Saturday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

Matthew 6:24-34

Jesus said to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or 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 in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

In the ancient Middle East, a particular language developed for communication between kings and vassals, and rulers and subjects.  Equals would refer to each other as “brothers”, as in, “The King of Tyre sends this letter to his brother, the King of Damascus.”  A superior would refer to his subject or vassal as his “son”, and a subject or vassal would refer to his superior as his “father”.  We see this throughout the 13th century B.C. Amarna letters, for example.  In addition, in keeping with this kind of speaking, obedience owed to a superior and the benefits provided by a superior was referred to as “love”.  “I love my father, the King of Sidon” means, “I obey my superior, the King of Sidon.”  A King who suspects a vassal of plotting against him or withholding tribute might write to him, “Why does my son hate me, since I have loved him?”

We see this language here, when Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”  The slave or servant of one master cannot obey an interloper.  It might cost him his life.  A slave or servant could only have one rightful master, the one who purchased or inherited him.  The idea that another person could come along, no matter how powerful or rich, and command a slave not his own would have been ridiculous to people living in the time of Christ.  Thus, Jesus is saying, He will either disobey the one and obey the other, or obey the one and disobey the other.  He cannot offer obedience to two masters.

Jesus speaks of God and mammon as two masters.  The word “mammon” is an old Aramaic or Syrian word that became the name for the Syrian god of wealth.  We should understand that Jesus is speaking, then, of the true God and a “false” god.  Put this way, only a fool would obey a god that cannot benefit its servant.  Further, a servant who obeys the false god cannot hedge his bets by trying to obey the true God at the same time.  “You cannot serve God and mammon.”  We can also understand mammon as more than a god of monetary wealth.  Mammon is the god of careerism, the god of the stomach, the god of popularity, the god of societal or political position.  The person who dies in this god’s service will not inherit eternal life because he does not and cannot offer it.

The words the Lord speaks here of not worrying about what to wear and what to eat would have consoled the first hearers of Matthew’s Gospel, Galilean Christians whose houses and possessions were confiscated by the local synagogue, and whose livelihoods disappeared.  Shunned by their Jewish neighbors and hunted by the authorities from Jerusalem, their state would have been very desperate.  The Lord here promises to take care of them, and even assures them that the Father sees their beauty, for if a wildflower is more glorious than Solomon, the believer in his Son is more glorious still in the eyes of God.  These words console us, as well.  We need not toil in service to Mammon in order to look beautiful or to be able to eat and have a safe place to sleep.  Although at times even King David and the Prophets had to flee into the wilderness from their enemies, the Lord protected them and provided for them.

The ancient slave obeyed his master out of fear.  We obey our Master as a sign of our love for him.  And while the suffering Job says, “There [in the sleep of death] the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest.  There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are both there; and the slave is free from his master” (Job 3, 17-19), the Lord Jesus tells those who love him, “I will give you rest.”