“HE ABIDES WITH YOU”
Saint Matthew 6: 24-34
15th Sunday After Trinity: 12 September Anno Domini 2021
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
God does not equivocate or give you any wiggle room at all. “No man can serve two masters.” God was talking to the “12,” the very ones who took this truth to the world. God was talking to His other disciples and hangers-on, and Pharisees and Scribes in the audience as well. Jesus addresses these words to you and therefore you actually need to hear them, to understand them (Him).
Your English translations use the word “master.” That is a good rendering but Saint Matthew (who along with the other “11” referred to Christ as “Master”) uses the word “kurious.” That is absolutely perfect because, theologically speaking, vis-à-vis Jesus, it means LORD, i.e., God! You all sung the Kyrie a few minutes ago in the Divine Liturgy.
As there is only one God, you are commanded to have only one God. He is “Dominos” (the one with dominion/rule Who dominates all things). He is King and, yes, Sovereign. He is Father and all life comes from His generative self. He is LORD.
The problem is, you don’t do what God tells you to do. Don’t you kind of think that’s a “big deal,” I mean, if you believe in God? Maybe people believe The Master is real but not really much of a Master who—Masters you; commands you; with consequences. I guess a lot of people will find out sooner or later. The “rich man” in the parable of Lazarus found out.
Christ says, to you, that “divided” loyalties don’t stay divided. You will despise the one. You will end up, (daily?), despising the true Master—The One that has rules, expectations, commands, demands, and Who expects His children to be obedient! He knows you will gravitate, slither, towards the other ersatz “master.” The reason THE Master, God, suffered and died on Calvary was to pay for your “serving” (being a slave to) the darkness, sin, rebellious regicide (killing the king).
Quickly shifting, Christ makes clear none of His words, to you, are abstract (loyalties of the heart and spirit) but rather actual worship of the create rather than The Creator. Christ goes from talking about “Master A” and “Master B” to God and mammon.
Mammon is everything of the world that is not God which you take and treat like God.
You have your Small Catechism. How does the explanation to the First and Greatest Command read? “Thou shalt have no other Gods beside me” (in My Face). You should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Jesus of course takes the first three Commandments and collapses them into an expansive reading. He did it in Deuteronomy (this morning’s Old Testament) and also when He responded once to a “lawyer” [Mt. 22.37] about the greatest law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
There’s not a lot of worry that you will trust in Allah, Buddha, or Vishnu above The Lord. Christ grounds the trust issue in the daily things you need because of the daily vicissitudes (trials) of living, dying, in a dying world. You need clothing, food, stature (health) and all other necessities for body (and soul.) Jesus knows this. Do you not believe Jesus providentially cares and protects you while feeding and clothing you?
But Jesus also knows where this goes. He gave Solomon everything. Yet even Solomon, for a while, ended up not fearing, loving, and trusting, in God above all things. Solomon, with all that he had been given, relied upon mammon—to the point of even erecting false idols and temples to the false Gods of the pagans.
I was now going to list a bunch of Old Testament Saints who at one time or another (daily?) served, slaved, to mammon and not to The Lord. But that would let you both day-dream for a few minutes and get you thinking “you’re off the hook.”
When you see prices rise faster than your income—whom do you fear; whom do you trust? When your freedoms and hitherto liberties and way of life seem to be constricting at warp speed—whom do you fear; whom do you trust. And now, straight to the questions of Job: when you begin to get ill, sick, or chronically wracked with pain; when your loved ones begin to suffer (or worse)—whom do you fear; whom do you trust?
Mammon, far too often (daily?) mammon.
And while knowing the answer—Jesus is The Answer (The Way, The Truth, The Life)—just having it thrown into your face and even into your ears doesn’t instantly produce results.
Trust God! Have Faith! Hold on to The Promise! Well, yes, but if you had to rely on your trust and your faith in God’s benevolence and mercy, you should be pitied as the most pitiful heathen.
Even at the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon simply rests in the Word of God. Saint Paul finds contentment in the good and gracious will of God.
Telling someone who is frightened, in pain, and worried (terrified) about tomorrow to trust in God is not the answer. Only Christ Who has + Baptized you is the answer. Only Christ Who will give you His Body to eat and His Blood to drink is the answer. Only Christ who holds you when you fall, when you fail, when you lay in the ditch with Lazarus, will send His angels to take you to Abram’s bosom.
You don’t build bigger barns to hold your mammon. You confess that Jesus has built heavenly mansions for when He comes to take you out of this vale of tears.
“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou Who changest not, abide with me”
The faith of Jesus is given to you: “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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