Sermon for 15th Sunday after Trinity, 2020

Sermon for Trinity 15

September 20, 2020

Fr. Tony Melton

Our bishop just made the point in a teaching at our diocesan synod on Friday that in the Bible, things often come in twos. Two humans, two brothers, two animals per kind, the disciples go out two-by-two. But often, God’s love of twos shows up when there are two ways, a paths, a mutually exclusive choice. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The choice for the Hebrews to stay or go. He tells the Israelites, “I set before you Life and Death. Make a choice which way you will go.” And then there is our Gospel, the choice between God and Mammon. 

Now I usually don’t like personal illustrations. So I won’t give one. Instead, I’ll tell you a story about a friend named Jeff, no Ben. Yes, we’ll call him Ben. When Ben was just about to be ordained, one of his friends approached him. “Ben, you shouldn’t become a priest. You don’t have what it takes.” This friend was the most successful friend Ben had. He was a big-time lawyer with an office at the top of the Chase Tower in Dallas. “Ben, I want you to do something for me. Today, I want you to buy a new suit, get a haircut, and meet me at the Chase Tower tomorrow.” Ben obeyed and met his friend the next day. Together, they went up the elevator to the swankiest office he’d ever seen. Walking down the hall of the law firm, Ben’s friend pointed over to a painting on the wall and said, “$450 grand.” Sitting down, he said, “Ben, I told you yesterday that I don’t think you should be a priest. You have other giftings that I think are better used for the kingdom here, in this office. I’ve talked to a friend at United Bank of Switzerland who will give you a decent starting position. I’ll buy your books so you can get your Financial Analyst certificate, and you can work for us soon after. What do you say.” Ben respected his friend. He was a good Christian man. He said he’d think about it. There were two paths. Clear as day. Which one should Ben choose?

Our subject today is the worship of mammon and the remembrance of our death. And our texts are the Epistle and the Gospel for this 15th Sunday after Trinity, found on page 210. We will see that a perpetual remembrance of our human frailty, our future death, and the Cross of Christ, will keep us from the worship of Mammon. I’ll explain as we go, but for now please turn to page 210 and follow along. 

First, I want to show you that I am taking my theme directly from the Propers. Look at the Collect on page 210. In the 2nd line the prayer mentions “the frailty of man.” Because of our frailty, we must rely on God’s perpetual mercy, otherwise we “cannot but fall.” With this in mind, let us observe St. Paul in Galatians 6, just below on the same page. Paul is a man who remembers his own frailty. Our task is to discern what he makes of it, how he understands his own decrepitude. 

“Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mind own hand.” Biblical scholars believe that Paul had an affliction of the eyes, and could not see well, perhaps even suffered from great pain. He writes in big letters, as the blind often do if they can write at all. He is reminding them that he is frail. His opponents, he says, “desire to make a fair shew in the flesh.” Big shots. They wanted the Galatian Christians to be circumsized in order to appease the Jews, to look good in their eyes, and to avoid “persecution for the cross of Christ.” They want to “glory in your flesh.” In other words, they are out to make a show, they are concerned with how they are perceived by others. 

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by who the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Paul accepts that there is nothing impressive about him to the world. He is nearly blind, way out of favor with the elite Jewish officials. In what does he glory? He glories in the Cross, a death that was far more shameful than we can properly recognize. This is what he glories in. In fact, the Cross is the lens with which he relates to the world, and the world relates to him. Don’t miss this. He says that "the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Meaning public perception, personal bravado, physical impressiveness, are as meaningless to him as they were to Jesus while He was hanging half-naked on the cross. The world is crucified to me….and I unto the world.” The only thing he cares to display to the world is the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Moving on a bit, at the top of page 211, Paul says, “From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Meaning, ‘I don’t care what they think. I don’t care how they look. I don’t care how they speak. I don’t care who is impressed by them, or whose approval they have. My frailty, my un-impressiveness points to the glory of my crucified King. 

Children, raise your hand if you have a real human skull in your house. What? No human skulls? Wow, you guys are weird… Did you know that in the past many Christians would keep a skull on a banister or shelf so they could look at it? Why do you think they would do that? It was to remind them that they were going to die. In fact they had this phrase that that they’d use: “Momento mori.” Remember your death. You know what they didn’t usually have in their homes? Mirrors. Ancient christians didn’t often have new suits. Even the wealthy saints often dressed humbly. They didn’t often hang half million dollar paintings. The Cross of Jesus Christ continues to adorn many Christian walls. They didn’t look into mirrors to remind them how young and beautiful they were, but would stare at what they would become in the not-so-distant future. 

What use did momento mori have for them? What did St. Paul’s remembrance of his frailty do for him? At least three things. Our frailty unites us to the crucified Christ. Our frailty reminds us of our reliance upon the Grace of Christ. Our frailty points us away from glorying in the flesh, that our glory comes from the redemption of the Gospel, the beauty of Christ’s resurrection which will be ours NOT in this life, a glory that does NOT come from what we wear, or what we eat, or what we drink. A remembrance of our death and an acknowledgement of our human frailty keeps us from glorying in the flesh, which is the worship of mammon. 

