Homily 21 — Matthew 6, verses 24 to 27

“No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” [a]

Do you see how, step by step, he draws us away from the things of the present? How at greater length he brings in what he has to say about voluntary poverty, and throws down the rule of greed? He was not content with what he had already said, many and great as those sayings were. He adds others too, more and more alarming.

For what could be more alarming than what he says now, if our riches are really to make us fall away from the service of Christ? Or what more to be desired, if by despising wealth we will have our affection toward him and our love made perfect? What I am always repeating I say again now: he presses the hearer to obey his sayings in both ways, by what helps and by what hurts. He is very much like an excellent physician, who points out both the disease that follows from neglect and the good health that comes from obedience.

See, for instance, what kind of gain he shows this to be, and how he proves its benefit by showing what harms it sets them free from. “Wealth,” he says, “hurts you not only because it arms robbers against you, and not only because it darkens your mind to the utmost degree, but also because it throws you out of God’s service. It makes you captives of lifeless riches, and it harms you both ways: on the one hand, by making you slaves of what you ought to command; on the other, by throwing you out of the service of God, whom above all things you must serve.” In the other place he showed the harm to be twofold: storing up treasure here, “where moth destroys,” and failing to store it up there, where the guard that is kept can never be broken. In the same way he shows the loss here to be twofold too: it draws us away from God, and it makes us subject to Mammon.

But he does not set this down directly. He first establishes it from general principles, saying, “No one can serve two masters” — meaning here two who give opposite commands, since otherwise they would not even be two. For in that way “the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and of one soul,” and yet they were divided into many bodies; their oneness of mind made the many one.

Then, to add force to it, he says that far from serving, a man will even hate and loathe him: “For either he will hate the one,” he says, “and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” It may seem as if the same thing were said twice over. But he did not choose this form without purpose. He did it to show that the change for the better is easy. I mean, so that you would not say, “I have been made a slave once and for all; I am under the tyranny of wealth,” he shows that it is possible to change sides. Just as one may pass over from the first master to the second, so one may also pass back from the second to the first.

So you see, he spoke first in general terms, so that he might persuade the hearer to be an honest judge of his words and to decide by the very nature of the things. Then, once he has made sure of the hearer’s agreement, and not before, he reveals what he means. So he adds at once, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” [b]

Let us shudder to think what we have driven Christ to say: to set the name of gold beside the name of God. But if this is shocking, it is far more shocking that it happens in our deeds — that we prefer the tyranny of gold to the fear of God.

“What then? Was this not possible among the people of old?” Not at all.

Someone asks: “Then how did Abraham, how did Job, win a good name?” Do not tell me about people who are rich, but about people who serve riches. Job too was rich, but he did not serve Mammon. He owned it and ruled over it; he was its master, not its slave. So he held all those things as though he were the steward of another man’s goods. Far from extorting from others, he even gave up his own to those in need. What is more, when he had them, they were no joy to him. He said so himself: “If I so much as rejoiced when my wealth grew great…” That is why he did not grieve when it was gone either.

But the rich today are not like him. They are in a worse state than any slave, paying tribute, as it were, to some cruel tyrant. Their mind is like a citadel seized by the love of money, and from there it sends out its orders to them every day, full of every kind of wickedness, and no one disobeys. So do not be too clever about this. God has declared once and for all that it is impossible for the one service to agree with the other. So do not say, “It is possible.” One master commands you to rob by violence, the other to strip yourself of your possessions; the one to be chaste, the other to commit sexual immorality; the one to get drunk and live in luxury, the other to keep your belly under control; the one again to despise the things of this world, the other to be riveted to the present; the one to admire marble and walls and roofs, the other to scorn these and honor self-restraint. How can these possibly agree?

He calls Mammon a “master” here, not because of its own nature, but because of the wretchedness of those who bow down beneath it. In the same way he calls “the belly a god,” not because such a mistress has any dignity, but because of the wretchedness of those who are enslaved to it. Such slavery is worse than any punishment, and even before the punishment comes, it is vengeance enough on the one caught up in it. For what condemned criminals could be as wretched as those who have God for their Lord, and yet desert his gentle rule for this cruel tyranny — and that when the act brings so much harm even here? Their loss in doing so is beyond words: there are lawsuits, and harassment, and quarrels, and toil, and a blinding of the soul. And what is worse than all of these, a person falls away from the highest blessings; for that is what it is to be God’s servant.

