You Can’t Serve Two Masters

The Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity

I recently found an online advertisement for one of those two-day success seminars (you see these everywhere). They were highlighting the day's five speakers with great executive headshots, and one of the speaker's bio read as follows,

"Mr. So and So drives a gold Lamborghini, is a happy multi-millionaire, and is renowned as the number one sales trainer in the United States. He is a no-nonsense instructor who doesn't believe in losing and is absolutely positive he can train anyone to maximize his or her drive and ambitions. He'll teach you how to keep score in the competitive game of life and how happy you can be while you're getting rich. Mr. So and So's eye-opening, forceful presentation leaves many people breathless because of his unswerving focus on success."

We snicker and sneer, but you're apt to find similar seminars in pursuit of the same material success in "Christian" circles as well. Here's an advertisement I saw for a WealthBuilders 2024 conference entitled:

Such a time as this! Join the movement of marketplace-minded Christians who are using their financial resources to advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The WealthBuilders Conference is a power-packed weekend of fellowship, practical workshops, worship, and empowerment for your God-given assignment. Leading Christian financial experts will equip you with biblically-based investing, real estate, and business strategies that you can leverage to make a difference with your money.

Christian marketplace leaders will equip you with practical knowledge to help you reach financial freedom and leave a lasting legacy. You will meet divine connections and receive financial direction for your year. Are you ready to Reach a financial breakthrough / Start that business / Scale your company / Advance your real estate portfolio / Invest in a biblical way, / Step into God's vision for your financial future?

This modern world is best described as an achievement society. Our base orientation is towards production. During the industrial age, man-made machines afforded increased production, speeded up commerce, and increased profits through technological efficiencies to maximize wealth. Now, man has progressed from utilizing machines to becoming a machine himself, ensuring maximal production and success. The human person today is no longer conceived as a subject but as a project of self-actualization through exploitive self-production. Sadly, a person is both producer and product.

It's not hyperbolic to say our society is obsessed with work (production). It shapes our identities (I am what I produce), gives our lives structure (work/production orients our time), and guides us toward our purpose in life (gaining back time to truly live). Work is who we are. Our achievements and productivity define us and pave the way for success and happiness, perhaps even salvation.

The commonest god in the world today is Success, and Christians, no less than others, want to be successful in something. But Jesus says that we cannot serve or work largely for God and then moonlight for gain: it's either one or the other. And less we foolishly think we can serve both, St. John Chrysostom reminds us that when "God says "not possible," don't you dare say "possible."

Jesus warns, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and lover the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."

The god of success is given a curious name in today's Gospel: mamonas, Mammon, from the Aramaic word meaning 'riches' or possessions, wealth. Today, we would rightly translate Mammon as things, money, gain, or success. Notice that Mammon is capitalized, a noun, because, in Jesus' day, Mammon was a pagan god, an idol, a spiritual force who works with tremendous attracting power to draw us into its orbit and out from the service of Christ. The service of Mammon is idolatry.

"Trying to get ahead," a seemingly harmless pastime for any person with drive, conscience, or family, can be playing with fire, and they quickly find themselves in real danger of the covetousness that is idolatry. St. Paul warned the Church at Colossae to "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming" (Col 3:5-6). We cannot serve both God and "Making it!"

Therefore, today's Gospel sets two 'gods' before our eyes: Mammon, a false god, and Jesus Christ, the true eternal God. You can't serve both. Now, Jesus isn't asking his disciples to make a decision resulting in euthanizing their professional ambitions. No, He's calling for sobriety, reason, and faith. Jesus doesn't say it's unspiritual to serve two masters; he says, "It's impossible to serve both God and Mammon" simultaneously. Our Lord's emphasis on that little word 'serve.' Having money, property, and a home is not a sin. But you must not let it be your master.

The old proverb is true: "Money is a good servant but a bad master." The prudent and more fulfilling course of action for Christians is to decide that they will no longer allow their lives to be determined by the prerequisites of success, awards, appointments, salaries, promotions, or Mammon. Jesus says to turn our backs on the goals and goods of this world and to be the real atheists by denying the god of success to whom this secular production-achievement age gives its unquestioning fealty.

