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a pretty good god
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, May 25, 2008
Matthew 6:24-34
Someone approached me
after the service last week and asked, “What is the Revised Common Lectionary?”
He was looking at the back page of his bulletin where there was a notice that
the worship services at First Baptist are now being planned around readings from
the Revised Common Lectionary. “What is that?” he asked. I explained it
as I usually do, by saying that the lectionary is a plan for reading through
most of the Bible in public worship over a three-year period, that there are
four readings suggested for each Sunday—one from the Old Testament, one from the
Psalms, one from the Gospels, and one from the Epistles—and that I usually
choose one of those four as the text for my sermon. What I forgot to tell him
is that we will be printing the Scripture references in the bulletin each week
so you can read ahead and be ready for worship, but even if you don’t, if we
read all four passages out loud each Sunday, then anyone who comes to church
faithfully or watches our services on television will be exposed to most of the
of the Bible over a three-year period just by listening. Isn’t that wonderful?
It’s a plan that is used by nearly a billion Christians around the world each
Sunday, and for Baptists, who sometimes refer to themselves as “People of the
Book,” it seems like an excellent way to take the Bible seriously.
Not only that, but because
the lectionary covers most of the Bible it keeps the preacher from coming back
to the same well-worn passages over and over again. The lectionary ranges
around in the Old Testament stories of creation, the Exodus, the settlement of
Israel, and the Babylonian exile. It moves through the Book of Psalms—twice!
It devotes a year each to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with generous helpings of
John mixed in everywhere. It takes us through the Book of Acts and on into the
life and ministry of the early church through the Epistles. It even ventures
into the mysterious Book of Revelation occasionally. For people who are hungry
for the word of God, the lectionary offers a sumptuous biblical feast.
But it does have its
drawbacks. Today for instance—my third Sunday in the pulpit as your
pastor—would have been a good day for a text like, “the Lord is my Shepherd, I
shall not want,” or “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my
help,” or, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.” Instead when I opened up the Gospel lesson last week to have a
look there was Jesus telling his disciples, “No one can serve two masters, for a
slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
Gulp.
I can just hear some of my
colleagues saying, “You did what on your third Sunday in the pulpit?
Preached on money? James, James, James! You know, don’t you, that just
because it’s in the lectionary doesn’t mean you have to preach it. You could
always preach one of the other passages.” That’s true, but as I studied these
passages last week I couldn’t get away from the voice of Jesus, and the way he
said “You cannot serve God and money.” I think we sometimes hear him saying it
like a stern judge announcing the verdict as the gavel comes down (Boom!): “You
cannot serve God and money!” But last week I heard him saying it like your
mother might say it after you had found out the hard way: “Sweetie, you can’t
serve God and money. It just doesn’t work.” Notice that he doesn’t say you
shouldn’t serve God and money, but that you can’t. And if we’re
willing to take him at his word it means we will have to make a choice:
God or money?
Money is one of those
small “g” gods, like success or power, health or happiness. You can almost see
it up there on the mantelpiece along with all the other shiny idols. I like the
way the King James Version calls it Mammon, because it almost sounds like the
name of a god, doesn’t it? Mammon, the god of money. And, as small “g” gods
go, it’s a pretty good one. If you bow down before Mammon long enough, often
enough, and if the god of money rewards you for your devotion, then when you get
hungry Mammon will buy your groceries, and when you get sick Mammon will take
you to the doctor. It’s been good to a lot of people that way, and to some
people it has been very good. I see them sometimes when I go down to
visit my daughter in Charleston, South Carolina. We stroll down to the marina
and there they are, lounging on the decks of their million dollar yachts,
looking suntanned and bored. And that’s when I say to Ellie, “You see, Honey?
Money can’t make you happy but it can make your misery very comfortable.”
So, why do so many people
choose to serve the god of money if it can’t make them happy? The answer, I
think, is in the next section of this passage from Matthew 6, where Jesus begins
to talk about worry. "Therefore I tell you,” he says, “do not worry about your
life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you
will wear.” It’s that word therefore at the beginning that makes me
think there must be some connection between this paragraph about worry and the
one that precedes it, where Jesus talks about money. I wondered what that
connection was for most of last week and then it hit me that along with the
small “g” god of money there is the small “g” god of worry, and it’s not a good
god at all. It’s one of those wicked, tyrannical gods who forces people into
slavery and it seems to have most of the world enslaved. So, when they hear
Jesus say, “No one can serve two masters,” they hope he is right about that, and
they hope that if they serve Mammon faithfully he will strike off the shackles
of that other god and set them free. Or, to put it more prosaically, they seem
to believe that if they only had a little more money all their worries would be
over.
