Today, on the third Sunday of Matthew, we hear Jesus Christ’s challenging words in the Sermon on the Mount. He reminds us that we cannot serve both God and money, for, as He points out, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” And He then proceeds to remind us of the pointlessness of worrying about material things, for “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
We may be tempted to think that it is easy for Jesus to say this, and may think we have good reason to worry about material things. Moreover, we live in a society that seems to programme us to be concerned about what we will eat, or drink, or wear – or the size of our bank balance.
While we do need to take some concern for the matters of our earthly life, Jesus Christ goes to the heart of the matter by asking us who our true master is. Are we governed by our desires for wealth or success, whatever form they may take? Or are we governed by our desire for God, and for God’s Kingdom?
The reality is that, for many of us, our hearts are divided as we seek to juggle the competing realities of our lives. The conflicting demands that we experience exist because we live in a fallen world, and the conflict that we experience in our hearts exists because our desires have also been affected by the fall and are in need to healing. The path to salvation that Christ calls us to involves the healing of this division within ourselves so that, “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.”
The Fathers understood this to mean living out of an inner unity and integrity in which our desires are aligned to the will of God. It is about learning to live out of a single heart that is wholly given to God – not so much because we “must” and because God is a “master” who will otherwise punish us, but because this is the only way to find true freedom. For, as Saint John Chrysostom tells us, money is a far more tyrannical master than our true Master who cares for our every need.