Perspectives of Mammon

Sermon for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Does Our Lord really not understand mortgages?

We need to think about how we are going to pay off our debts otherwise, we will be homeless.

If we don’t spend some time thinking about which secondary school our child needs to go to, then they will end up somewhere horrid.

If we don’t think about that presentation for work, we will lose our jobs.

So, for Our Lord to tell us not to take any thought for tomorrow is rather more worrying, especially when it suggests that, if we do take thought for tomorrow, we’re not really displaying faith in God Who loves us and provides for us.

Surely, we do need to plan for the future. Surely, we need to think about pensions, and mortgages and payslips and what we are going to eat.

Our Lord suggests that being anxious for the future is almost a sin.

[PAUSE]

Anxiety is rife in our modern society. More and more people are being treated for anxiety, especially since the economic turbulence started twenty years ago and exacerbated some four years ago. Couple that with the political situations, the wars and rumours of wars. Surely, we do need to think forward.

And isn’t the Lord being a little inconsistent? If the five foolish virgins had the presence of mind to fill their lamps well before the bridegroom came, as He tells us, surely they would have entered into the feast with the five wise virgins.

What’s the problem? Where have things gone wrong?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord reminds us of the two masters: God and Mammon. They are entirely contradictory but only one is the Creator. What actually is Mammon, then?

Many people have thought that Mammon is actually a demon sent to tempt those prone to avarice. In fact, Mammon is just a Aramaic personification of wealth. The word is just used in the same way that we would talk about Death as the Grim Reaper or Love as being a chubby cherub bearing a bow and arrow. Mammon is an idea, a meme. It simply focuses the mind on our concepts of wealth and riches.

Our Lord is contrasting two influences in our lives. One is God our Father seeking to love us and to share His good things with us – His good things, not the things we think are good. The other is Mammon, Wealth, Riches, the sparkling mountain of gold upon which lurks Smaug the dragon. Mammon is what we think good things are, and we think that they are good irrespective of whether they are actually good.

Mammon arises when we make the decision as to what is good for us rather than rely on God Whose very nature tells us what is good for us.

[PAUSE]

The trouble is that we live in a society in which material things are shoved in our face. Every advertisement promises us something good. Every security system is a testament to the evil robbers who seek to steal our wealth. Every bank is encouraging us to invest our money into computer systems that have made our wealth invisible and susceptible to instant deletion by a strategic power cut. Even our banknotes are IOUs – “I promise to pay the bearer…”

Our anxiety is heightened when we can’t see our riches for what they are. In fact, the world around actively wants us to be unable for us to see our riches for what they are. The world does not want the spell of Mammon to be broken so that, while we worry about what we have and what we don’t, we can be controlled through delight and through dread.

Our Lord urges us to see the better path.

[PAUSE]

First, we are urged to grow in faith. This takes time, but Our Lord tells us that even a grain of faith makes a difference. We are to look to God as the source of what we need. Yes, we have mortgages, investments, pensions, and debts, and He knows that. He doesn’t ask that we forget that, nor live irresponsibly, but rather to focus on Him.

Second, we are urged to see God as the source of what is really good, not our belly. The beauty of Lent and Advent, as well as the Ember Days, is that days of fasting are our opportunity to gain control over our own bodies and to look for what is truly nourishing. Riches will not buy our way into Heaven. Indeed, we shall spend seventy, eighty, ninety years on this earth and Eternity somewhere else, preferably in the Kingdom of God.

Third, we are urged to focus on God’s love for us. Anxiety is real and growing, but the more people see that there is hope, security and joy in the Church, the more they can put their problems into a better perspective. The more active love we can show people, the more they can realise that even in the worst-case scenario, there is true hope, justice and resolution. Anxiety might be seen as a lack of faith in God. In truth it is a loss of perspective which we can regain by struggling through hardship and worry to the realisation that God truly is in control.

We, the Church have a duty to love people and give assistance where we can so that this grip of Mammon can be loosened.

[PAUSE]

Easier said than done?

Possibly, but the grip of our economy is rooted in Mammon, one way or another. We cannot serve two masters, and so we need to learn to serve only one. That is going to take time. This is why our salvation is not a one-off event but a life-long struggle against Mammon as well as the other temptations. It is part of our life’s walk with Christ to disengage from worrying about material things that are ultimately immaterial. It takes work, prayer, silence and love.

It’s not as if we don’t have a reason to worry, but rather that this reason needs perspective and only the perspective of Almighty God will do.