Trinity 15 + Matthew 6:24-34 + September 24, 2017

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1)         Jesus tells us that no one can serve two masters. Our hearts aren’t built for that. We can only serve one master. We can only look to one thing to provide for us and go give us everything we need for this life. You cannot serve God and mammon. To serve God means to look to Him in faith and expect Him to give us every good thing at the proper time. To serve mammon means to give our hearts to money, possessions, and the things of this life so that we expect all good things from them. The heart that serves God is confident that God will give daily bread; daily bread being all that we need to support this body and life. The heart that serves mammon frets over how much money is in the bank or how much food is in the cupboard. The heart that serves God is content because it fixes itself solely upon God’s Word and promises. The heart that serves mammon is always turbulent and discontent, imagining that if it had just a bit more then contentment would come easy. The heart that serves God takes whatever God gives each day and enjoys it. The heart that serves mammon takes the good things it receives from God and hordes it for tomorrow while recoiling at the things that don’t seem good to it. “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.” Your fear, your love, and your trust, cannot be split two different ways. When you find yourself worrying and fretting over the things of this life, or the perceived lack of the things of the life, at that moment you are serving mammon and not trusting God for your daily bread.

2)         “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” Since we cannot serve to masters, Jesus simply tells us to stop worrying about the things of this life because we cannot control the things of this life. Jesus is very gently calling you to repent of serving mammon. Why worry about food for the stomach? Life is more than food! He will not give you life and then neglect to feed you. God has created you and fashioned your body in your mother’s womb. If He’s given you a body you have no reason to believe He won’t also graciously clothe your body. Since he has given you life itself, why wouldn’t He also graciously give you everything you need for the support of this body and life? Consider the birds of the air. They are fed in the way that God has ordained to feed them. Consider the lilies of the field. They do not labor or spin but they are clothed in such glorious garb that they outshine the splendor of Solomon. If God cares for simple birds and wildflowers in ditches, why wouldn’t He give you everything you need? Of course you’ll have to work for it. God commands us to work from the beginning. He has given each of us vocations through which He graciously gave us all good things. Our working doesn’t mean that it is we and not God who provide our daily bread. Our work is the means through which God provides our daily bread, just as the Lord doesn’t create food for birds in their nest, but commands them to find it. So He has ordained to give us our daily bread through the sweat of our brow and the labor of our hands.

3)         God gives us the work. He does not give us the worry. Worry will get you nowhere. It’s often said: “worry is like a rocking chair; it keeps you busy but gets you nowhere.” But that’s not true. It’s worse than that. Worry does get you somewhere but it’s nowhere a Christian is to be going.  Worry is the worship of mammon. Fretting about the things of this life and agonizing over the things that you don’t have draws your heart away from God the Father, the one who “knows that you need all these things.” Worry is the opposite of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. When you worry, you seek only the things of this life. Christ bids you to seek the things from above, the kingdom of God. Paul says that the kingdom of God is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). He says elsewhere to “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2) because your Father in heaven knows you need all these things and promises to give them to you. Worrying about the things of this life, our possessions, our circumstances, even our future, draws our eyes back the transitory things of this life, things which are passing away. The kingdom of God and His righteousness, the Gospel and all its promises, that is the only permanent thing. That is where we are to fix our eyes because if God has graciously given us the greatest gifts such as the forgiveness of all our sins, Christ’s robe of righteousness, and eternal life, why in the world would He withhold the lesser gifts of food and drink, house and home, and all that we need to support this body and life? When we consider that God the Father has given His Only-Begotten Son into death to bear our sins and be the Savior of all who believe, faith says along with St. Paul, “how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

4)         Christ speaks this to us as individuals but He is also speaking this to us as His Church. Just as we are tempted to the two masters of God and mammon in our lives, so we are tempted to serve two masters as a congregation. With our inner we man we serve God, looking to Him for our spiritual daily bead. We rejoice that we have here in this place the Word of God purely taught and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution. And we should rejoice because there aren’t many places like that in this day and age. We trust that God will give us our daily bread from heaven by forgiving our sins each week when confess them. We are confident that Christ will come to us in His true body and blood to forgive us and create new hearts within us that love God and neighbor. We know that the Holy Spirit will speak to us in the words of the Holy Scripture to comfort us in our afflictions and teach us to run the way of the commandments. But we are not just the inner man, the one who is daily renewed through the gospel. We still have the sinful flesh. And the sinful flesh is only concerned about the things of this life. It wants to entice us to worry about the church’s financial circumstances. The sinful flesh wants us to fret about “the future of the parish,” and to ask questions like: “What about the money we don’t have but desperately need?” “What are we going to do with our school building now that our renter is gone?” “How will the ministry go on in this place?” “What does the future look like here?”

5)         When the school that rented our building closed abruptly at the beginning of August, I can’t tell you how many times I was pelted with the question, “What is the church going to do?” Parents. Teachers. Administrators. Board Members. Even strangers still come in off the street and ask me how the church is doing and what we’re going to do now. They all asked the same question, but in different ways. And the answer is always the same. What are we going to do? We will wait for the Lord to provide. What about the building? The Lord will provide. What about the finances? The Lord will provide. The ministry will go on. God will keep giving us His Word and Sacraments. He will continue to preach Christ into our hearts. We will keep being church, gladly hearing the Word of God and learning it for our salvation. That answer wasn’t good enough for most people, who simply nodded and walked away. But it is the only answer that God gives to us. He will provide what we, as a congregation, need, when we need it. He does not want you to worry. He asks you, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” As worry is worthless in our individual lives, so it is worthless and detrimental for our life together as a congregation of saints gathered around the Word and Sacraments.

6)         What will we do? We will do the work God has put into our hands to do. We will seek first the kingdom of God and His righteous. We will focus our eyes on the things that are above, gathering to be fed by Christ through His Word. We will worship the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity and confess the truth of God’s Word in a world that laughs at the idea of truth. We will continue to be Christ’s church in this place. When worry about finances or the future seize your hearts, console yourself with word of Jesus who says: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Let the Lord worry about tomorrow. He’s not given tomorrow to us yet. Let the Lord worry about the future. He hasn’t given us the future, only today. Let the Lord worry about the finances. He is the one, after all, who paid the temple tax with a coin from a fish’s mouth. We will be faithful stewards of what God has graciously given us, including this beautiful building, as long as it is His will. We will enjoy the good things He gives us today, the good things He gives us in our individual lives and the good things He gives us as a parish. We will believe as it is written: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

7)         The lilies of the field are fully clothed. The birds of the air are fully satisfied. “Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” The Lord will provide. He gives you the work but He does not give you the worry. Cast that aside, because you cannot serve two masters, God and the things of the life. God has promised to provide in His holy Word and He has proven Himself faithful to that promise every day of our lives. So enjoy the work God gives your hands to do and don’t worry about the outcome. Enjoy administering this parish and do not worry about the outcome. The outcome is God’s, not ours. He has not given us the outcome nor has He given us the job of worrying about the outcome. We have His Word that we have put on Christ in Holy Baptism and are sons of God, so that no matter what happens to us in this life, our eternal future is secure. Go in peace, children of God. Your Lord knows what you need and promises to care for you, for you are His. Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.