26 Feb 2017
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
“You cannot serve both God and mammon.” But this isn’t a commandment Jesus gives us;
he’s not saying “You will not serve both God and mammon.” He’s saying, “You are unable—it’s not
possible—to serve both God and mammon.”
Imagine walking along a path and you come to a fork in the
road. Now, you can straddle both paths
for just a little bit, but pretty soon you’re going to have to choose one or
the other. If you want to keep moving
forward, you have to pick one or the other.
“You cannot serve both God and mammon;” it’s not possible. And if we try, we just end up dividing
ourselves—in mind and spirit.
And this is something we experience when we really want to
follow God but, at the same time, we want keep enjoying what we enjoy, even if
it isn’t exactly what God has in mind for us.
And there’s a whole laundry list of things we could talk about: gossip,
self-pity, addictions, gluttony, pride (and a lot more). We know we shouldn’t do those things, or go
down those paths; we know that they go against our Christian values of:
charity, neighborliness, self-control, humility, and so on. But we still keep at least a toe on those
paths, don’t we.
And so, we can end up like Saint Paul who says, “I can will
[and desire] what is right, but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I
do” [Rom 7:19]. Paul could be a very
divided man within himself. And so can
we, if we try to serve both God and mammon.
In the Mass, right after the Our Father, we pray that “we
might be safe from all distress.” And
it’s the same prayer Jesus has for us in the gospel. He says, in so many words, “Don’t worry about
anything; don’t get anxious about this or that.
Don’t be overcome by distress.”
The word St. Matthew uses here for worry and anxiety is μεριμνᾶτε
(merimnátay). It’s an ancient Greek word
that means to be “divided into parts,” to be pulled apart.
And so, when we pray that “we might be safe from all
distress,” we’re praying that we not be pulled apart . . . by trying to serve
both God and mammon. We’re praying that
God keep us focused on the heart of the matter; that he keep us focused on who
we are and what we’re about as Catholic Christians. We’re praying that God keep us from getting
distracted.
And we know that we humans can get distracted. This seems to be what the little reading from
Isaiah gets at. God asks, “Can a mother
forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?” And what we’re supposed to say is “Yes.” It happens sometimes; just listen to the
news. But Isaiah continues, “Even should
she forget, I [God] will never forget you.”
We humans get distracted from what’s important and true and good, but
God is never distracted.
God is very single-minded in his love of all creation, of
which we are a part. Even when we start
to worry about this or that, and we turn from God to find reassurance and life
in other things—even while we’re doing that, God is still looking at us; God is
still focused on what and whom he loves.
He just wishes that we would stay focused on him in the same way, and be
at peace within ourselves.
We heard it so beautifully in the psalm: “Only in God is my
soul at rest; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my
salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed at all.” That’s the voice of someone who doesn’t try
to straddle both paths in a fork in the road, but who goes down the one path of
simply trusting God. That person, who is
not distracted, is not worried about the ups and downs of life, or what tomorrow
holds. That person is at peace within
him- or herself—and is also the most alive and free.
And that’s the direction we want to go; we want to go down
that path of being “not distracted,” but focused on the heart of the
matter. Now, ironically, in the church
we worry about a lot of things. We worry
about death, and life, and the future, and the sins of our past. We get anxious about: money, budgets,
worship, politics, fewer and fewer priests, and so on. We worry a lot. But all that worry and anxiety and distress
only distracts us from what’s important; namely, God.
Prayer is at the heart of our Christian life, not a revenue
and expense report. Love of neighbor is
at the heart of our Christian life, not “who said what to whom, and what side of
an issue they’re on.” God’s plans are at
the heart of our Christian life, and not my own.
You know, when we compare our own church (here in the US) to
so many megachurches that are all over the place, a major difference is that at
the heart of the megachurch is the desire to encounter God; whereas at the
heart of our church life, too often there’s just an ongoing argument over
church politics or finances, or whatever.
God is in the heart of our church, for sure, but so is a lot of other
stuff that shouldn’t be there. We worry
a lot. We worry too much. And all that anxiety and distress doesn’t
leave much room for God.
Jesus was right when he said, “You cannot serve both God and
mammon—you cannot give all your attention to God and all your attention to
other things at the same time.” We have
to choose. And it’s a choice we make
every day, even every hour of the day.
It’s a choice to let God be the foundation, and the highpoint, and the
peace within our life. But it’s always a
choice—to go down the path of worry and anxiety and distress, or the path of
simply trusting God and being at peace and free.
You
cannot serve both God and mammon.
Regardless of the choice we make today, we can always make a better one
tomorrow. No need to worry about that.
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