No Servant Can Serve Two Masters

"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."(Luke 16:13 NIV)

How many of us have ever tried to work two jobs in order to make the ends meet? If you have, have you ever had a conflict in the schedule between the two? It can be a real problem, can’t it?

I remember one time when I was working for a bottling company in the summer of 2000. It was my summer job until school would be starting up and soon I would be back to teaching school. However, I knew it would take a few weeks before the subbing would pick up so I thought I would stay on for another month or so.

Well my supervisor did not quite understand what I was doing. I worked 3rd shift which meant I worked until 7 AM then I would go home get changed and go back to the school to work. I did this for about 3 weeks, and quickly I found that it was taking its toll on my body. I thought it would be no problem going from one job to another.

However each night it got harder and harder, especially when the subbing picked up. On one particular morning, I was driving home down US Highway 34; I had just passed through a town into where it became a very busy two lane highway. Suddenly I realized I was dreaming, while I was driving. I awoke to find myself heading straight for a semi truck. I swerved and got back into my lane just in time. It was then that I decided to tell my supervisor I was quitting for the year.

In our Gospel reading for today we see a similar situation, we see a man who is really divided between two masters. We are never told how or what this man actually did as far as wasting the master possessions. However we can make a couple of assumptions. For one Jesus, makes the statement at the end of the reading; “You cannot serve both God and Money."(Luke 16:13b NIV).

The first assumption is that it had to do something with the master’s wealth. Maybe the servant made some bad investments or trades on behalf of the master. The other idea we could imagine is maybe he had embezzled the money to cover a gambling debt. That idea I would have to doubt since, he is never accused of stealing. He is accused of wasting away the possessions.

Well what ever happened, the man was chastised for his doings. This man put his own needs and actions above the work he was doing for his master. He had even let it his work become lax, causing his master’s business to falter.

This is not something that happened only in the past is it? It still happens each and every day, even in today’s world. It happens with work, marriage, family, as well as our relationship with God. Many people find themselves stretched and serving more than one master.

That seems to be the norm in our nation rather than the exception. We often find ourselves juggling much more than we can handle at one time. It is not only us as adults who do this, our children end up doing the same thing. How many of kids do you know spend the most part of their summer vacations running from ball game to ball game?

And if it is not just a ball game, its some club or dance, or some other activity. This not only has an effect on their school work, more over it has an effect on their home and spiritual lives as well.

For me as a pastor, the whole concept of the AAU games on Sundays is a travesty. For example, some of you may be aware that the AAU girls have a regional tournament on Palm Sunday, while the boys have a basketball tournament on Easter weekend. This pulls a family in all sorts of directions

While I feel the church should not legislate, Sunday as an official day of worship. I do feel it is the parents of these children’s responsibility to stand up and try to change the way things are done. In fact some of the student’s have done this;

A young man from Ida Grove, Iowa was playing AAU basketball. He was one the teams star players. Well the National AAU Basketball Tournament was being held in Oklahoma City, OK on the Easter weekend. This young man decided he would rather go to church on Easter morning rather than attend the tournament. His coach and others told him he would be making a big mistake. There would be scouts from all over the country there. It would be a very important step in his career.