You’ve seen them, haven’t
you? People who look like they can’t afford a gallon of unleaded gasoline
standing in line to buy lottery tickets at the BP station, hoping that they’ll
strike it rich. I saw it just last week. A man paid for his gas and then,
almost as an afterthought, he said, “And give me five of those lottery
tickets.” I watched him step outside and scratch the foil off those cards like
a nun praying the rosary, looking up to heaven before each one and hoping that
this would be the one that would answer his prayers. He looked like a man who
might have worried sometimes about where the money for groceries would come
from, like someone who might have worried about how to pay the utility bills,
and so he brought his tithes and offerings to the Temple of Powerball, he bowed
down before the altar of Mammon, and before he scratched the foil off each
ticket he prayed, “dear god (with a small ‘g’), please let me win this time,
please put an end to my worry.” But when he was finished he sighed and tossed
all five cards in the trash can. Mammon had let him down again.
But here’s the catch: even
if he did hit win the lottery his worries wouldn’t be over. He might not have
had to worry about food, clothing, or shelter anymore but there would still be
plenty to worry about. Ask the man who is sunning himself on the deck of that
million dollar yacht. He may be worried about how he can pay the fuel bills for
the thing, or why he even has it now that his wife has left him. He may be
worried about the lump he felt under his arm this morning or about the son who
hasn’t called in six months. Ask anyone you know who has a lot of money and
they will tell you it doesn’t bring an end to your worries, you just worry about
different things, and frankly the things you worry about are often far more
complicated than they were when you didn’t have anything. I remember reading an
article in which someone surveyed a number of lottery winners twenty years after
they struck it rich. To a person every one of them said they wished they had
never won. Their lives had changed for the worse, not the better; their small
worries had only been replaced by bigger ones.
But if the god of money
won’t set us free from worry, who will? Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the
air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by
worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor
spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of
these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and
tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of
little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will
we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all
these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these
things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well.”
There’s a kind of logic
here that may not be immediately obvious: Jesus is saying that people tend to
worry about what they will eat and drink and what they will wear, but they also
tend to think that if they only had enough money all their worries would be
over. Not so, he says. The remedy for worry is not money but trust—trust in
God. The birds of the air trust him and they are fed. The flowers of the field
trust him and they are clothed. If we could learn to trust God in these little
things we could stop worrying, and if we weren’t so worried we could stop
striving for the things of the world, and if we stopped striving for the things
of the world we could devote ourselves to the things of the kingdom. According
to Jesus then and only then would our worries be over forever, then and only
then would we find that we have everything we need.
You don’t have to believe
Jesus. You can go on striving for the things of this world if you like, you can
go on serving the god of money, but I’m afraid you’ll end up like that man on
the yacht—rich and miserable. I think that’s why I hear the voice of Jesus
saying it like your mother might say it after you had found out the hard way,
“Sweetie, you can’t serve God and money. It just doesn’t work.” So, what can
you do? You can make a choice. You can decide that from now on you are going
to trust God with the needs of this world and strive for the things of his
Kingdom. You are going to look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the
field and you are going to follow their example. You are going to recognize
that money is not the remedy for worry, trust is, and you are going to practice
it every day. Because if you can learn to trust God with little things like
food and clothing, then you can learn to trust him with big things like life and
death.
I don’t know about you,
but in the last hour of my life I don’t want a pretty good god. I don’t want a
god who can make my misery a little more comfortable. I want God Almighty, the
maker of heaven and earth. I want the God who holds eternity in his hands. I
want the God whose eye is on the sparrow, the one who watches me. And if it’s
true that I can’t serve that God and any other, then I want to make up my mind
now, while I still can, to seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness. If
Jesus is right then all those other necessities will be added to me as well and
in the end …
… I won’t have to worry
about a thing.
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