Why Worry?

Gospel: Matthew 6: 24-34

A great source of worry and suffering is identified by Jesus here as our possessions and our attachment to them.  Consider all the worry and time we spend on curating our stuff.  We fill our houses with stuff.  Many have storage facilities filled with more stuff.  We protect our stuff with alarm systems, locks, stockade fences, and firearms.  Yes, we would be willing to kill another person over our stuff.  The spiral downward in the spiritual life is directly tied to our possessions and attachments.  

But now consider the one who lives simplicity and voluntary poverty.  She is not attached to possessions.  She is not worried about the incessant curating and protection of the things of mammon.  She is truly free in the deepest sense of the word, far more free  than the one with many possessions and attachments.  The one with many possessions has to spend even greater amounts of money to protect their stuff, while the person of simplicity, poverty, and detachment does not.  

Here again this teaching is fundamentally linked to the Beatitudes - poverty of spirit, meekness, purity of heart, thirst for justice.  For the person of justice knows that having many possessions is intrinsically unjust and theft from those who lack basic necessities.  To give away our excess is not charity; it is justice.  Our detachment from the things of mammon is a posture of justice and the common good.  Today is a day for us to commit to this justice and the common good.

Sharing the Treasure

Gospel:  Matthew 6: 19-23

What is this heavenly treasure of which Jesus speaks?  The context of this passage makes it clear that the treasure is the mercy of God, the very topic that preceded this passage.  This treasure we can not earn or achieve; it is something freely given to us by God.  Its value cannot be measured by any human standard or monetary specie.  For without this mercy we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We can not know peace within ourselves and among one another.  

So often we are told that this heavenly treasure is "merit" or indulgences, both of which are foreign concepts to the New Testament.  Yet we create such things because we have control over them.  They are things we can earn.  They are also things we have for ourselves and not to be shared.  But the mercy of God is not to be kept to ourselves.  It is a treasure meant to be shared with others, given away freely to everyone we encounter.  

When we discover this pearl of great price, we sell all that we have, i.e. material possessions lose their importance for us.  We have all received this treasure of mercy; the task of the spiritual life is for us to be aware of this gift, to have a spirit of gratitude for it, and to set about sharing this gift with everyone we meet through the works of mercy.  The example of the Lord Jesus provides us the Way in which to carry out this life of mercy in the world.   

The Words Jesus Gave Us

Gospel: Matthew 6: 7-15

A Christian would never admit that they pray like pagans.  After all, we pray in Jesus' name and in the Spirit!  Yes, well, leaving that aside, the words of Jesus today indicate otherwise.  Jesus gives us a simple prayer, around which sacramental Christians have constructed elaborate liturgy with endless prayers, and non-sacramental Christians have adorned with the rambles of spontaneous prayer and a sermon series on the book of Judges.  How often Christians compete on length of service as if that were the criterion for worship and Christian life.

Jesus tells us to pray simply and briefly.  The essence of our prayer is to be the one thing necessary - mercy.  We are in need of God's mercy for our sins, and we ourselves need to be merciful as the sole criterion to receive mercy and for being a Christian at all.  For, if we have mercy in both senses we have all that we need.  We have the burden of our sins lifted, and we have the peace of God's kingdom within our own hearts as people of mercy directed to all.  

If mercy be not the center of our prayer life and moral striving, ours is then a false Christianity, one that is of bloodlust and power.  But mercy was the entire ministry of Jesus, who came to be the incarnation of God's mercy in the world, the one who invites and anoints others to be the mercy of God in the world.  So, today we pray to be merciful not only so that mercy might be shown to us, but because it is the first of the Beatitudes, the way to peace in the world, the essence of God's very life among us.