So you see, he has taught in every way the benefit of despising riches: for keeping the riches themselves safe, for the soul’s pleasure, for gaining self-mastery, and for making godliness secure. Now he goes on to show that this command can be carried out. For this belongs above all to the best lawgiving: not only to command what is beneficial, but also to make it possible. That is why he goes on to say, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat.” [e]

That is, so that they would not say, “What then? If we throw everything away, how will we be able to live?” In what follows he takes his stand against that objection, and at just the right time. If at the beginning he had said, “Do not worry,” the word would have seemed burdensome. But now that he has shown the harm that comes from greed, the advice that follows is easy to accept. That is why here, too, he did not simply say, “Do not worry,” but gave the reason and then gave the command. After saying, “You cannot serve God and Mammon,” he added, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry.” “Therefore” — why? Because of the loss beyond words. For the harm you suffer is not in your riches only. The wound is in the most vital parts, in what overthrows your salvation, since it throws you out from God, who made you, and cares for you, and loves you.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry.” So only after he has shown the harm to be beyond words does he make the command stricter. He not only tells us to throw away what we have, but forbids us to worry even about the food we need, saying, “Do not worry for your soul, what you will eat.” It is not that the soul needs food, for it has no body; he was speaking in the ordinary way people speak. For though the soul needs no food, it cannot bear to stay in the body unless the body is fed. And in saying this he does not simply state it, but here too he brings arguments: some from what we already have, and some from other examples.

From what we already have, when he says, “Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than clothing?” So the one who has given the greater, how will he not give the less? The one who fashioned the flesh that is fed, how will he not provide the food? That is why he did not simply say, “Do not worry about what you will eat,” or “what you will wear,” but “for your body” and “for your soul,” since he was going to draw his proofs from these, carrying on his argument by way of comparison. Now the soul he has given once and for all, and it stays as it is; but the body grows every day. So, pointing to both these things — the immortality of the one and the frailty of the other — he goes on to say, “Which of you can add a foot and a half to his height?”

So, saying nothing more about the soul, since it does not grow, he spoke about the body only. By this he made another point clear too: that it is not food that makes the body grow, but the providence of God. Paul showed this in another way as well when he said, “So neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but God who gives the growth.”

From what we already have, then, he urges us in this way; and from the examples of other things, when he says, “Look at the birds of the air.” So that no one would say, “We do well to worry,” he talks them out of it both by what is greater and by what is less: by the greater, that is, the soul and the body; by the less, that is, the birds. “For if he has such regard for things far beneath you,” he says, “how will he not provide for you?” He spoke to them in this way because as yet they were an ordinary crowd. But to the devil he did not speak like this. How, then? “Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” Here, though, he mentions the birds, and in a way meant to put his hearers deeply to shame — and that kind of thing is of very great value for the purpose of admonishing.

Yet some of the ungodly have reached such a pitch of madness that they even attack his illustration. It was not fitting, they say, for someone building up moral conduct to use what comes by nature as an incentive to it; for these animals, they add, have this by nature. What, then, shall we say to this? That even though it is theirs by nature, we too may be able to attain it by choice. For he did not say, “Look how the birds fly,” which would be impossible for a human being, but that they are fed without worrying — something easy for us to achieve too, if we are willing. And those who have carried it out in their actions have proved it. [i]

That is why the thoughtfulness of our Lawgiver deserves the greatest admiration. He could have brought his illustration from among human beings. He could have spoken of Moses and Elijah and John and others like them, who did not worry. But to touch his hearers more to the quick, he mentioned the creatures without reason. If he had spoken of those righteous men, his hearers could have said, “We have not yet become like them.” But as it is, by passing them over in silence and bringing forward the birds of the air, he has cut off every excuse from them. In this too he is following the old law, for the old covenant also sends us to the bee, and to the ant, and to the turtledove, and to the swallow. And this is no small mark of honor: that the very things those animals have by nature, we are able to achieve by an act of our own choice. If, then, he takes such great care of the creatures that exist for our sake, much more will he care for us; if for the servants, much more for the master. So he said, “Look at the birds,” and he did not say, “for they do not trade or do business,” since these were among the things strictly forbidden. But what did he say? “They do not sow, nor do they reap.”

