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.
Money is not a problem when it serves us as we, in turn, serve God. However, money does not demand obedience all at once and obviously. It is rather in a pernicious and almost undetectable way that it insinuates itself into our hearts.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink,
or about your body, what you will wear.
We might think that the main problem with money arises in response to temptations for yachts, sports cars, memberships in exclusive clubs, and similarly extravagant expenditures. But Jesus seems to suggest that a problematic relationship with money could begin before all that, at the level of basic needs.
When we manage our life, our food, drink, clothing, and shelter adequately, we often experience the illusion of control that money can provide. This illusion is the basis for the belief that money can buy happiness. Worry that we will have enough makes us long for more direct control over our lives. Money pretends to be the solution by which we can apparently have enough. But if we look at things from a broader perspective we can see that our circumstances that allow us to have money are not really of our making. And that we don't walk headlong into catastrophe is also something over which we have little influence.
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?
We are called to move beyond manipulating money as one more lever of control over our lives and to instead receive it is use it as a gift, just as birds receive their own food day to day. We are called to move beyond the feelings of worry that make us desire control to trust instead in God's providence. This is the only way we can hope to become truly generous.
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.
Is the teaching of Jesus an excuse for imprudence, for not availing ourselves of necessities or even of planning for the future? Is it an excuse to disregard the real and dire needs of the poor? No, it is rather a teaching that reveals that worry is an unhelpful illusion. It does not plan or produce, but distracts us from the opportunities truly available in the moment, and from thankful for the gifts we have already been given.
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.
It is hard for our flesh to believe that if we seek the Kingdom first we will have what God wants us to have. Worries about food, clothing, and shelter, touch our survival instinct so deeply it is hard to relegate our concern for such things to second place. But the promise of Jesus will not fail us, and in this promise we can have peace.
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.
Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
Jesus wants to teach us to follow him with enough trust to let go of our own need for control. For us to be available for him and his purposes we must get beyond the worries and anxieties that tend to make us slaves to money, and to other illusions of control. The Christian life demands that we let go of our own control in order to cooperate with God. Perhaps even a hint at the idea of doing so fills us with anxiety. Let us respond to that anxiety with the word of God, saying, 'I will not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself. The Father knows what I need.'
Following Jesus does not mean that there won't be a thorn in our flesh like the one experienced by Paul. The temptation when we encounter trials like that is to try to take back control. But instead we can learn that, as for Paul, God's grace will always be enough for us if we trust in it.
Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness.”
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