So Jesus hits the nail on the head so to speak. Let's be honest about this – money is the issue in the church all too often. It's also all too often the issue that dare not speak its name. It's not just an issue in the church; it's an issue in the life of every Christian. How do we manage that which God has given us? Sometimes the issue becomes how what God has given us has come to manage us! That seems to be what Jesus was getting at in this morning's Gospel reading. “No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve both God and money.” If Central United Church is like every other congregation I've ever known, those words will make many of us here today squirm just a little bit. Talking about money does that – and how dare the church talk about money! And how dare the minister talk about money! But Jesus talked about money a lot. He understood that there was a potential problem caused by money to a life of faith. Now, in spite of how Matthew 6:24 is usually translated, Jesus is actually talking about far more than money, I'll admit. The word used is “mammon” which means more broadly “possessions.” So Jesus is really saying that you can't serve both God and those things you possess. You have to make a choice, because two masters will inevitably make competing demands on us. You can't follow them both. So, Jesus is neither judging nor criticizing the people He's speaking to. “You cannot serve both God and money” isn't a statement of moral judgment against the people and it's not even really a statement of moral encouragement calling the people to a more faithful way of life. Jesus is just stating a simple fact. You can't have two masters. You can't have two things that control your life. You just can't do it. In that sense, while Jesus isn't making moral judgments, He is challenging people to take a position on wealth, because He sees wealth as a potential threat to our relationship with God. “You cannot serve both God and money.” If your life is consumed by worry over how much money or anything else you have, then you can't effectively serve God, because serving God requires a certain amount of trust in God to make provision for you. If we say we believe in God but put our trust into money or wealth or possessions, then God gets displaced and money, wealth and possessions become our god – and the power of this alternative god is as real today as it was in the first century. Wealth competes with God for the human heart. The desire to get it and the fear once we have it that we might lose it can easily consume a human life that really needs to be consumed by God.

 

     There are a lot of reasons I could offer you to explain why you should choose God over money. One reason to follow God over money is that God is with us forever – money can disappear tomorrow. How many of us discovered that a couple of years ago when all the wonderful investments we'd been making for years to provide for ourselves suddenly collapsed in value. But God's value never decreases and God's presence never goes away. Unlike money, God is with us always. Another reason to follow God instead of money is that God pushes us to think of others, while money can easily cause us to turn away from others. There are wealthy people who've avoided being trapped by their money, and the combination of a person who serves God and has a lot of money can be very powerful. But a focus on money can cause us to become inward-looking. How many people look at poverty in despair and think they can't make a difference and so they don't even try? Another reason to follow God over money is that God gives us freedom, while money controls us. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus makes a great deal of the fact that there are signs everywhere of God's care for that and those He has created. If we believe that, then we're freed from worry about the future. “Give us this day our daily bread” we pray every week – not for massive savings and reserves but for “daily bread.” That's very liberating. To serve God is to have faith that there will be enough – not a lot, perhaps, but enough - and that frees us. To serve money is to become convinced that there's never enough; that there's always a need for more – and that enslaves us.

 

     So, how do we know if we're following God or money? In some reading I was doing, I came across a article written by a man named Joe Plemon called “The Money Quiz: Do You Serve God Or Money?” The questions are well thought out – simple but thought-provoking. I want to share them with you and invite to you assess your own relationship to both God and money.

 

     The first question is: Do you acknowledge that everything belongs to God? Psalm 24:1 tells us that The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” We can’t serve God above money until we realize that God already owns it all in the first place. In fact, God even owns us. We own nothing. He allows us to manage His assets, but He never gives us the right to claim them as our own.

 

     The second question is: Are you generous? God is a giver. John 3:16 tells us that God His only Son for us. That was the sign of God's grace. God's grace frees us from legalistic obligations, but it doesn't free us from responsibilities, and our responsibility to God as we manage God's assets is to use them in the manner that God would want – and that means to use them generously. Tight fistedness is a symptom of loving the money more than we love God.

 

     The third question is: Are you cheerful about giving? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that “each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” That, of course, isn't an invitation for us not to give because we're not cheerful; it's a challenge to us to be transformed into cheerful givers because giving cheerfully is a great sign that we acknowledge God’s ownership of what we have.

 

     The fourth question is: Do you hoard your wealth? Have you established a maximum (rather than a  minimum) limit on how much you'll save before giving the rest of your wealth away? Because if it's a minimum then we're inviting ourselves to simply keep holding on to what we give. R.G. LeTourneau was a wealthy heavy equipment manufacturer who chose to live on 10% of his income and give away the other 90%. When he was asked why he did that, he said “the question is not how much of my money I give to God, but rather how much of God’s money I keep for myself.”

 

     The fifth question is: Do you accumulate stuff? Take a look around. Is your garage or basement  filled with stuff that you no longer use? Do you pay for separate storage to house your stuff? Do you keep clothing that you haven’t worn in more than a year? Does the thought of getting anything out of your life cause you to hyperventilate? Do you put the old table out to be picked up and then worry that it's going to miss you? That could be a sign of a misplaced loyalty.

 

     The sixth and last question is: Do you worry about money issues? Worry is a symptom of misplaced trust. In today's passage, Jesus had some words to share with the worry warts, “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

 

     God doesn't ask us to give up our money or our possessions, but as in all things, to try to find a way to use them to further whatever call God has placed upon our lives. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by what little we have and we worry about ourselves and we become convinced that we can't make a difference anyway. But Mother Teresa once said, “If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” Faith teaches us that God will take care of us, so our task is to take care of God's work in the world. There's more to life than concern for our daily needs and Jesus expects His followers to invest themselves into things that give more meaning to life. Once we do that everything else will take care of itself -  or, to paraphrase Jesus, God will deal with the rest.