Gospel: Matthew 6: 1-6
The dawn of the modern age brought with it the idea that self-interest is and ought to be our primary motivation for human action. Self-promotion is not only encouraged but required in almost every profession if one wants to advance in a career. Social media itself is an exercise in self-promotion: all our activities, beliefs, political views, and the like are all shared for people to see and give us the adulation we desperately seek at all times.
This modern impulse acquired two religious half-breeds. The first is the prosperity Gospel wherein we have no value at all in religion if we have not prospered because of it. The second is a merit based theology where we do good deeds, recite certain prayers, and the like in order to store up merit from God: indulgences and notice from ecclesiastical authorities that inflate our egos and create a self-interested religious life.
Today's Gospel is a tonic to all of this. To follow the Lord Jesus is to live a life of selfless loving kindness and mercy for others. It is not to seek recognition, to avoid seats of honor and distinctive garb and the adulation of others. Certainly such an approach is one our hired PR firms and fundraisers would shun, but it is a more authentic and honest life, a life modeled after the way of the Lord Jesus.
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