This is why this Epistle reading is paired with this Gospel reading. “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and desire the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” And here we return back to the two paths. As the story goes, Ben chose to go into the priesthood. And he lost touch with his friend until one day, a few years later, Ben heard that his friend had committed suicide. There are only two ways. Either you will live your life for this world, which is Mammon, or you will live your life for God, which is the Cross.

Now the word “mammon” is often understood as simply meaning “money.” Yet this is too narrow a definition because this is not how Jesus uses it in this passage. As it is, Jesus never even mentions money after mentioning the word “mammon.” The rest of the passage is talking about anxiety about what you will eat, and anxiety about whether your clothes look fancy enough. In other words, the worship of mammon is not so much a love affair with money as it is the idolatry of this life, a fixation upon our survival and status in this world, an oscillation between worrying about our lives and glorying in the flesh. This is the worship of mammon, the idolatry of this life. 

It is in this context that we can properly understand what Jesus means when he says, “the worship of God.” It is an orientation of the soul which sees its only sustenance as coming from God, just like St. Paul saw his only glory as coming from the crucified Christ. The worship of God is a vertical orientation. It looks to God as one’s only hope, their only validation. The worship of Mammon is a horizontal orientation that sees the world as the source for their life and glory. These two are opposite paths. They fight against one other. There is an antagonism between earthly glory and the worship of God, and these two orientations, these two paths find their violent intersection at the Cross. The two paths do not run side by side. There is no harmony between them. If you worship God and not Mammon, you will die. Perhaps this won’t mean bodily death, but it might. It will likely mean the death of some deep aspiration. If you follow the Way, eventually you will have to put something very dear to you on the Cross. Actually, if you follow the Way eventually this will be a daily occurrence. This is why the Cross is St. Paul’s paradigm for understanding his relationship to God and World. “The world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.” 

St. Francis is one of my favorite saints. He was a lot like St. Paul. He, too, had an infection of the eyes. He, too, was frail. He had no glory in his flesh. He rejected Mammon more than any other saint in history. I want to draw your attention to one of the themes that marked his teaching that is often forgotten in this time. St. Francis spoke of Poverty as a Mother. Sometimes he called it Lady Poverty. He said that we should hold Poverty close. For him, poverty was the skull on the shelf. It was his teacher of the true nature of things, that the grasping of any earthly glory was futile. We often speak of Poverty as the greatest evil, and no doubt, Poverty can be a terrible thing. Yet, another mother, Mother Teresa once said that the misery of spiritual poverty of the West far surpassed the physical poverty of Calcutta. Poverty is the greatest enemy of a culture that worships Mammon. In our effort to eradicate financial poverty, we also eradicate that Poverty that St. Francis called “Mother.” We kill our children who “can’t have a high enough quality of life” at sickening rates. We relegate our elderly to loneliness. Our poor, too, are subtly pushed to the outer fridges of society. We don’t want to be around us. They are the skull on the shelf. They remind us that the rat race of worldly success and anxiety is a terrible fiction, an opiate. Mother Poverty certainly has application to how we provide for our needs financially, but really it is simply that orientation of the soul which Jesus speaks of in the Gospel and that St. Paul shows us in the Epistle, “Let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks fo the Lord Jesus.”

So why do we need to hear this? Well, besides the fact that the air that we breathe day in and day out reeks of the worship of Mammon, we also need to hear this for at least three reasons. First, we are as a group young and strong and healthy. Death is a long way off for most of us, easy to forget. “Momento Mori” is not easy for the young and the restless. Second, for the most part, we have all our material needs met so easily that self-actualization seems plausible in this life. Poverty is more like a distant, crazy aunt than a Mother for 21st century Georgians. Third, we are growing church plant with a big vision. It would be easy to “glory in our flesh”. Trust me, I preach to myself in this. Fourth, we are told through a variety of sources that our purpose is to accomplish our dreams. Yet, even the Son of God, the King of the Universe, ended this life on the Cross. 

I need not get specific in the application. If the Cross of Christ is our paradigm, if our identity is validated in that we, too, bear in our body the marks of the Lord Jesus, then God will no doubt show us how we are to be crucified to the world, and the world to us. But the Gospel does give two applications for this Way that we should go. First, seek first the Kingdom of God. We have to live in the world. We know that.  You have to eat, and buy clothing, and secure a home. These are not bad things at all. But seek first the Kingdom of God. Not second. Not last. So many, myself included, give to God from our leftovers. Prayers come from our leftover attention. Acts of mercy come from our excess of time. Time, treasures, and talents come from the bottom, not the top. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God. 

The other application from the Gospel is “be not anxious.” Not for your clothes, or food, or anything. Don’t be anxious about the election. Don’t be anxious about COVID. Don’t be anxious about your promotion. Your salvation doesn’t come from these things. Neither does your glory, or your identity. Our salvation comes through Jesus Christ, and the unfathomable love of the Father for us. Our glory comes because we have the Holy Spirit, and the promise of resurrection in a glorious body. And our identity comes from being sons and daughters of the High King of the Heavenly Jerusalem, honored to walk in the same path that He walked, and to bear the marks which He took for our sakes. Amen.