Someone says: “What then? Must we not sow?” He did not say, “We must not sow,” but, “We must not worry.” He did not say that one should not work, but that one should not set one’s mind on low things, or torture oneself with cares. For he told us to be fed too — only not by worrying.

David too laid the foundation of this lesson long ago, when he said in veiled words, “You open your hand and fill every living thing with bounty”; and again, “To him who gives the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that call on him.”

Someone may ask: “Who, then, has lived without worrying?” Did you not hear how many of the righteous I brought forward? Do you not see Jacob with them, leaving his father’s house with nothing at all? Do you not hear him praying and saying, “If the Lord gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear”? That was not the prayer of a man who worries, but of one who looks to God for everything. The apostles also reached this: they threw everything away and did not worry. So did the “five thousand” and the “three thousand.”

But if, when you hear such lofty words, you cannot bear to free yourself from these cruel chains, consider how useless the thing is, and so put an end to your worrying. For “which of you by worrying,” he says, “can add a foot and a half to his height?” [l]

Do you see how by what is plain he has made clear what is hidden as well? “Just as you will not be able by worrying to add anything to your body, however little,” he says, “so neither will you be able to gather food by it, whatever you may think.”

From this it is clear that it is not our hard work but the providence of God that accomplishes everything, even where we seem to be the ones acting. So if he were to abandon us, no care, no anxiety, no toil, nothing else of the kind would ever come to anything; it would all pass away completely. So let us not suppose his commands are impossible. There are many who carry them out as they should, even now. And if you do not know of them, it is no wonder, since Elijah too thought he was alone, but was told, “I have kept for myself seven thousand men.” From this it is plain that even now there are many who live the apostles’ life, just like the “three thousand” then, and the “five thousand.” And if we do not believe it, it is not because there is no one who does well, but because we are far from doing so ourselves.

The drunkard would not easily believe that there is anyone who does not taste even water — and yet many solitaries in our time have achieved this. The man who takes up with countless women would not believe it is easy to live in virginity, nor the man who extorts other people’s goods that anyone would readily give up even his own. In just the same way, those who wear themselves down every day with countless anxieties will not easily accept this.

As for the fact that many have attained this, we could show it even from those who have practiced this self-denial in our own generation. But for you, for now, it is enough to learn not to covet, and that almsgiving is a good thing, and to know that you must share what you have. If you carry these things out as you should, beloved, you will soon go on to those others as well.

For the present, then, let us set aside our excessive luxury. Let us put up with moderation, and learn to earn by honest labor everything we are to have. Even the blessed John, when he was speaking with those employed in collecting taxes, and with the soldiers, commanded them to “be content with their wages.” He was eager to lead them on to another, higher self-mastery; but since they were not yet fit for it, he speaks of the lesser things. For if he had spoken of things higher than these, they would not have applied themselves to them, and would have fallen away from the others as well. [m]

For this very reason we too are training you in the lesser duties. Yes, because we know that the burden of voluntary poverty is still too heavy for you; heaven is not farther from earth than such self-denial is from you. So let us take hold, if only of the lowest commandments, for even this is no small encouragement. And yet some among the pagans have achieved even this, though not in the right spirit, and have stripped themselves of all their possessions. Still, in your case we are content if you give alms generously; for we will soon arrive at those other duties too, if we make progress in this way.

But if we do not do even this much, what favor will we deserve, we who are commanded to surpass those under the old law, and yet show ourselves worse than the philosophers among the pagans? What will we say, we who ought to be angels and sons of God, and do not even fully keep up our standing as human beings? For robbing and coveting do not come from human gentleness but from the savagery of wild beasts. No, those who attack their neighbor’s goods are worse than wild beasts. For with the beasts this comes by nature; but we who are honored with reason, and yet fall into this unnatural vileness — what pardon will we receive?

So let us consider the measure of the discipline set before us, and press on at least to the middle stage, so that we may both be set free from the punishment to come and, going forward step by step, arrive at the very summit of all good things. May we all attain them, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.