You cannot serve God and mammon

"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?  No servant 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."

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

"The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."

- Luke 16:10-17; Luke 16:18

Yesterday we read that Jesus taught His disciples,  "There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.  So he called him and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you?  Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.'  Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?  For my master is taking the stewardship away from me.  I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg.  I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.'  So he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'  And he said, 'A hundred measures of oil.'  So he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.'  Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?'  So he said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.'  And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'  So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly.  For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.  And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home."

"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?  No servant 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."  My study bible tells us that the test as to whether God will bestow heavenly blessings (true riches) on a person is directly related to how that person spends his or her money.  It says that the money that we consider our own is actually another man's.  In other words, we are stewards of what belongs to God -- and therefore also to the poor.   The Fathers universally see a person's failure to give money to God's work as stealing.  Theophan calls it "nothing less than the embezzlement of money belonging to someone else."  Chrysostom preached that the excesses of personal expenditure on frivolous household luxury took bread out of the mouths of the poor who were fellow Christians.  Basil the Great taught that the unused coat hanging in a closet belongs to the one who needs it.

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God."  My study bible says that the things which are highly esteemed among men include money, power, position, and praise.  That is surely a description of the priorities which Jesus criticizes about the Pharisees.

"The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail."  Jesus speaks about a new time, but is saying that this new time of everyone pressing into the kingdom of God is founded upon the law and its fulfillment.  A tittle is the smallest stroke in certain Hebrew letters -- so the whole of the Law is affirmed as the foundation of Jesus' new teaching.  It is His Passion and Resurrection that will be the fulfillment of all.

 "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."   Under Mosaic Law, there was an easy access to divorce, which was widely misused.  Jesus repeatedly condemns divorce but does so through emphasizing the spiritual and eternal nature of marriage as a sacrament.  In other passages in the Gospels, Christ allows for possibilities of divorce based on infidelity, and the early Church would expand grounds for divorce.  But what Christ is teaching here is about relatedness and relationship.  It fits in the context not only with caring for others including the less powerful, but also about the attitude toward property -- we note that it is addressed to men, not to women.  We note here the emphasis on a man who divorces and marries another.   Given the rules of dowry, this is also a disincentive to divorce and remarriage for the sake of potential financial gain.

Jesus teaches us about fidelity, and about choice.  Overall, He's teaching us about the essential importance of fidelity to God in our choices.  In some sense, even mentioning marriage and divorce in this context can have a kind of resonance on a theological level.  To what are we loyal?  Where is our first loyalty, our top priority?  Whom do we serve, God or mammon?   The 'law' of marriage takes on a higher concern in that context, God's intention and God's kingdom.  Everything in Jesus' teaching comes back to a kind of inclusivity that is the full focus of righteousness or justice and of mercy.  What it seems to me He is saying is that without our top priority on God's purposes, we'll fail to fulfill even the Law itself properly.  And here is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, Christ Himself, who is preaching both about the openness of the Kingdom to repentant sinners as well as those who assume they are a part of it who fail to put the love of God first and don't make this choice between masters.  We are always called by Christ into a place where it is God's love that matters most deeply, and God's love translates into community -- something these experts in Moses' Law should understand.  The question is always how we can serve the true master, even down to the smallest details.