November 27, 2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1.27)

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6.22-23)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Apart from Matthew and Luke who record this teaching of Jesus concerning the service committed to two masters, we hear nothing. Matthew’s remembrance speaks to “money.” Matthew, the tax collector, would have a very personal understanding of the value of money. Collecting taxes from all those in Israel who were not Roman, he would pay his percentage of “the take” to Rome and keep the rest for himself. We know of another tax collector in the gospels. His name was Zaccheus. We also know of his repentance from the unjust manner in which he conducted his office and his life. Shall we assume that Matthew’s response to the gospel of Christ had a similar impact? We do not know what that response was but we do know he vividly undestood what Jesus was saying about the inequity and inability of attempting to serve two masters: God and money.

Luke’s version, found in Luke 16, uses the word “mammon” to describe the “significant other” who held sway over a person’s life in contradistinction to God. “Mammon” can also be interpreted as money. However, it carries with it a sense of riches, inheritance or investment in the future. This would have made sense, I think, if Luke’s rendering was used in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew following the lesson on “lay up for yourselves riches in heaven.” But, it does not and I won’t belabor the point. However, it does seem to me that in the context of which both were written, we can apply the same concept to other aspects of our own lives. What would the options be for a “suitable” other master? What is it that we devote ourselves to that rival attention that should be given to God? There is nothing? Might I call your attention to the time of worship each week? How much time is spent in actually worshipping God? Announcements, meet and greet (which happens before, during and after the worship service), time on the cell phone retrieving email or playing games are all conveniently wound together into the worship hour. Now that “hour” is reduced to 40-45 minutes. And if the lesson of the day is not sufficiently engaging or is too challenging can we subtract even more time? To be honest, we may actually spend more time prepping for the “social gospel” hour than the hour of worship itself. Little wonder why so many people are turned off by congregations and their congregational time. Hard to be authentic when two masters are being served.

And if all of those “investments” were exchanged into a monetary valuation like the money changers in the courts of the Temple which Jesus scattered, what would that say about our lives, too? Jesus declared, “My Father’s house is intended to be a house of prayer but you are using it as a den of thieves…robbing from the poor and giving it to the rich. Who then would truly be the “poor in spirit”? Mighty ones of God, we would do well to take that hard look at the use of time in our lives and for what purposes. We may be able to justify the use of time and resources but do that add extrinsic and intrinsic value to the Kingdom of God on earth as it is intended to look like in Heaven? We may be able to justify it but can we live with it as an authentic testimony of our faith in God and for God? Is the “other” a viable means of worshiping and serving God before all else and all others? I think Jesus is saying “probably not”!

PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain the eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.