No man can serve two masters

"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.

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

"No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

- Matthew 6:19-24

We've been reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel. Starting last Monday, we have been reading the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew's Gospel. We began with the Beatitudes, the blessings of the life of discipleship. Next He taught, You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world - the value of discipleship to the world. Then He began to teach His vision of the Law, "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill." He then elaborated on discipleship regarding several statutes; first against murder: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder;'" next against adultery: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery;'" and then regarding vengeance: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'" Jesus' discussion of discipleship in His teaching involves a deepening of those statutes, in a sense directed toward our inner lives. Then He moved on in the Sermon to discuss spiritual practice, especially forbidding hypocrisy and again emphasizing the inner life in "Do not be like the hypocrites." In yesterday's reading, Jesus taught us how to pray, in Our Father in heaven.

"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." In the structure of the Gospel, we go from Jesus' teachings against hypocrisy in religious practice to these teachings. Again, the emphasis is on the depth of the person, in the sense of what we truly treasure in the heart -- the things we really put our faith in in life. This teaching takes us from a faith in appearances, in the purely material, toward a different set of values, and, I think, especially the things by which we judge ourselves and our worth in the world. In the Beatitudes, Jesus lays out the blessings of discipleship, the things that help to make His disciples the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Here He asks us to deepen, into a sense of multiple layers or dimensions, our understanding of what truly gives our lives value and meaning. It is in our heart that we must decide what truly serves worth and value, and what we love. My study bible says, "We have need of certain material things, but we use them according to God's will and purpose."

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" My study bible says, "We all understand the value of light in our lives. As the eye is the lamp of the body, so the mind (Greek nous) is the spiritual eye of the soul: it illuminates the whole inner man. Keeping our inner eyes good, that is, wholesome and pure, is fundamental to a Christian life." I think the emphasis on the eye is a fundamental way of speaking about how we look at things, how we see things. It gives us a sense that Jesus teaches us about the importance of what we focus on. He has also taught us to shine our light before others, that a lamp belongs on a lampstand. Here, He emphasizes our inner life: in a sense, how we see determines the inner light that is allowed in. If we do not allow in that light, the depth of internal darkness is great indeed. There is yet another sense to a "bad eye" that is very powerful throughout the Near and the Mid-East, and that sense of bad eye is "envy." This is the meaning of the "evil eye" in popular understanding and cultural tradition. In this sense also, how we see is related to what we truly treasure. A poisonous, sinful envy is rooted in a kind of material-mindedness, one that does not value the true blessings of the life of discipleship, and is not rooted in the depth of inner relationship to God. Envy, we know from the Gospels, can apply even to seeing the spiritual life in others as a kind of material competition, a zero-sum game.

"No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Finally, how we see is determined by what we choose to serve, what we love -- as in "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." My study bible puts it this way: "As slaves serving two masters, people attempt to maintain an attachment both to earthly and to heavenly things. but this is impossible, for both demand full allegiance. Jesus calls mammon a master, not because it is by nature evil, but because of the absolute and wretched servility it exacts." Mammon is a term that denotes a kind of servility to the material, what we truly trust in. It goes back again to what we put first, what master we serve and love with all our heart and soul and mind. In this, Jesus' teachings have been perfectly consistent.

For myself personally, the teachings in today's readings can't be overestimated. I think that we are creatures formed to worship. If we don't put our faith -- our trust, as the Greek word for faith truly implies -- in the right place, then we will be serving that which asks of us a true servility, no compromise, no light. So many addictions abound in our world; what starts out as something which seems to promise us some good can create a very deep darkness, a true slavery. This can apply to anything we put our trust into, even to other people. It is a kind of material-mindedness in any case where the spiritual life, and the inner life of relationship to God, is abrogated, denied, pushed aside. We seek to put our trust in the God who is love. It is in His teachings of discipleship that we find liberation from slavish devotion to that which really doesn't have our best interests in mind. Jesus says here that we need to make a choice, to take a stand. I find that each day, in some way or another, I'm asked to renew that vow, that purpose, with a new choice, a new decision to make between God and mammon. Staying on the road, the Way, really involves the trust that the One knows better what is best for me, so that I can be the person Christ entrusts with discipleship. I often backslide, talk myself into choices that seem good on the surface (even full of good intention), but don't help me at all with real discernment and true learning of discipleship. How do you hear that call? How do you make the choice? What is it that you think you really need?