Trinity 15
Mt
6:24-34
9/13/26
If you had attended at St Mary’s
Church in Wittenberg, Germany on this Sunday – the Fifteenth Sunday after
Trinity – during the 1520’s and heard Martin Luther preach, you would have
heard him preach on our text this morning, Mt 6:24-34. If you had attended at
Trinty Lutheran in Soulard on this Sunday during the 1870’s and heard C.F.W.
Walther preach – the first president of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod -
you would have heard him preach on our text from Mathew. In fact, if you had
attended church most anywhere in northern Europe during the medieval period, you
would have heard the priest preach on this text from Matthew chapter 6.
The lectionary – the assigned
Scripture readings of the church year – is one of the many strengths of our
catholic heritage (And please note, that’s catholic with a lower case C). The
Scripture texts used in the Divine Service each Sunday are not chosen by the
pastor. You are not subject to the whims of what I find to be interesting.
Instead, they have been chosen for me by the shared practice of the Church that
stretches back for centuries.
I bring this up today in order to
make the point that I have not in any way cherry picked our text. It is there every single year because the
Church put it there on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity long before the
Reformation even occurred.
And for that matter, it has not been
taken from some obscure corner of Scripture. Matthew chapter six sits right in
the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s Gospel includes five large
blocks of teaching by Jesus, and the first of these is chapters five through
seven. Right from the start the evangelist gives us the Sermon on the Mount – a
portion of Scripture that Christians have always recognized as being a central
statement of our Lord’s teaching.
These are important observations
because the subject of our text is something some people don’t want to hear
about in Church. It is something that at
times the Church herself is even hesitant to talk about because it seems
self-serving. But Paul told the pastors gathered at Miletus that he did not
shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God. We learn from the
apostle that the Church must listen to all that our Lord teaches. Jesus spoke
these words in the Sermon on the Mount. The Church listened to our Lord by
setting it before us as the Gospel lesson for this Sunday every year. So today,
we consider what our Lord has to say about a subject that truly is of great
importance for our life in the faith.
“In this world, nothing can be said
to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin wrote this in a
letter in 1789. I have always been struck by the fact that the subjects
involved here are also the times when we really see the role that God plays in
our life. When we or a loved one are faced with the prospect of death, we find
out who our God truly is. And the same can be said when it comes to how we deal
with money and wealth.
This morning, Jesus is talking about
money. He is very direct in identifying it as a false god that threatens the
life of faith. Just before our text he 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.” Our Lord
says that what we really value is where our heart will be.
He leaves no doubt about the
implications of this as he says in the first words of our text, “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.”
Jesus says that God and money are competing lords in our life.
The First Commandment is, “You shall
have no other gods.” The Small Catechism teaches us that this means, “We should
fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” In the Large Catechism we learn
that a god is whatever is most important in our life. Consider what provides
you with a sense of security, well being, and stability, and you have found
your god.
It’s not hard to recognize how money
and wealth function in this way. We want
to be secure in the fact that we can take care of all our expenses. But of
course, those expenses include many expectations about what “must” be in our
life. We have expectations about the size, décor, and landscaping of our house.
We have expectations about the travel that we will undertake. We have
expectations about the clothes, eating out, sports experiences, and new iPhone that we need. There are so many things
that we just can’t do without.
Jesus teaches us that money and
wealth is a spiritual threat. After interacting with the rich young man, Christ
said, “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.”
The disciples were shocked because first century Judaism assumed that wealth
was a sign of God’s favor and salvation. But Jesus’ statement was based on the
truth found in our text: money and God compete with one another for the place
of primacy in our life. In a process of diminishing returns the more we have
the less we appreciate what we have, and the more we feel motivated to get
more. As the apostle Paul wrote: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds
of evils.”
Christ’s promise in our text is that
God will provide us with daily bread. He will give us what we need to support
this body and life. The Lord 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?”
