You cannot serve God and mammon

 

 "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 one 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 are currently reading through the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5 - 7 of Matthew's Gospel.  In yesterday's reading, Jesus taught about prayer:  "And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do.  For they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Therefore do not be like them.  For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.  In this manner, therefore, pray:  Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.   And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.  For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." 

 "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."  My study Bible comments that by attaching themselves to treasures on earth, people cut themselves off from earthly. treasures.  They become slaves to earthly things rather than free in Christ.  It says that the heart of discipleship lies in first disentangling ourselves from the chains of earthly things, and then attaching ourselves to God, the true treasure.

"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!"  The mind, my study Bible says, (Greek nous), is the spiritual eye of the soul; it illuminates the inner human being and governs the will.  To keep the mind wholesome and pure is fundamental to the Christian life.

"No one 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 writes that as slaves serving two masters, people attempt to maintain an attachment to both earthly and heavenly things.  But this is impossible, since both demand full allegiance.  Jesus calls mammon ("riches") a master not because wealth is evil by nature, but because of the control it has over people.

In today's reading, Jesus is really trying to get us to take a look at our relationships to the things that are around us.  He asks us to examine our own attachments, and set them in proper order.  The material life has such a strong hold over us if we allow it to be first in our priorities that it becomes a truly demanding master, making slaves of us.  It is hard to realize when one is in this sort of slavery, because we are clearly dependent upon material things and live a material life.  However, the Incarnation itself is a model for us regarding our lives.  Just as we are not to be slaves to our passions, we cannot put the material first.  As my study Bible comments, it is a demanding master.  If we do not put God first, to remember our capacity for worship and put it in the proper place, we will find ourselves worshiping mammon, the material life.  Everything will be measured in terms of material value, when our true dependence is first on God, and then with this priority firmly in place will we be able to come to terms with a proper use of and relationship to material goods.  It is easy to be deluded about the material life, especially within a prosperous world that puts so much emphasis only on this aspect of life.  It's easy to be "out of order" in terms of what our real needs and relationships are.  But worship only belongs in one place, and that is to God.  The mind, or nous in Greek, to which my study Bible refers, is the part of ourselves capable of real perception, and it is this that Jesus refers to as the "eye."  As the lamp of the body, it gives us light, meaning light by which we can truly see what is what in life.  So we must take good care that this eye is pure and without impediment or obstacle in it.  But if we're not capable of this clear perception, if we can't perceive the things of God, our whole world is going to be darkness.  We're never going to see the right path through life.  Jesus is not saying we don't have material goods; He's telling us how easy it is for material goods to have us!  That is, for us to be slaves to material life, rather than putting ourselves in proper order  by our love and loyalty to God first, Who then places things in proper order and priority for us.  This is where we understand that we have treasure in heaven, and the true light by which we need to be guided in life.  It will give us the values we need and the priorities to live by.  We also need to read today's passage in light of yesterday's, in which we were taught the Lord's prayer, and Jesus' words reminded us twice about the power to forgive.  If we take this in context, we understand Jesus' use of the word "debts" to indicate ways in which we've been hurt or sinned against, and it is clear that an attachment to a materialist perspective will lead us to store up those kind of "debts" as well in a disordered way.  This materialist viewpoint will lend itself to a perspective on the hurts and scores we need to settle that renders us unable to see the priorities God would teach us for our true inner health and well-being, the right way of relatedness and righteousness in the world.  Therefore, Jesus is teaching us about the slavery of mammon, how if we don't "see" properly, this materialist viewpoint will pervade all of our lives and leave us in darkness on a number of levels, creating improper order in our lives.  Our focus instead needs to be rooted in God and the things of God, and only then will we have a truly righteous understanding of how we are to live the rest of our lives, what values we assign to things.  His verdict is categorical, and serves as a great warning:  "No one 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."  There is nothing in this world that it is proper to put first, to worship, to make an idol out of, whether that be a political party or leader, a slogan, a drive for material things, an image we seek before others, another human being, friends or family, even an image we have of ourselves and what "success" means on material terms, and this would certain include the drive for material power and position.  There is only one person deserving of worship who has walked in the world, and that is Jesus Christ, both God and man.  What is your true currency in life?  What is your bottom line?  By what light do you see?  What do you put first before everything?  These are the questions we ask ourselves, if we want to avoid real slavery.  We've got to make a choice.