With our reading today, Matthew 6:24-34, we end our readings from the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”Well, I have known some people of very great financial means who were extremely responsible about their resources, and went to a great deal of care to help all sorts of people by means of those resources: hospitals and schools and churches and a wide variety of charities. And also institutions that make beauty – music or art.
When I went as a very young priest many years ago to be rector of a parish on the edge of urban Boston, in a blue collar industrial town area, Bishop Burgess said to me, do not romanticize poverty. There are people of limited financial resources who can be stingy and mean and generally human just as much as rich people. And as a priest of long experience I would note that human beings get sick and die and love in much the same ways whether rich or poor or in between.
And I have known people of both great financial resources and limited financial resources who had rich gifts of soul and mind. In the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s hymn “rich in things and poor in soul” – we are called to be rich in soul, and all kinds of people are equally called to that.
You can be a servant – or slave – of wealth, or you can be a disciple of Jesus who is a steward of financial resources. The money can own you, or you can be a steward of how money is used.
The next section of this passage, through most of the years of my ministry, was the Gospel appointed for Thanksgiving Day – and I remember a memorable occasion in Trinity Church in Boston when there was a service of thanksgiving for the long ministry of Bishop Sherrill (who had been rector of that church, Bishop of Massachusetts and Presiding Bishop) and the propers for Thanksgiving Day were read, including this Gospel.
I have always found this Gospel fascinating because I have been a great worrier. And sometimes there are things to worry about – parish and pastoral concerns and kids.
I guess it is true that worrying has not added an hour to my life. Worrying probably takes a few hours (or more than a few) off of our span of life.
It pushes me to think what it means to give myself into God’s hands.
I do the best I can, and then it is God who gives the outcome.
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."
(Raymond Webster)
