Serving One Master

No. 88

I began this week back to the question of two masters from Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters.” I’ve been down this path a few times in this series not to mention thinking about it many times over the last number of years.

This was rekindled when a friend directed me to Randy Alcorn’s little book, The Treasure Principle, saying I might find perspective on the money and materialism thing in it. I didn’t find it particularly helpful in answering my questions about serving two masters but it did direct me to Matthew 6:19-20, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” But this didn’t help much in explaining why we are so connected to the latter of “two masters,” namely money and our earthly things. Understanding the joy that follows our lives on earth made sense but there’s also the joy of enjoying this existence we’re fortunate enough to experience with friends and loved ones for a while and the earthly things we obtain. I still was lacking an understanding and a comfort with the juxtaposition between the two—that being God and money—and needing to serve but one.

I went back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship and the seventeenth chapter entitled “The Simplicity of the Carefree Life.” Interestingly extending from Alcorn’s book, this chapter begins with a look at Matthew 6:19 and moves through to Matthew 6:34. Thankfully Bonhoeffer’s explanation at least partially, helped clear the fog in my head of serving two masters in this life.

He begins with “the disciple looks only to his master, never to Christ and the law, Christ and religion, Christ and the world.” In discipleship, nothing is to come between Christ and ourselves. Only by committing to and following this direction can the disciple maintain following Christ alone with the single eye from Matthew 6:22, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” Here Bonhoeffer adds, “the follower of Christ is in the light only so long as he looks simply to Christ and at nothing else in the world.” We see this included in the second part of Matthew 6:22, “if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” Furthermore, from Bonhoeffer, “If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost.” And, follows from Jesus in Matthew 6:23, “If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

The heart is dark when it clings to earthly goods. We try to combine devotion to them with loyalty to Christ. The light of the body is through the eye if it is healthy. Our whole body will be full of light as will our heart. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness—Matthew 6:23,” as we cling to earthly goods. It’s not that earthly goods are bad. Jesus does not forbid the possession of property. Afterall He was a man. He ate and drank and sanctified the good things of life. But earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. But if man stores up his portion from God, Bonhoeffer writes, “as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift, but himself as well, for he sets his heart on his accumulated wealth,” which becomes a barrier between us and God. Again, in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” How do we recognize this? Anything the hinders us from loving our Creator acts as a barrier and is our treasure, “and the place where our heart is,” notes Bonhoeffer.

It becomes clear in Matthew 6:24, that “no one can serve two masters.” Do we think that over time we have advanced in an endeavour to serve two, giving each its due? Do we not rejoice in His good gifts? Do we not see our treasures as a blessing? Should we not be happy in this world because He created us? “No!” Bonhoeffer writes, “God and the world, God and its goods are incompatible!” The world and its earthly goods bid for our hearts. Only when they have won our hearts do they become what they really are, and we become unfulfilled. Earthly treasures fade, often quickly—like when the new car becomes the old car, and we are left wanting more, never satisfied with the promise—a lie we seem blinded to—only to desire the next and the next earthly good ever the more.

But then, in Matthew 6:25, a shift takes place in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and a clue to further understanding. “Do not be anxious about your life.” Earthly goods dazzle our eyes and as Bonhoeffer wrote, “delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety. If our hearts are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden is intolerable. Anxiety creates its own treasures and they in turn beget further care. When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the next result is the precise opposite of our anticipations.”