 We will do almost anything to succeed. And since one badge of success is the possession of fine things, we will often find ourselves in the train of Mammon worshippers. But the "promised fortune" of serving Mammon, living a production-oriented life for gain, goes far beyond attaining nice things. More often, what serves as "the promise" of the production society is the prospect of perpetual prosperity or the realizing of absolute wealth. "If we can amass X amount in capital assets and savings, THEN we'll begin to live our lives." Or "We need to amass X amount of capital in case something awful or unforeseen happens."

Money, then, serves within a production-oriented society as a replacement for religion by replacing God as the master of contingency because, in this secular age, God is no longer a viable contingency plan to face the uncertainties ahead on the horizon of tomorrow. There is no longer a promise of "peace of mind" found in turning to the all-powerful, reassuring God who can intervene when faced with all the contingencies of living in a fallen world. If God is dead, as one German philosopher once pronounced, then what's our contingency plan? Or better still, who is our contingency plan?

What now serves as a functional equivalent to God as our contingency is having the largest possible amount of money, which affords us options, allowing one to best react to future contingencies. In the form of capital, money has transformed the indeterminable, scary unknowns of life into the determinable and controllable. Yet, scripture, our liturgy, reason, and experience tell us that no human person, society, nation, institution, or industry can control the indeterminable events of life. Yet, we easily fall into the baseless false security of thinking that through accumulating capital, we are not only prepared but will overcome tomorrow's scary unknowns. But Jesus calmly says, "Be not anxious about tomorrow."

For the Christian, the master of all contingencies is the Lord, and this God speaks comfortably to us today. "Be not therefore anxious, saying, what shall we eat? Or, what shall we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." Be not anxious; why? Because we serve the true, living, all-powerful, and loving God, the ruler of heaven and earth and he is faithful. By contrast, the service of Mammon causes great anxiety because the false god of material success has no concern for its worshippers but demands more and more and more.

Yet serving the Lord Jesus brings peace because He deeply loves all who are his with tender care and great concern. A person will either entrust their salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ or attempt to save themselves through unceasing production and self-exploitation. It's no wonder the latter course of servitude produces such angst-ridden, depressed, and anxious souls.

To serve God, and him alone, demands faith. And by faith, I mean trust, not merely a belief. And haven't we already done this when we repented and believed in him for salvation from original sin and the promise of eternal life? Friends, if we trusted him enough to save us from death, judgment, and destruction, shall we not also trust him today, right now, in this present life? Have we not, by faith, been placed into his loving care? Are not our lives, families, relations, finances, societal concerns, and even this parish safely in his hands? Jesus says, be not anxious.

"But Fr. Michael, I am anxious about all sorts of things, things that are and things that may or may not come to pass." Listen, who doesn't become anxious in a fallen world, during challenging times, in an age of uncertainty and confusion? Yet one very important aspect of Christian faith is trusting God enough to accept the world as it is and face it with courage, not trusting in our own strength but in the mighty hand of God. Christian courage turns from the service of Mammon (and its false securities) to serve the Kingdom of God. This demands faith: not in ourselves, our abilities, capacities, or resources, but in God.

Listen, this secular production society is obsessed with economic questions, not kingdom questions: matters of diet, appearance, health, wealth, entertainment, and never getting old. This is why the production society is obsessed with consumerism and preoccupied with obtaining more and better things. The world, my friends, has a religion and it’s called acquisition, attaining, achieving. Worldly success is what the servants of Mammon seek. But that is not our way. "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

In the accelerating world of consumeristic production, we, my friends, must exert some counter-cultural stubbornness. Our 'first priority' according to our master, is the quiet, steady, patient seeking of God's kingdom and righteousness. Our quest is and will always be for something far beyond the material goods and riches of this world, and that is an eternal sabbath with the Lord Jesus, never lacking or in need, fulfilled in every way, and alive to the fullest.

Jesus says, seek after eternity today, and I will provide what's needed to get there. Our Lord's teaching is very clear: the people who put their trust in God and serve only him will lack nothing of consequence in this life or the one to come. He wants us to trust him, and he's pleased when his children place their confidence in Him, for as the apostle says, "Without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6). So beloved, hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and be assured: serve the Lord your God and He alone, and be anxious for nothing. Amen+