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.”
My favorite book by C. S. Lewis is
one that very few people have heard of and even fewer people have read. It’s called, “The Great Divorce.” After all, who wants to read about a divorce,
even if it is a “great” one?? It doesn’t
really have anything to do with marriage and divorce, but rather, it’s about an
imaginary bus trip to heaven and Lewis’ startling claim that you can’t take any
souvenirs from earth into heaven. Listen
to how he puts it: “You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on
one journey (here he means to heaven) even your right hand and your right eye
may be among the things you leave behind.”
Remember in the Bible where Jesus says that if your right hand causes
you to sin, cut it off, and if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it
out? Lewis goes on saying, “If we insist
on keeping earth, we shall not see Heaven; if we accept Heaven we shall not be
able to retrain even the smallest souvenirs of earth.” For just a moment, try to visualize packing
your suitcase for a trip to heaven. What
would you take? Would you take your
favorite Teddy Bear, pack your jogging shoes, charge your Kindle and download
books, take plenty of sunscreen? Or, put
it another way: what would you want to have in heaven so much that, without it,
it wouldn’t feel much like heaven?
Several years ago there was a news story about
a man who loved his Cadillac so much that when he died, he wanted to be buried
with it, with his body placed in the driver’s seat. He said he wanted to drive his Caddy in
heaven. That’s a true story; you can’t
make this stuff up. Two friends were
discussing the passing of a very wealthy neighbor. One asked, “How much did he leave
behind?” The other answered, “He left it
all behind.” That’s what C. S. Lewis was
saying: We won’t take anything material with us to heaven. Do you recall that famous line from the Old
Testament book of Job, where Job exclaimed, “Naked I came forth from my
mother’s womb; naked I will return there.” (Job 1:21)? When we return to heaven, we’ll all go back
in our birthday suits.
Now, here’s the hard thing to
understand about heaven: it won’t be simply a continuation of life as we know
it on earth: just more of the same but just a lot better. That’s what most people think and that’s what
they expect heaven to be like. But it
won’t. Rather, there will be a radical
break with earthly life, a dramatic departure, for which Lewis decided to use
the drastic term “the great divorce.”
Grasping that dramatic difference between heaven and earth is the hard
part of heaven.
In the gospel today, Jesus is
trying to prepare his disciples for that final bus trip to heaven, so that,
when they climb aboard that heaven-bound bus, they can leave behind all of
their luggage. Our Lord says rather
starkly: “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.” That is, they cannot love
both heaven and earth equally, they must choose one, they must love one
decisively more than they love the other.
When Jesus uses the term “mammon” he’s referring to all the things
they’d like to pack on that bus trip to heaven; the things they feel they just
could not live without. That’s why Jesus
goes on to list the things they tended to worry overmuch about (really to love
too much): security, food, clothes and so forth. But his point is clear, even if
uncomfortable: you cannot pack anything for heaven. The apostles must love God more than they
love their teddy bear, more than they love their Cadillac, more than they love
their chai latte.
Let me ask
you: have you decided what you’ll give up for Lent this year? Now, don’t be like one of my friends who
always waits till the end of Lent and asks himself, “Let’s see, what did I not
eat or drink for the past 40 days?
That’s my Lenten sacrifice!”
Sorry, there are no “retroactive Lenten penances.” Maybe you’ll adopt the attitude of one of our
second graders who said last week, “I’m going to give up watching 6 minutes of
T.V. every day!” Hey, that’s a big
sacrifice for some people! May I suggest
another way to look at Lent? Try to
think ahead to that inevitable bus trip you’ll take one day to heaven. What are the things you think you cannot live
without in heaven: your morning coffee and newspaper, your favorite playlist of
songs, texting, tweeting, and Facebook, watching American Idol and drinking a
cold Coors Light? Give up these things
for Lent; you’ll have to give them up one day.
Now, don’t misunderstand me: we don’t give
these things up because they are bad, indeed they are good things. God made them for our happiness. Rather, it’s because sacrificing them shows
we love God more than these things. You
see, Lent is a kind of “litmus test of love” to see if you really do “love God
more than mammon.” It’s easy so to say,
“Yeah, I love God!” It’s a lot harder to
show it.
Then, if we truly love God more than mammon
during Lent, something beautiful will happen at Easter. We will celebrate the Resurrection. And I don’t just mean Jesus’ Resurrection,
but in a spiritual sense, also our own resurrection. You see, just as Jesus had to be stripped of
everything of this world – all the worldly mammon – during his passion and
death so that he could rise on the third day, so must we. The cost of that bus ride to heaven is the
same for everyone, that includes Jesus: we must leave behind all our
luggage. You could say that every Lent
and Easter we are invited to take a little “day trip” to heaven. But like before any vacation, the hard part
is knowing what to pack and what to leave behind. That’s what you have to figure out this Lent:
what is one more thing you must learn to leave behind before you can board that
bus? “You cannot take all luggage with
you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may
be among the things you have to leave behind.”
Oh, and if you need someone to drive your Cadillac around during Lent,
I’ll be happy to swap you for my Toyota.
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
No comments:
Post a Comment