2 Pentecost, Year A

“A MATTER OF IMPORTANCE”
PROPER 3 - Isaiah 49: 8 – 18; Psalm 62: 6 – 14; I Corinthians 4: 1 – 13; Matthew 6: 19 – 34
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL on May 25th, 2008

“What’s important?”

That seems to be the “bottom line” in Jesus’ teaching, heard today in our (expanded) Gospel text from Matthew, chapter six.

“What’s important?” Or, we might ask ourselves, “What’s most important?” in our lives.

We make evaluations every day, assessing the importance of everything from the parts of the newspaper we need to read in the morning, to the more important choices of where to work or where to live.

In today’s text, we are called to assess the importance of the most vital reality in our lives, our relationship to God.

So, let’s unpack this text a little, digging into its riches.

The first thing we ought to take note of is the context of the passage….We are in the latter half of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 3 – 7: 27), and we find that today’s passage falls shortly after the Lord’s Prayer (6: 9 – 13).

In fact, Jesus’ comments about “do not be anxious…” expand on the phrase of the Lord’s Prayer which says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Such expansions are common in Matthew, who also loves to include two teachings of our Lord on the same topic.)

Now, you’ll notice that we’ve expanded the length of the text for today: The lectionary calls for reading verses 24 – 34, but we’ve added five verses earlier. The reason for that expansion is that it puts Jesus’ teaching into better context. Allow me to explain: If we read beginning at verse 24, we might be tempted to think that Jesus is simply asking His disciples (including us, His 21st century disciples) to simply give or sell everything we have, and take up a vow of poverty.

Indeed, some Christians over the centuries have taken these verses to mean just that, and they have given or sold everything they possessed, have taken a vow of poverty, and have chosen to live out their lives as a hermit, or in a monastery.

But if we begin at verse 19, we get a different sense of what Jesus seems to be saying, and that sense is:

Jesus wants us to sharpen our skills, to see what’s most important in our lives.

We are to sharpen our visual skills – our spiritual visual skills – in order to assess the value of everything we do, everything we own.

So, with this idea in mind, let’s have a look at the text before us today:

The first thing we notice is the word “mammon”. What is “mammon”, we should ask. The word comes from the Aramaic (a Semitic language which is a cousin of Hebrew, and which was the commonly spoken language of Jesus’ day),[1] and it is usually translated as “money”. However, it has a wider definition, that of “property”.

So Jesus’ warning that we “cannot serve two masters” applies not just to money, but to everything we own. In other words, His teaching applies to all of life!

Now, we notice that Jesus begins to focus on the “eye”, saying it is the “lamp of the body”. We may not think of the eye in those terms, but ancient peoples did. Apparently, for them, the eye was not just an organ of vision, but it was an instrument which cast light on things, so that we might see them clearly.

So Jesus seems to be calling us to assess clearly the importance of everything in our lives.

But what about this business of “give us this day our daily bread”, or, as Jesus expounds on it on the passage we study today, “do not be anxious”?

Essentially, it seems that Jesus wants us to recognize our dependence upon God, the giver of all good and perfect gifts (as the Book of Common Prayer puts it). For all that we have, including: our health, the intelligence and skills with which to work (and earn money and accumulate wealth), all of these and everything else which enables life ultimately comes from God!

So, it’s a matter of perspective, it seems. It isn’t a matter of possessing money or things, it’s a matter of how we view their importance, and their relationship to God.

One final thought…Think of it this way: When all is said and done, and our life on this earth is over, everything we have will be lost to us….Our relationships, our money, our possessions. The only thing we will have left is our relationship with God, that’s all. Shouldn’t we be cultivating that relationship here and now, assessing its lasting and central importance (when everything else is considered)?

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[1] In Jesus’ time, Hebrew was a largely liturgical language, and was used mainly in synagogue and temple worship.