's not because we're afraid of death, is it?

We proclaim loudly every Sunday that Christ has destroyed death, that there is no final separation between us and God, that even in the midst of tragedy there is still beauty and grace and love - because God is in those moments.

We profess it with the words of the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds. Christ died to destroy death.
We hear it all over the Epistles of Paul.
We sing it loudly, using some of my favorite Easter hymns (among others)

And yet, even in the light of Easter change is still painful and scary.

How do we embrace the fear of change and let it go?
How do we stare this fear and death in the face, and in spite of that still live as God invites us to live?

And that living invitation looks like:

Loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Feeding the hungry.
Caring for the sick.
Dining with outcasts.

We are invited to live in God's kingdom, where death has no power.

And that is the treasure.  Everything else is just a clay jar.