“JESUS FEEDS, CLOTHES, AND FORGIVES”
Saint Matthew 6: 24-34
15th Sunday After Trinity: 13 September Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Satan attacks you and your old sinful nature the way he attacks all believers—the way he attacked Solomon. Not only did the pagan kings of the North, Israel, lust after mammon and reject The Lord, but even Solomon himself fell into the tar-baby trap of serving a false master. He wrote a whole book of the Bible about it (Ecclesiastes). Vanity of vanities all is vanity. He was talking about mammon.
The devil doesn’t appear as a devil. Satan is the most skilled puppet master and ventriloquist. The “prince of the air” will come to you as a roaring lion yes, roaring in his “heart” to devour you, but not so in his outward appearance. He approaches you as the concerned and sensitive helper. He says he wants to be your enabler, advisor, and friend. He professes a willingness to enlighten you to what’s really going on so that you’ll be able to grow and achieve your maximum potential. Though he once asked Christ to “worship him” in exchange for all the riches of the kingdoms of this world, he doesn’t ask you to worship him as he is: liar, murderer, and evil un-incarnate. He wants just a piece of your heart. He says he’s the voice of reason and compromise—splitting the difference; warm fuzzy consensus.
The Lord is not interested in “consent of the governed” republicanism, majority rule, or parliamentary niceties. The Lord is monarch and master and there is no regency, viceroy-ship for Rome, or allowance for your own taste or personal views. God is God and your attempt to worship mammon “just a little” is sinful and unclean. “Did God really say” worked on Eve. The Spirit constrains you to you reject this damnable lie by believing, teaching, and confessing Christ, and only Christ for the forgiveness of your trespasses!
Yes God did say obey. Yes God did say I am your Father and I love you. Yes God does expect you to love Him and to love your neighbor. No man can serve two masters or have two Fathers: period!
Aaron tried to “massage” the heathen rebellion at Sinai, make “lemonade out of lemons” when he constructed an altar to go along with the Golden Calf. It didn’t work. The Lord won’t allow you to mix in 2% idolatry and worship of mammon with 98% fidelity towards Him. Hell will be littered with lukewarm moderates in “theology.” No man can serve two masters. You can’t shake hands with a rattlesnake just because your sinful nature has been deluded into thinking it’s a bunny’s paw. You can’t kiss a great white shark because your fallen reason wants to believe it’s a seal pup’s cute little moustache. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Your mammon, your stuff, can certainly be your money and possessions. You spend far more for your hobbies and entertainments than is fitting for a brother or sister of Jesus who has other siblings in such need. But the real mammon, the real false master that you conspire and consort with, is the one who looks at you from a mirror. Your self-will, your “my way” is the mammon that must be daily drowned and put to death. No man can serve two masters. You are a New Man in Christ. You can’t “serve” the Law or do the Commands. To live by Moses, to be a hypocrite, is to worship mammon and despise Christ’s gift. Be the lost lamb for the Good Shepherd carries that one. Be the blind, crippled, and miserable beggar. Jesus comes to these, to you, and bestows mercy!
The Lord takes upon himself, as He did at Calvary, all of your distrust, panic, hoarding, selfishness, and wavering faith, and He forgives you. He forgives you with the Body and Blood that paid for these sins on the cross. If God did not spare His own Son; if the God/Man did not spare His own life; how will The Lord ever let you go hungry or naked, or uncared for? Satan says worry about “your life” but Christ says “I AM your life…your light…your food…your drink…and your robe!”
In this green season of Trinity, you remember that you are green as branches because you have been grafted into the Green Eternal Life of the Vine Jesus Christ. You bear fruit not because of anything you do but because you are His branches. He is the Fruit and He flows in you and into you! The lilies of the field are robed in more glory than regal Solomon for Jesus is the greater Solomon, the true Peace that incenses you with Easter lily beauty and immortality. You wear + Jesus. You are green and alive through His red blood and His death…and His resurrection.
This morning you ask not “what shall we eat or what shall we drink or with what shall we be clothed?” These things pagans worry and convulse about. You know that Jesus knows you need all of those things. This Mass day The Lord speaks to you: My flesh is food indeed and My blood is drink indeed. Take, eat, the forgiveness of sins. Sufficient unto the day and the days to come to eternity. Jesus covers you with Peace.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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