You Can't Serve God And Mammon

 

Mammon. The name itself connotes a kind of vast deadness and it's typically translated as wealth or riches. Nothing wrong with those, may everyone have nice things, but when wealth becomes the logic, criteria and end of our lives, when it's served and worshiped as God? Then it becomes an idol and an enslaving beast.

St. John Chrysostom likens followers of this false deity to dogs chained to a tomb. Here he is:

For though none of these things should come to pass, says He, you will undergo no small harm, in being nailed to the things below, and in becoming a slave instead of a freeman, and casting yourself out of the heavenly things, and having no power to think on anything that is high, but all about money, usuries and loans, and gains, and ignoble traffickings. Than this what could be more wretched? For in truth such an one will be worse off than any slave, bringing upon himself a most grievous tyranny, and giving up the chiefest thing of all, even the nobleness and the liberty of man. For how much soever any one may discourse unto you, you will not be able to hear any of those things which concern you, while your mind is nailed down to money; but bound like a dog to a tomb, by the tyranny of riches, more grievously than by any chain, barking at all that come near you, you have this one employment continually, to keep for others what you have laid up. Than this what can be more wretched?

 

Infernal Mammon waxes large today, it's in the deadly air we breathe. Stand fast against it; fix heart and soul on the true God, pray to Him in adoration and contrition, loving Him simply for what He is in Himself. I find the Jesus Prayer helps, "Lord Jesus, I love you, have mercy on me a sinner." In the face of this the idol Mammon seems at best tawdry, repellent and absurd.

Then, from adoration of the Savior, ask for the illumination and discernment to use our wealth, such as it is, for the love of God and neighbor. Then do it, concretely, tangibly. For some, this means total renunciation of worldly goods. For all, the giving of our substance to the glory of God and the service, the love, of our neighbor. Do these things; break the power of the infernal idol and store up treasure in heaven. 

Here endeth the Saturday sermon.

Sicut erat in principio,

LSP

Saturday Sermon

 

Jesus says to his disciples, who were annoyingly busy fighting among themselves over their respective positions of power in the  coming Kingdom, "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk. 10:45)

Christ does so on the Cross, the throne of his sovereignty, by which he exercises dominion over sin and death, opening the gates of heaven to the faithful and inaugurating the Kingdom. I found this, by the Anglican bishop NT Wright helpful:

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook of our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is much, much more. It is the moment when the story of Israel reaches its climax; the moment when, at last, the watchmen on Jerusalem’s walls see their God coming in his kingdom; the moment when the people of God are renewed so as to be, at last, the royal priesthood who will take over the world not with the love of power but with the power of love; the moment when the kingdom of God overcomes the kingdoms of the world. It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with him. The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. 

 

The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Yes, powerful, though I'd change "garden city" to "heavenly Jerusalem."

That aside, how easy it is to be a porch warrior or for that matter an armchair Christian. Our Savior demands more, we're to take up our cross and follow him, entirely. 

In the end, all will be asked of us. Pray that with James and John we will, by the grace of God, say yes and that by loving as Christ loved us find greatness in the Kingdom of God. And know that the demons, to say nothing of their temporal allies flee before the sign and the life of those who live in Christ crucified.

In Hoc Signo,

LSP