• "Anxious Concern of Material Things Should be Contrasted With Nature"
• Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
• September 19, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

In the gospel (Matthew 6:24f.) Jesus contrasts two ways of life. He says, "No man can serve two masters... Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Mammon is the ancient pagan god of money. It is a reasonable translation to simply say, "You cannot serve God and money."

Jesus says that a life centered on the pursuit of material things produces anxiety. We worry, "What shall we eat and what shall we drink and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Or, in more contemporary terms, "How can we afford to send the kids to college, how can we afford to retire, how can we get the things we want?"

Such anxious concern about material things is to be contrasted with nature. Nature is wonderfully provided for and beautifully clothed. Yet, one does not observe the birds of the air or the lilies of the field suffering from anxiety disorders.

The answer, Jesus says, is to serve God: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." This sounds great-but just how do we go about the business of seeking first the kingdom?

We can get at what Jesus means by dealing with a common objection. Some will say, "It is all good and fine to talk about seeking first the kingdom, but I have to work for a living. The landlord or mortgage company wants its check. The boss demands that I work on his terms." There are various monetary things that one can't avoid by resorting to prayer and piety.

But the command, "Seek first the kingdom," does not mean that we are to sit around and pray all day and somehow trust that food will descend from heaven. Jesus used birds as an example. Birds are very industrious. I have never seen a lazy bird. I have never seen a bird that chose to pray rather than work. Birds work hard, but somehow they serve God in their labor.

The command to seek first the kingdom does not necessarily mean that we will do different things or that we will become less active. We seek the kingdom by approaching what we do in a different way, with different motives and goals.

For example, if our main motive in our work is to get money this will influence our behavior at work. We will be preoccupied with how to get more money. We will be tempted to unethical avenues of gain. We will tend to assess other people in terms of how they can help or hinder our economic prospects.

But if we seek first the kingdom of God we will have a different set of concerns. We will be concerned that the work we are doing is good work that honors God and benefits others. We will perform our duties as unto God, not merely to gain approval of a boss for a raise. If we seek the kingdom, we will honor even the lowest ranking employee as one who is made in the image of God. We will be concerned for the welfare of the least of these. Money will be seen as a by-product of work, but not the end of what we do.

And even the money that is earned as a by-product honors God. For the one who seeks first the kingdom acknowledges that Jesus is Lord by tithing-while the one who serves mammon gives God only some of what is left after needs and wants are met.

When we seek first the kingdom, we look at times of temptation and struggle in a different way. The person whose chief goal in life is material gain will view every setback as a threat to his very existence. Every struggle will bring panic concerning material provision for the future, leading to the question, Why is God doing this to me?

The person who seeks first the kingdom will also ask, "Why is God doing this to me?" But he will persevere long enough in prayer to get the answer. He will come to understand that spiritual growth is the end of life, not things or, even, health. Thus he will realize that times of struggle are opportunities to grow in faith, to develop new virtues, to learn to trust, to fix our hope on things beyond this world.

The question is, "What are we really aiming at?" 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." As we say in the Creed, "He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead." This is the proper end and focus of the Christian life. We ought to so direct and orient our lives that we are preparing for that encounter with Jesus on the last day.

Now, we orient our lives toward the coming of Jesus through devotion to the Word of God and prayer. Judgment is not an entirely future thing. The sense of the Christian life is that our encounter with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit brings us into a sort of judgment right now. The Holy Spirit reveals God's will to us, makes us aware of the ways in which our motives and goals fall short and leads us to repentance and new life. We are reconciled with God in Christ now so that Judgment Day will bring no surprises, but, rather, the fruition of our redemption.

This requires that we take the reality of judgment seriously and commit ourselves to a life of repentance, faith and spiritual growth. The truth is that most of us probably have a little too much devotion to mammon left in us. As we continue in the life of prayer, the Holy Spirit continues to reveal this to us, and lead us to repentance and purer motives.

We gather around the altar on the Lord's Day to point our lives back towards their proper end and goal, to remember again what the trials and temptations of the week cause us to forget. Here we appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Here, Christ comes to us in the sacrament in a manner that foreshadows he coming in glory at the end of time. If our hearts and minds are open, the Holy Spirit will here reveal to us what we need to change.

As the questions and concerns of the kingdom come to govern our thoughts, words and actions, we discover, as a by product, that we worry less because we trust God more. This is the God-ordained pattern. God wants us to be concerned primarily with obedience and faithfulness. That's our job. As we do what we are supposed to do, God will do his part. He will give us the things we need to live.