Trinity XV Sermon 2025

Trinity XV
September 28, 2025
 
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon (St. Matthew vi: 24)
Our Gospel lesson appointed for today comes to us from the Sermon on the Mount. And like all the lections of Trinity Tide, it helps us to understand our habituation to virtue. Today’s lesson is hard to study because it involves our relationship with two necessities of life, food and clothing. And our anxiety over these essentials is abruptly dismissed by our Lord. Jesus is far more concerned with the spiritual food and raiment that will nourish and clothe our souls for Heaven. He insists, You cannot serve God and mammon. (St. Matthew vi. 24) Simply put, you cannot serve God if you are more devoted to Mammon. He condemns the idolatry of mammon because He insists that if we first serve God, He will take care of the rest.

Perhaps we can better understand all of this if we recall the main reason for Jesus Christ’s Incarnation. Christ came down from Heaven to conquer our sin and reconcile us with God the Father. Moses’ depiction of Original Sin in the First Book of the Bible is brilliant. Man preferred to take a bite from a piece of fruit rather than obey God’s command. Man tempted his fate with something as small as a piece of fruit. Sin is always about preferring the little things of the creation to the will of the Creator. The frailty of man without [God] cannot but fall, we read in today’s Collect. Thinking that we are strong and can decide what is good and what is evil, however, reveals our true weakness. We obsess over small things, created natures, more than over our relationship with God.

And to be sure, God the Father knows our weakness and has mercy for us. You will remember that in Genesis I, God does not abandon Adam and Eve but confronts them. He does not leave us helpless but continues to be with us, even though He makes it clear that our journey back to Him will be difficult. Man’s return to God is a journey as long as the Old Testament. In it, God’s people, the ancient Jews, spend centuries being prepared for the coming of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ. Even when Christ comes down from Heaven, most men reject Him and prefer the created things to the visitation of the Creator.

Now, of course, it is not as if all ancient men neglected the soul’s knowledge and love of God. Great philosophers, like Aristotle, taught his students that all men by nature desire to know (980 a21), and that man naturally seeks happiness. (1097b) Not all men are incurably obsessed with food, drink, clothing, and material riches. Restless men have always sought out deeper spiritual happiness and knowledge. But even in ancient Greece, such men, like Socrates, Plato, and our Aristotle, were either executed or exiled. Pursuing spiritual truth threatens earthly-minded men in all ages. Aristotle himself insisted that knowledge and goodness alone satisfy the man who knows himself and lays to heart wisdom for happiness. Even the Ancient Jews persecuted their own prophets who tried to recall Israel to God. When the Jewish prophets, priests, and kings tried to warn Israel about the dangers of neglecting the spiritual life and the pursuit of God, they too were either abandoned, imprisoned, or put to death.

The problem is that human beings are not just souls but souls in bodies. We depend upon earthly things to live and survive. But survival is one thing, while making gods out of earthly things is quite another. We acquire what we need by way of food, drink, shelter, and clothing. But we are not satisfied with what we need. We become desirous of material luxuries. They, too, however are unsatisfying. And we might be tempted to keep buying in order to temporarily bring happiness to ourselves.

But wise men in all cultures and ages know that man’s true satisfaction comes from finding God and learning more from Him about true happiness. Jesus came into time and space not only to defeat sin but also to help us to embrace a kind of spiritual death that opens a great spiritual horizon to us. Every one of us should know that sin separates us from God. For this reason, Jesus comes down from Heaven to help us to work out our sins and work in his righteousness, not only to avoid damnation but to find true joy and happiness. Today we pray for things profitable for our salvation, and such things bring a happiness that begins now and can be found forever in the happiness of Heaven.

But we do well to remember that Christ became men so that He might identify with our condition and help us to embrace His healing of it. And He did this not only to be tempted as we are tempted, but to reject sin because something more satisfying is intended by God for us. Always, He points us to life in the creation, not only as something negative and potentially damning but also positive and potentially saving! Consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Jesus tells us to slow down, leave behind what we need, and open our eyes to nature. Look at nature, the flowers, the animals, and the birds of the air. We haven’t made nature or the animals. We don’t keep them alive. And for the most part, all are satisfied with the simplest things. God feeds, sustains, colors, beatifies, informs, and defines all of creation. Neither nature nor animals, birds, or fish are complicated. Each unique nature is defined by God the Father’s wisdom and enlivened by His ceaseless loving care. The birds neither sow nor reap and my Father feeds them. The lilies neither toil nor spin, and Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed by my Father like one of these. (St. Matthew vi. 26-29) Jesus brings before us the created things of this world and shows that they hang entirely upon the Father’s Wisdom and Loving Care for their being and beauty. He shows us that God orders all of nature providentially. He reminds us that the birds of the air are anxious over nothing and are fed. Similarly, the lilies of the field emit utter beauty without the slightest effort or toil. God provides for them and would do the same for us, if only we would have faith and trust in Him. Christ tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added to you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Faith in Christ means following Him, through nature and then beyond it, up and into the transcendent loving truth that enlivens and informs all things.

Why do we find this so difficult? We are too comfortable with mammon. Our souls have grown cold and have been dulled by the worship of creaturely comforts and earthly joys. We have been rendered slothful because we have forgotten whence we come and whither we go? Are we possessed by Mammon? Mammon is a false god or idol. We treat things as false gods or idols when we allow them to have lasting and essential importance in our lives. Idols, or false gods, are created things or creatures that might lend us some happiness and joy but, in the end, threaten our worship of the one true God. If we wish to stop worshiping Mammon, we must tend to the good of our souls.

Today, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Is not life more than meat, and the body made for more than raiment? (St. Matthew vi. 25) Jesus knows that Mammon has gotten the better of us and causes us to toil and spin with fear of losing it and anxiety over keeping it. We toil and spin because we have become so at home in this world that we have forgotten that we were made for another. Mammon has made a mess out of us all.

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. (Idem) O how great is thy goodness that thou hast laid up for them that fear thy name. There is a loving kindness in God that is better than what meets our natural needs and provides earthly happiness. Redeeming Love enables us to feed on Christ’s victory over our sin and death. It promises to make us invulnerable to the pull of false gods. It settles the score of our fallen souls with God the Father and enables us to live not for things of the earth but for heaven. If we embrace it, earthly idols strike us as unreal and without value. We can become rich in heavenly things because their value is so real that it secures our salvation.

This morning, Jesus intends to anchor our minds and hearts in the reality of God’s Kingdom. With St. Paul we must try to glory only in God’s love. This love is perfectly expressed on the Cross of Christ. God forbid that I should glory save in Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. (Gal. vi. 14) When we glory in Christ’s Cross, we value the treasure of His death, through which we too can die to the false gods of this earth, to sin, and through Him seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. (ibid, 33) When we glory in His Cross, we are intent upon dying to false gods and rising in Him, living in the day. When we glory in His Cross, our souls are intent upon finding all things profitable to our salvation.

Amen.
©wjsmartin