He points to the birds who don’t
sow, reap, or gather into barns and yet God feeds them. Jesus asks: “Are you
not of more value than they?” If God provides for birds, certainly he will give
us food. Christ sets before us the flowers that are clothed in beauty even
though they do not work. Then he asks, “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?”
God promises to provide what we need
to support life. However, he makes no promise about all the wants that we have.
In fact, quite the opposite, he warns that the drive to obtain the wants makes
money into a false god that runs our life. Instead, Scripture teaches us to be
content with the blessings God gives to us. St. Paul wrote, “But godliness with
contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world,
and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and
clothing, with these we will be content.”
Jesus’ words this morning convict us
of all the ways that money acts as a false god in our life. And if you think it
does not, then you are lying to yourself. But what he says at the end of our
text gives us the comfort of forgiveness. And it also directs us to what
Scripture teaches about how are to deal with money.
Christ says, “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.”
With this statement, Jesus points us
to himself. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, was the presence of God’s
saving reign – the kingdom of God. He was the presence of God’s righteousness –
his saving action to put all things right.
Because we are people who create
false gods all the time, God sent his Son into the world as he was conceived by
the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. At his baptism Christ took our
place – he the sinless One identified himself with sinners. On Good Friday he
took our sin and made it his own. He fulfilled the Father’s will as he offered
himself on the cross as the sacrifice for sin. Paul told the Romans about God’s
action: By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Sin brought death, but in his
resurrection Christ defeated death and began the resurrection life of the Last
Day. Through his Spirit the Lord has now called you to faith. You have been
born again of water and the Spirit in baptism. Your sins have been washed away
and in your baptism you have the continuing comfort that you are the forgiven
child of God.
Now, you seek the kingdom of God and
his righteousness in the Means of Grace that the risen Lord has given to his
church. In the reading and proclamation of his word, through absolution, and
through the true body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar God’s
reign is present giving you forgiveness and strengthening you in faith. Because
of these gifts you know that you have received the saving righteousness of God
– that you are justified and have peace with him.
And in turn God’s word directs us
how we are to use our money in ways that seek first the kingdom of God and
his righteousness. This is an action that supports the Means of Grace that go
on in our midst. And it is also one that orients our use of money in ways that
put God first.
St Paul told the Corinthians, “In
the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should
get their living by the gospel.” God’s Word commands his church to provide for
a pastor and all of the things necessary for the Means of Grace in our midst.
We seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness as we give our offering that
enables God’s Word to be proclaimed and his Sacraments to be administered here
at Good Shepherd.
Scripture give us this command. And
it also tell us how to do it. Paul told the Corinthians, “On the first day
of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as
he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.” The
apostle says that it is to be done on the first day of the week. God comes first and so we start with God as
we use the blessings he gives us. We give to God out of what we have in the
beginning, not using what is left over after we have done all the other stuff
we want to do.
The apostle says that our offering
is to be “as he may prosper.” It stands in relation to how God has blessed us –
it is proportional. It does not matter how large or small this may be. What
matters is that it reflects what God has given to us.
The Church has captured this
proportional character with the tithe – with the practice of giving 10% our
income to God. The New Testament nowhere commands the exact amount we are to
give. But drawing on the Old Testament precedent, the tithe has served as the
standard goal of the Christian offering for good reason.
Finally, later Paul told the
Corinthians, “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap
sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Each
one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under
compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” We learn that our offering is
to be willing and cheerful. It is a response to the blessings that God has
given us, and especially for the salvation we have received in Christ. As Paul
said, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was
rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become
rich.”
When God directs us in how to live
in Scripture, it is for our good. The command to give an offering is no
different. The act of determining and then giving a faithful offering helps us
to keep God as the true Lord in our life. It puts money in its proper place in
relation to God. It helps us to seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness.
This morning Jesus 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.” Our Lord confronts the
fact that money and wealth present a great spiritual challenge in life. He
assures us that God will provide us with what we truly need. And he calls us to
place him and his Means of Grace at the center of our life for in this we are
receiving the reign of God that brings forgiveness, resurrection, and
justification before God on the Last Day.
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