We misuse our possessions by using them as insurance against what might happen to us tomorrow or in the future. Anxiety is always directed to the future and what may happen. Earthly goods in the strictest sense are meant to be used only for today. Again, Bonhoeffer, “By trying to ensure for the next day we are only creating uncertainty today.” Despite our disbelief in such things, tomorrow, or even the next hour, are beyond our control. We don’t know the future and as it turns out are terrible prognosticators. This is reminiscent of what C. S. Lewis wrote in his The Screwtape Letters that I’ve written of before where Screwtape tells his young intern that “humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity.” Screwtape and the demon world want humans living not only in the past (that “has a determinate nature” or is knowable) but in the future (that is unknowable and where “thought about the Future inflames hope and fear”). Both times are where humans worry and develop anxiety over what occurred in the past or might occur in the future. In the book, the Enemy (God) wants humans in the present as it is that time that is closest to eternity. The only way to win assurance about the future is by leaving tomorrow in the hands of the Almighty while receiving from Him all we need for today or in the present. This seems very near impossible today as we’re taught to plan, think, even worry, about tomorrow and the future from a very young age. Yet here Jesus tells us directly in Matthew 6:27, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” Jesus furthers this about our concern with earthy goods in Matthew 6:28, “And why are you anxious about clothing?” He illustrates this with a simple example almost reproaching us in Matthew 6:30, “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Bonhoeffer adds here, “If instead of receiving God’s gifts for today we worry about tomorrow, we find ourselves helpless victims of infinite anxiety.”

It's really hard not to see this to be true. Today, we’re told that anxiety, depression and mental illness are at epidemic levels throughout the western free world, while at the same time we enjoy a materialistic world with its endless and unprecedented supply of earthly goods driven by advanced technologies never before seen in human history.

Bonhoeffer again wrote, “Only those who follow him and know him can receive this word as a promise of the love of his Father and as a deliverance from the thraldom of material things. It is not care that frees the disciples from care, but their faith in Jesus Christ.” Is this not another reminder of Apostle Paul’s words in Galatians 2:16, “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

Bonhoeffer suggests that neither anxiety nor work can secure our daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father. Jesus tells us this again in His Sermon, Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Then Matthew 6:28, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Bonhoeffer recognizes this in the birds and lilies needing earthly goods only for their daily sustenance; they do not make storage for the future. He then writes quoting Martin Luther, “they glorify their Creator not by their industry, toil or care, but by a daily unquestioning acceptance of His gifts.” Later Bonhoeffer continues with more from Luther, “… it is man’s bounden duty to work and do things, and yet withal to know that it is Another who nurtureth him: it is not his own work, but the bounteous blessing of God.” If God then sustains the birds and lilies, does he not have even more concern and regard to nourish his own children. Jesus asks us this in Matthew 6:26, “Are you not of more value than they?”

Bonhoeffer goes even further here to write that, “anxiety is characteristic of the Gentiles who rely on their own strength and work and not that of God. They do not know that the Almighty knows we have need of all these things, trying to do for themselves what they do not expect from God.” Again, Jesus has addressed this thinking in his Sermon, re-emphasizing man cannot serve two masters in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Bonhoeffer looks at this again, writing, “Anxiety for food and clothing is clearly not the same thing as anxiety for the kingdom of God, however much we should like to persuade ourselves that when we are working for our families and concerning ourselves with bread and houses we are thereby building the kingdom, as though the kingdom could be realized only through our worldly cares.” We somehow get this mixed up with Matthew 5:16 where Jesus has already told us we are the “light of the world,” saying, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Jesus does not tell us this as a way to get things but rather to “give glory” to the One who created us.

Bonhoeffer then ends, reclaiming his point: “Jesus does not tell us what we ought to do but cannot; he tells us what God has given us and promises still to give,” if we will only believe. But from our beginnings as a species, however, it seems all but impossible to do, given our proclivity for earthly ways. Bonhoeffer adds, “If Christ has been given us, if we are called to his discipleship we are given all things, literally all things.”

For me this is why the direction that we cannot serve two masters is such a difficult thing to understand and live by. Yes, our love for our earthly goods makes us take our eyes off of our Creator and makes us anxious for all of our earthly things. Yet we know that love and desire for earthly goods is unfulfilling—it’s impossible to fill the bottomless void inside our hearts with material, earthly things. The more we have the more we want. And the more anxious we become to have them. Even the first line of Psalm 23 reminds us not to do this: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Yet it goes unheeded when we do.

Why is serving “one master” so hard? Well, no one ever wrote that it would be easy.