Trinity 15
Mt.
6:24-34
9/8/13
I don’t mind telling you that I love
my job. I really do. I look forward to coming to work in the
morning because some things have not changed since I was little boy living in Pensacola,
FL.
I
knew in first grade that I wanted to be a pastor. Now certainly the fact that both of my
grandfathers had been pastors and were then, in the mid-1970’s, seminary
professors played a role in this. But
the thing that really made me know I wanted to be a pastor was that I just
enjoyed being at church. The Lutheran
congregation where we were members had a school and I attended there for first
through third grade, before we moved to Indiana. For nine months out of the year, I spent six
days a week in the setting of church – and I was happy being there. It just felt right.
That
is still the feeling I have when I walk into Good Shepherd in the morning. Working in the setting of the Church in
general, and this congregation in particular, is a place where I feel content.
I
have found that the pastoral ministry provides great balance and diversity in
life. You work in an office, but you
also go out and about making calls. You
work with books studying and also work with people. It never gets boring.
And
speaking of books …. In many vocations there is a need for continuing
education. Being a pastor is no
different. There is the need to continue to study so that you have new things
to share with people in preaching and teaching.
I am blessed in that I really can’t tell you where my reading for work
ends and my reading for fun begins. They are one and the same.
Now
of course in a fallen world, work is still work – there are things that I don’t
love doing. Getting the announcements
ready for the bulletin is not my favorite thing. And of course no situation is perfect. When I accepted the call to Good Shepherd I
had no idea that I was placing myself in the midst of rabid Cardinals
fans. If you have been paying attention,
you may have noticed that during the seven
years that I have been here as pastor I haven’t received any other calls. So apparently it is a cross that God wants me
to continue to bear. And talk about a cross: recently my son Michael had
something to share that he clearly thought was very important. He told me that he had decided that he was
now going to root for the Cardinals.
When I asked him why he said, “Because the Cardinals are more better
than the Cubs.” What could I say? In this case the double comparative is
probably appropriate.
In
spite of those kinds of things, I like getting up and going to work. And one of the things I like as a pastor is
that I don’t have to worry about what I am going to wear. I don’t have to think about what I am going
to put on. After all, I can either go
with black … or black. The only real
question is, “Short sleeve or long sleeve?”
In
our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus talks about not worrying about what we
are going to wear. And in contrast to my rather light hearted introduction to
this sermon, he is addressing something that is very serious – very fundamental
to our life as Christians.
Our
text this morning is found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Our Lord has just said, “Do not lay up for
yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves
break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus is talking about the focus and
orientation of our life. Are we focused
on the things of God or the things of this world? Are we concerned with being
rich toward God or rich in this world?
Jesus reminds us that the riches of God’s kingdom – his reign - are
secure and lasting while the things of this world are uncertain and prone to
loss. And he emphasizes that the things you treasure reveal the true
orientation of your heart.
At
the beginning of our text, our Lord tells us why this matters. He says, “No one can serve two masters, for
either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the
one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” While our
translation uses the word “money,” the Greek word used here – mammon –
really has a broader meaning. It refers
to wealth, property, money and all that goes with it. The word itself is actually a Semitic one
that Matthew carried over into Greek letters.
And since the Matthew kept the word and used it, I am too in this
sermon.
Jesus
makes a very simple point. There can be
only one master in a person’s life.
There can’t be divided loyalties.
And Jesus explicitly identifies the two potential masters: God and
mammon.
What
does it look like when mammon is the master in your life? You worry.
Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will
put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
Our
Lord uses the example of the basic necessities of life. And that illustrates for us the way mammon
acts as our master – the way it enslaves us.
Our wealth creates ever increasing new expectations which must then be
maintained. What was a convenience
becomes a necessity.
Later
in the Gospel, a young man comes to Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good deed
must I do to have eternal life?” The very
fact that the man calls Jesus “teacher” tells us right of the bat that he is
not approaching Jesus in faith, for no believer calls Jesus this in Matthew’s
Gospel. When the man doesn’t get the
kind of answer he wants and presses Jesus, our Lord says to him, “If you would
be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went
away sorrowful, and it is only then that we learn the reason: “for he had great
possessions.” Mammon was his master and
Jesus instruction was aimed specifically at his false god.
Then
Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a
rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God.”
Now
we try to avoid these words of Jesus. Many
of us will say, “Well, I’m not rich, so it doesn’t really apply to me.” To this I can only say, “Yes we are.”
Granted, some are richer than others, but we are rich. One of the things I have really enjoyed about
Facebook is that it has allowed me to get to know Lutherans from all over the
world – especially in Africa. It has
allowed me to see pictures of the world in which they live. And it has made me realize how rich we really
are. We are so rich that have the luxury
of confusing needs and wants.
And
Jesus is not kidding when he says that this makes the spiritual life more
difficult. Wealth – mammon – makes it more
difficult because it sends us on the never ending quest to keep what we have
and to get more. We worry about losing what we have because how can you live
without air conditioning and wireless internet access and a smart phone? How can you live without going on
vacations? And then we also covet and
crave what others have – those are even richer than we are.
That
is how mammon enslaves us – how it acts as our master. Jesus says that you can
only have one master – that you can’t serve God and mammon. The challenge then
is to repent of the ways we serve mammon.
We are to have God as our God.
And we do this by using mammon in the ways that are God pleasing. After all, it’s not yours. It’s his, and he is just letting you use it
for awhile. He wants you to be a good
steward of it by using it to support the work of the Gospel in this
congregation and around the world. He
wants you to use it to help those in need – to help those who actually do face
the challenge of providing the true necessities of life like food and shelter.
Instead
of the drive to acquire more mammon, Jesus calls us to trust our heavenly
Father. He says, “Look at the birds of
the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” He says, “And why are you anxious about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil
nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is
alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O
you of little faith?”
We
often are people of little faith. We
worry and fail to trust God to provide us with what we need, even as we seek forthings
we don’t need. And so Jesus says in our
text, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall
we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these
things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to
you.”
He
says, don’t worry about all that stuff – after all, those are the things
unbelievers worry about – people who don’t even know the true God. He says, don’t worry about all that stuff –
after all, your heavenly Father knows that you need them. And he is your
heavenly Father – he is going to provide what you need.
Instead,
what you need to do is first to seek his kingdom and his righteousness.
To seek God’s kingdom and righteousness is to be focused upon Jesus
Christ. Our Lord spoke these words as
the One in whom the kingdom of God - the reign of God - had broken into this
world. He spoke them as the One in whom
the saving righteousness of God was present. He would make his way to the
cross. There he would provide the answer to sin. And then on the third day he would defeat
death in his resurrection.
Because
he has done this – because the Father sent him to do this – we know that we can
trust our heavenly Father to provide all that we really need. The old man in is will want to doubt. The
world around us will seem threatening.
And so we need to continue to seek his kingdom and his righteousness
where he has promised that it is present for us. That’s what we are doing here
right now.
And
that is what we are about to do in a few moments as we go to the Sacrament of
the Altar. For there in the body and blood of the crucified and risen Lord we
receive God’s reign and his saving righteousness. We go there seeking it and then we can go
away from this altar and this place confident in our Lord’s words: “But seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
added to you.”
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