God and Mammon - A Few Thoughts

Homily Thoughts – Trinity 15 2013 (8 Sep 13)

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Mamonos (Manna) – riches; treasure; wealth; money

For the purpose of vanity, honour, self-indulgence

Let me start by asking a question:

Do you agree that the pursuit of money is a powerful driver of human nature?

But before we get into the divine teaching of Jesus on this text, can we agree with the impossibility of fully serving, of being wholly at the disposal of two earthy masters? Two bosses? Would we not agree that when their commands interfere with each other, the servant, in obeying the one, must disobey the other.

In clinging to one, in essence we abandon the other.

Or, lets tackle this from a different angle…

Maybe we can indeed be able to serve two bosses?

Maybe we can serve three bosses?

But there is a caveat in how many bosses we can serve, it depends on the boss. Each boss must be content with partial service, part-time service, knowing that sometimes when called upon we will not be able to work because we are pre-occupied with the other boss.

Do you agree with that?

This is simply not the relationship we are called into, for we are taught, indeed commanded, through graceful invitation, to love and serve God with all our heart, and mind, and soul and strength. This is, of course, the First Great Commandment, and the second is like unto it; thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

So, first and foremost we are called into deep, loving, self-giving relationship with God who is in His essence deep, loving and self-giving. God is so totally self-giving that He gave of himself on the Cross to make things right.

So, it is clear we should serve God, first and foremost. But this begs the question that we are here to answer, why can we not serve both God and money?

Because, and to state it simply, they conflict with one another: Firstly, the object of their interests are different and, secondly, their commandments are starkly different.

a. Their interests are different:

1. God is interested in freeing us from the darkness; to free us from fear; to free us from corruption; to free us from the greed of ourselves, to the glory of the other we know through Christ. God is in the business of freeing us from the corruption of our self-interests and leading us to the in-corruption of the self-giving gift of eternal life in Christ.

2. John Stackhouse wrote, “There has never been a famine caused by a shortage of food.” There is plenty of food to go around and plenty of means of transportation to get he food to hungry mouths. Famine is caused by corrupt systems of sharing the food. Famine is caused by corrupt leaders, greed, jealously, pride, conflict and war.

The world, our nature, the desire of more money lures us to focus on the short horizon of pleasing ourselves for the mere object of pleasure, as we search for security and control. We want control, we want insurance that our material wealth will be preserved.

There is plenty to go around but we are not sharing as God has taught us to share.

Let me give you an example from my past experience in the Middle East.

- Bahrain

- immigrant workers from Pakistan, Bangaladesh and India

- One step from slave labour

- Atco trailer on the roof

- no air conditioning

- labour laws

- no one cares because they are without dignity

Main interest:

- Money

- secure source of oil

- economic self-interests to maintain a Western lifestyle of vanity and greed.

Every human being has dignity

It is a God given dignity.

b. The Commands are different

            1. God commands us to love Him, to love our neighbour as ourselves and in so doing, shine the great beacon of eternal hope in the world. To make present God among us. We are commanded not to be conformed to the world but to be conformed to Christ.

            2. This is a farce to the world. It is naïve in the eyes of the world to think that an all powerful God would be murdered on a cross as a common criminal muchless that God would actually walk among the muck of the world. Power in worldly terms uses the logic of coercion by means of money and weapons. The strongest win. 1 Cor 1:23 states, “For the Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.”

But we know…darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can drive out darkness.

Christian power is humility; a humility we know through Jesus. Let us listen to Philippians 2 “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better then himself. Let each of you look out not for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Christian power is in humility.

I would like to read to you the meditation I pray with on Friday’s and every day I am on retreat:

The goal of our lives is to live with God forever.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

God who loves us; gave us life and gave his life for us.

Our own response of love allows God’s life to flow into us without limit.

All things in the world are gifts from God.

As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us develop into humble Christians, open to receive love and open to offer love.

But if any of these gifts become the centre of our lives, they displace God and will hinder our growth toward our goal.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance.

We should not fix our desires on health or sickness

Wealth or poverty

Success or failure

A long life or a short life

Because everything, wealth, poverty, success and failure has the potential of calling us into a deeper response to our relationship with God.

Our greatest desire and our choices should be this:

To be open to receive the love of God freely offered through Christ.

This is why the first commandement is to love God, because it is the first principle of freedom: The freedom to be open to receive love and to offer love; the freedom to be open to accept forgiveness and to offer forgiveness; the freedom to be served and to offer service; and the freedom to be in an intimate relationship and dialogue with the God.

We cannot serve God and manna.

I want you to know that if you are not experiencing this freedom; if something is holding you back, be it fear, pain, regret for past failures, know in your heart that you are loved by God and He is gracefully inviting you to a peace that surpasses all understanding. Accept the gift. Accept Christ. He knows your fears and your failures and is offering you life; life eternal.

Let not the worries of the world reign over you.

Let the peace of Christ reign over you. Come, just as you are.

Amen.