I crashed a funeral the other day.

I know—color me creepy.

Really, I didn’t mean to do it.  My kids were helping with a Vacation Bible School in a park about thirty minutes from our house.  Rather than drive all the way there, then home, then back to get the kids, then home again, I went looking for a shady place to park and relax for a couple of hours.  I found such a place at a cemetery a few blocks from the park.  Plenty of shade, and plenty of quiet.

Yes, I was parked outside the gates.  What do you think of me, anyway?

As I waited, I saw a hearse pull into the cemetery.  There were no other cars.  The vehicle pulled up to a prepared site—hole dug, astro-turf covering the loose dirt—and parked.  Two men in suits got out of the car and waited by the graveside, looking very Hi-I-work-for-the-cemetery-sorry-for-your-loss.  A minute later, a truck pulled up and six men in work clothes piled out.

At this point, I was wondering, “Where is the family?  Where are all the friends?  I figured that maybe the workers were there to set up chairs, which I noticed were conspicuously absent.  It seemed odd that the hearse had arrived so far ahead of the mourners, but what do I know?

Then the workmen walked to the back of the hearse and removed the casket.

You gotta be kidding me…these are the pallbearers?

I watched in shock as the men carried the casket over to the plot and placed it down on the rack prepared for it.  Then five of them returned to their truck, where they stood joking and waiting while the sixth walked toward a fenced-in area where a backhoe was parked.

It was about this point that I realized something.  This man had no one at his funeral.  The workmen were waiting for someone to arrive and officially lower the casket into the grave, and then they could use the backhoe to wrap up their job.  There would be no Scripture read.

No songs sung.

No words spoken.

No tears wept.

My son and I are in a production of Treasure Island at LifeHouse, the community theater that has completely consumed my family.  One of the themes of this show is the emptiness of worldly treasure.  Billy Flint, the pirate captain who has amassed the treasure everyone is after, dies drunk, broken, and alone.  Because of the darkness of his heart, the treasure he spent his life winning and protecting brings him nothing but grief.  The pirates who have pursued Flint, and hounded him to his death, are likewise consumed with this treasure.  They will stop at nothing, including murder, to gain the “Stuff” their dreams are made of.

Even the good guys, Jim Hawkins and his family and friends, get seduced by the lure of the treasure.  It is not until they are captured and facing death that they come to see the real treasure they possessed all along—each other.

I know that Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…” is one of the most quoted, most preached upon passages in Scripture.  For some reason, that tends to make us dismiss it as a Sunday School lesson for small children.

Which it is.  Because if they can get the message early enough, perhaps it will sink in before this world gets its hooks into them.

So, my friend, here it comes…you knew it was coming…

Where is your treasure?

Don’t dismiss the question just because it is simple and you have heard it a thousand times.  And don’t answer it with a trite and pious, “In Heaven, of course.”  The question deserves a more thoughtful answer, and so does your soul.  Take the time, right now, to consider where you invest the bulk of your time, your energy, your resources.  Is it the Kingdom of Heaven…or the Kingdom of Things…or perhaps the Kingdom of You?

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

The day after I crashed the funeral, I visited the gravesite.  Yeah, I know—I couldn’t help myself.  The turf was replaced, the simple headstone in position—that’s how I know it was a man, by the way.  There was nothing to distinguish this grave from the hundreds of others surrounding it, other than a slight mound where the dirt had not yet settled.

There were no flowers.  No wreaths.

My last, lingering hope that perhaps I had been wrong, that perhaps there had been a large group of loved ones who arrived just after I left, evaporated.  This man went to the grave alone.

I don’t want that.  When my time comes, I want people.  People to rejoice that I lived; to mourn that I’m gone.  People to say that I made a difference,  my life mattered to them.

That takes investments of the kind you don’t find on Wall Street.

Which is good, because I’m broke.

And I’m rich.