Text: Matthew 6:24-34
The bible’s relationship to wealth and money is a very complex one indeed. In the Old Testament, we often see wealth as a sign that someone is blessed by God, typically because of his righteousness. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the three Patriarchs in Genesis, are great examples of this. Throughout their stories material blessings are a sign that God has chosen them to be heirs of the covenant and founders of his family. However, in Psalms, Proverbs, and the other wisdom literature, we find an acknowledgement that riches can be a force for corruption, and that it is far better to be righteous and poor than to be wicked and wealthy. The pattern of wealth as divine blessing is by no means universal.
By the time we get to the New Testament, there does seem to still be a lingering assumption among the folks in Jesus’ day that righteousness will result in some form of material blessings. But there’s also a recognition that humility is a virtue that can be lost when riches increase. We have, for example, these words from the Magnificat, the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Luke’s Gospel, words that we recite or sing most every day at Evensong:
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
In fact, when we read the New Testament it’s pretty clear that neither the Lord Jesus nor his Apostles were men of wealth. There were, however, people of means among the wider ranks of the disciples, and those folks often supported the ministry in addition to caring for the poor among the Church.
Today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount begins with our Lord’s teaching against serving riches and allowing material considerations to be the top priority. Jesus says, “No man 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. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
This is a very timely Gospel reading following Labor Day weekend. If you follow Anglican ministries on Facebook or Twitter, you may have seen folks sharing this prayer from the Prayer Book, titled “For Every Man in his Work,” originally composed around the same time and for the same reasons as our country began celebrating Labor Day:
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, who declarest thy glory and showest forth thy handiwork in the heavens and in the earth; Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings from the service of mammon, that we my do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men; for the sake of him who came among us as the one that serve to, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
We see service of mammon contrasted with doing work in truth, beauty and righteousness. We see it contrasted with serving God and our neighbor. And we see an exhortation to follow in the footsteps of Jesus as we work and serve. This is a prayer to put our Lord’s teaching on serving God versus serving mammon into action.
Now, the word “mammon” is not New Testament Greek, but is a loan-word from Aramaic, likely influenced by other Semitic languages. It basically means riches or wealth, but is usually used in a negative sense. No one saw mammon as implying something good. It’s kind of like when we talk about “lucre” in English. While it might be a positive or neutral thing to describe an endeavor as “lucrative,” I don’t think I’ve ever heard the root word, “lucre” used without the descriptor “filthy.” It’s always “filthy lucre” never just “lucre.”
The exact linguistic origins of the word “mammon” are highly debated by scholars, but I particularly like something I found in the classic Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. Vine’s says that “mammon” is related to a Hebrew word signifying to be firm or steadfast, from the same root as the familiar word “Amen,” with the implication that mammon is something trusted. And this is the problem with mammon: it’s very easy to put our trust in wealth, but that is exactly the wrong thing to do.
This is where the complex pictures of money in Scripture get a bit clearer. For all of Abraham’s wealth, he is held up as a paragon of putting his trust, his faith, in God. Similarly, most every place in the Psalms that speaks negatively of riches is in the context of the ungodly trusting in their riches rather than in God.
And that is why our Lord Jesus speaks of trusting in mammon as service to mammon. Whatever you ultimately trust, that will you ultimately serve. When money becomes the basis for your sense of security, you will become enslaved to getting and keeping it. It will rule your heart. In his devotions based on this week’s Collect, Epistle, and Gospel from the turn of the last century, Melville Scott writes, “we cannot trust unless we serve, and we cannot serve unless we trust. Man only has one heart, and if he fill it with wordly cares he will leave no room in it for God.” Just a few verses before today’s reading from Matthew 6, the Lord warns against laying up our treasures here on earth rather than in heaven, and he says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So, guard your heart against becoming enslaved to mammon.
Indeed, this is why later Christians often personified Mammon as a demon or devil of some sort; riches can easily become an idol. The 18th century evangelist, John Wesley, likens Christians trusting in riches to the peoples sent by the Assyrians to repopulate the lands of the exiled northern Kingdom of Israel or Samaria in the Old Testament. 2 Kings 17 tells us that these people tried to both fear the Lord and worship the gods of the lands where they originally came from. It didn’t work. In fact, at times God sent lions among them as punishment for the idolatry. The half-paganism of the settlers in Samaria in 2 Kings is, in truth, full paganism. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and mammon.
St. John Chrysostom writes that such a state is terribly tragic, not only because service to wealth makes serving God impossible, but also because our wealth is meant to serve us! Chrysostom says that service to mammon makes you the “captive of lifeless riches … by causing you to be slaves of what you ought to command.” He says that this was not the case with folks like Abraham and Job, who were indeed wealthy, but never servants of their wealth. “Tell me not of them that are rich,” he writes, “but of them that serve riches.” How do you know that Job wasn’t the servant of mammon? Because the Scriptures tell us of his generosity toward the needy, and his lack of lament over his former wealth when his wealth was taken from him.
I’m reminded of a sermon by the late Victorian high churchman, Isaac Williams. Commenting on our passage he asks:
What then is to become of the worldly callings by which we live; of the farm, and the shop, and the wages of labour, and to the minister himself, the profits of his ministry? Ye cannot serve them says our Lord, ye must be in heart above them, ye must make them merely secondary, and subservient to the love of God and his service.
This advice and the examples of the Old Testament saints should be a lesson for us when dealing with our own money, regardless of whether we are wealthy or not. We should be both responsible and generous with it. We should use it to help the less fortunate and in service of the Gospel. I’m very thankful that we have people in this parish who take this to heart. Your generosity has made the ministry of All Saints possible. And in over seven years of service as your rector, I have never experienced that generosity to come with any strings attached. There are some congregations where the largest doners use their donations to manipulate the church and the clergy. But that has never happened in my time here at All Saints. Rather, your generosity has indeed been generous.
So, this leads to three practical steps to refrain from treating our wealth as mammon. First, practicing generosity is one of the chief ways we can tear down the idol of mammon in our lives. Use your money in love and service to God and to others rather than in mere selfish ways. Second, remember last week’s parable in which we discussed the thankful Samaritan leper and how practicing thanksgiving builds up the virtue of gratitude in the Christian heart, particularly gratitude toward the source of all good things, the Lord himself. The practical lessons of Trinitytide are indeed interrelated. The Good Samaritan leads to the thankful Samaritan, which lead to the teaching against mammon.
Third, while we don’t have time today to look into the details of the rest of our Gospel reading, notice that our Lord’s teaching against trying to serve both God and mammon leads into his teaching against being anxious for the cares of the world. Worry does not help us. Worry does not solve the problems of the world’s cares. Indeed, in the Parable of the Sower, our Lord compares those cares of the world to thorns and briars that choke the seed of the Gospel out of the soil of our hearts. So instead of being anxious, the Lord tells us to trust our Heavenly Father who clothes the fields with flowers and provides for the sparrows, and will certainly take care of us. Instead, seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, and let him take care of the rest. When righteousness and the Kingdom of Heaven are our priority, there is no foothold for the idol of Mammon.
Finally, remember the end of that prayer so many of us used on Labor Day. We prayed “for the sake of him who came among us as one that serveth, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” We are not righteous for our sake or on our account. We are not citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven for our sake or an our account. No, it is all for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can serve God because he first served us, by assuming our humanity, by living and teaching what it looks like to be God’s children, by dying for us on the cross, and rising again to show his lordship even over death. He is the one who says, “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy lade, and I will refresh you.” His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Indeed, he calls us his friends, not merely his servants.
And we say this in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
