“Yielding All Things: I Am No Longer My Own, But Thine”
Matthew 6:19-34
Jesus tells us: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on…”
“…do not worry…”
“…do not worry…”
“…do not worry…”
Raise your hand if you have gotten to the place where you “do not worry.”
As I just read, the New King James Version reads: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. ‘You cannot serve God and mammon.’”
Mammon means “money”, but it also means “accumulated resources.”
Mammon means “stuff,” as in, “We have a lot of stuff around here.”
Or “please go in your room and pick up all your stuff.”
Or, closer the point, “You can’t serve God and stuff.”
Now, raise your hand if you have too much “stuff.”
How many of us have a garage full of “stuff”?
How many of us have a closet full of clothes and yet we still scan the internet looking for more?
Most of us have so much stuff that we can’t stand up under it; it threatens our very existence.
And then, we worry.
We rely on self rather than God.
We are insecure.
We want to protect our stuff!
We don’t trust others with our stuff!
We don’t trust God with our stuff.
One person has written, “When the admonition against worry is yoked with the idea that money is not the ultimate goal, we find ourselves on the receiving end of one of the most countercultural sermons that Jesus preaches.”
“You cannot serve both God and stuff.”
This is not a threat, but a comment on life that speaks its own truth.
Wall Street Journal columnist Robert Frank wrote a book called “Richistan.”
In it, he chronicles the parallel universe that the ultra-rich in America have built for themselves, complete with Gulfstream jets, 30,000 square foot homes, and alligator-skin toilet seats.
These are people who know a thing or two about storing up for themselves treasures on earth.
Frank interviewed a number of them, and was quite surprised to find out that these people are plagued by anxiety—so much so that some of them have even formed self-help support groups.
What could possibly keep these multimillionaires and billionaires up at night?
It turns out that they worry about running out of money.
Now that seems crazy—unless it’s just the way we human beings are wired: we never think we have enough!
Frank asked folks, “How much money would you need to feel financially secure?”
The results are quite revealing.
Those worth $1 million dollars said they needed twice that much in order to feel secure.
Those worth $10 million dollars said they needed twice that amount.
Those worth $100 million said they needed twice that much.
You get the idea; whatever their level of wealth, no one felt that they had enough money to feel secure.
All of this seems to help prove Jesus’ point that money and stuff is no guarantee of ultimate fulfillment or security.
So, what is the guarantee of ultimate fulfillment and security?
For the past 5 or 6 weeks we have been praying together “A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition.”
I consider this prayer to be the “prayer to perfect freedom.”
Because, I am convinced that if we were to be able to pray this prayer and really, honestly mean what it says—we would be set free from the worries of this life.
If we could honestly live lives that say: “I am no longer my own, but thine,” there is no end to what we could accomplish in this life.
If we could truly and completely give everything over to God and trust God and God alone for our happiness, our contentment, our peace—we would find it.
What did Jesus say?: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Do we believe this?
Do we really believe this?
And this is not some “prosperity Gospel thing” such as “seek the Kingdom of God first and God will make you rich.”
Being rich has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.
Being loving, generous, kind—those are Kingdom things.
Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
We might ask ourselves, “What in the world are ‘treasures in heaven’”?
“Treasures in heaven” refer not so much to “salvation (which too often is treated like some kind of commodity)” or to future, otherworldly rewards, but to transformed lives and transformed relationships that occur in God through Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “I have come to give you life and life to the full.”
That life comes through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives.
That life comes when we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
That life comes when we seek to serve rather than be served, look after the needs of others rather than our own, and set as our highest priority—loving God and neighbor through loving action.
That is how Jesus lived and that is how Jesus taught us to live.
And ultimately and literally, Jesus gave everything He had for others—even His very life.
That is love—that is Love Incarnate—that is Who God is, and in deciding to follow God that is our ultimate goal—to love like God loves.
Everything else will take care of itself.
In this sermon, money or mammon is not the enemy.
It is rather, how we feel about money that can get us messed up.
The ultimate question we must answer in regard to what Jesus is getting at in Matthew Chapter 6 is: “What or Who is our God?”
It’s kind of like when Joshua said to the Israelites to choose which god they would serve as they stood ready to enter the promised land of Canaan.
They were reminded of the gods that their ancestor Abram worshiped before he was called by God, as well as the Egyptian gods that they were once forced to serve.
No longer in a situation beyond their control, they were going into a land where they would be tempted by idolatry.
And they must make a choice.
And when Jesus gave the sermon in Matthew 6, it was originally to the Hebrew people.
They could choose to give their offerings to any number of gods from the mythological Greco-Roman world.
They were also forced every day to choose whether to worship the human god of Caesar, who made them serve the empire.
Both these choices would lead them to franticly worrying about whether they had offered enough to a self-serving god.
Jesus, however, is offering them and us an alternative to this madness.
And you gotta love how He uses the birds and flowers as illustrations.
I mean, the very idea of birds and flowers having to make a choice about whether or not to trust God is downright silly!
So, Jesus encourages us to learn from their kind within God’s creation in order to gain insight into what it means to trust God.
There had to have been a twinkle of humor in Jesus’ eyes when He used the word pictures of birds pushing plows and piling seeds into silos, as well as lilies spinning yarn and knitting sweaters.
Jesus’s illustration of the birds and the flowers is an example to us about how to live into a life that reflects trust in God.
And in verse 27 Jesus unmasks the powerlessness of worry and anxiety to add even a single second to our lives.
As a matter of fact, those of us who spend our days worrying don’t even get to enjoy the life we have while we do live.
There can be no doubt here that God is on our side.
Jesus spent His entire ministry modeling to us how to live—how to truly live!!!
And still, we humans have such a hard time believing Him.
When mammon is our master, a host of evil follows.
Our spirits shrivel and people are neglected.
Time, talents, and treasures get disproportionately used for ourselves.
A world of plenty for everyone becomes a place of greed, starvation, division and conflict.
The headlines change day by day, but the story stays the same.
God, however, is on a mission to win our hearts and set us free from mammon.
And then, mammon can be put to good use.
And that is really good news, because mammon makes a horrible master but a wonderful servant.
A servant, of course, cannot be in charge.
A servant’s only legitimate role is to carry out the intentions of the master.
So, mammon—that pretender, that fake god—must be put in its proper place and made obedient to God!
And this means that everything we have and everything we earn must be seen in an entirely different light.
The critical question is no longer “What do I want?” or “What can we afford to do?” but “How can we use what God has given us to carry out God’s will—God’s mission in the world?”
One Sunday morning a pastor encouraged the congregation to think about the potential of the church for the transformation of the community.
He told them, “With God’s help we can see the day when this church will go from crawling to walking.”
The people responded, “Let the church walk, Pastor. Let the church walk.”
He continued, “And when the church starts to walk, next the church can start to run.”’
And the people shouted, “Let the church run, Pastor. Let the church run!”
The pastor continued, “And finally the church can move from running to flying.
Oh, the church can fly!
But, of course, that going to take lots of money for that to happen.”
The congregation became quiet and then from the back someone mumbled, “Let the church crawl, Pastor. Let the church crawl.”
I know we don’t want to be part of a sad story like that.
Today, is “Commitment Day.”
In your bulletins you have commitment sheets.
They are an opportunity for each of us to make a commitment as to what our tithe and offering commitment will be for the year 2020.
And remember, a tithe is 10% of our income.
Also, a tithe is a floor; never a ceiling.
As we fill out our cards and then walk forward to lay our cards in the baskets up front, I encourage us to pray: “I am no longer my own, but thine.
And the covenant I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.”
Amen.
