Göttinger Predigten
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Pentecost 2, 05/25/2008
Sermon on Matthew 6:24-34, by David Hoster
Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? 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 clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today." (NRSV)
Serving More Than Two Masters
The modern world has improved on so many things that I can't help believing that we've upgraded today's gospel as well. Jesus says we can't serve two masters, but what did he know? Computers, cell phones and GPS equipment enable us to serve three, four, five or more masters all at the same time. We call it "multi-tasking."
In many cases, of course, multi-tasking isn't really an improvement over good old-fashioned "serving two masters," since many people who multi-task are still serving only the god of money. I'm thinking of the man with one eye on the Dow Jones Averages displayed by his computer on the passenger seat of his car while he trades stocks simultaneously with two cell phones and steers with his knees. I suspect he is actually closer to the other of Jesus' two traditional masters than he realizes.
Most of us, however, don't spend quite so much of our precious mental bandwidth on good old fashioned greed and getting rich. We're not about wealth, or what the King James Bible so colorfully called "mammon." God's employee that I am, at any given point in the day I might be downloading a map to the place I'm meeting a parishioner for lunch, scribbling a thought I just had for a sermon on my notepad, preparing myself in the back of my mind to deal with the young couple with a baby who just walked into the front office asking for assistance, juggling three e-mail threads involving what Terrie and I are doing for supper, why the Day School budget doesn't balance, and rescheduling my weeklong spiritual retreat this fall, when my computer bleeps and it's Stephen Linam in Tel Aviv on g-mail instant messaging wondering if I have a minute to chat online.
None of these is "mammon" unless you think we clergy are actually getting rich by doing our jobs. Most of them, considered in isolation, are quite godly. But I have to wonder, as I glance with a distracted eye at the icon of Jesus I keep on my desk for just this purpose, if I'm in touch with God at all.
We have modern observers who make a similar point to Jesus' observation about our inability to serve two masters. David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, wrote a piece last month about the deterioration of our mental capacity as we suffer through multi-tasking and information overload.
"The information acceleration syndrome," he writes, "means that more data is coursing through everybody's brains, but less of it actually sticks. It's become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life - to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high."
I agree. I can't remember the number of conversations I've had with people in the last few years about the blank spots in their memory-a conversation I never had thirty years ago as I met with people in a church office equipped with only telephone and typewriter.
Practical people that we are, most of us focus our worry on our compromised powers of memory and the trouble we get into by forgetting important things. I suspect, however, that there's much more to it. Memory is about "who I was," and preparing for "who I need to be." If it's reasonable to worry over blank spots in "who I was" and "who I need to be," might it not be reasonable to worry about blank spots in "who I am" as well? What if it's not just pieces of our memory that we can't bring to mind, but pieces of ourselves?
Loss of Memory Is Loss of Self
Now that's alarming, though at first blush you might think it's not true. After all, when I get home in the evening I always seem to be there-a little more stressed and weary than I was in the morning, but still, all there. Yet despite our taken-for-granted familiarity with ourselves, I think we ignore the close connection between what we do and who we are at our peril.
Think of the way the dangerous quest for wooly mammoth shaped a Neolithic hunter on the prowl. He must develop courage as he grows beyond his terror of large animals. He increases intelligence as he learns from the success or failure of experiments on the hunt. He grows in comradely bonds with his fellow hunters, none of whom is sufficient to the task by himself. His love for his family and tribe deepen as their grateful hands receive their nutrition from him. His profound respect for the animals he kills leads him to paint their images on cave walls as his connection to higher powers deepens. The hunt makes him who he is.
What do our fiercely complicated lives make of us?
The variety of demands on us makes us value quick study, snap decisions and ready skills. If it's deep, nuanced or spiritual we might not have time for it. Think about what we lose when we limit ourselves to our tasks and the skills they demand and the nervous energy that drives them. Our minds might be so fixed on planning dinner, responding to an edgy question on the blackberry, and sketching out a few strategies for the presentation tomorrow, that we check the kids' soccer game off the list without genuinely entering with them into the joy of their victories and the agony of their defeats. In effect, we may not be shaped, so much as limited, by the many tasks we do. As we melt away into our multiple tasks, we have to wonder who's home in our brains minding the store.
That's not to say that we should stop doing the things it takes to play the hand that our civilization has dealt us. I doubt any of us wants to trade what we do for hunting wooly mammoth. It does mean, however, that we need to pay attention to the spiritual health of the single person we are at the center of all these tasks; to pay attention to the souls of those around us whose lives we touch in such a variety of ways; and to remember the divine master who asks for our full loyalty before all the other things in life.
Ministers of the Two Great Commandments
In other words, to survive spiritually in a multi-tasking world we must live by the real priorities of life: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Don't turn your tasks into your master and serve them. Serve God by turning your multiple tasks into opportunities to minister God's nearness and love. Let your love for God relieve you of the inhuman pressure you feel as you fall behind in your tasks. God is a much more loving and forgiving master than we are loving and forgiving of ourselves in our slavery to our checklists.
Loving God first, however, will not fall out of the sky. It takes work, just as it did for the Neolithic hunters who engaged their higher power through cave painting. Our relationship with God is nothing we can put on auto-pilot so that we can pour ourselves into more immediate tasks. Loving God takes conscious energy and intentional focus of mind and spirit. We all know we've messed up if we turn ourselves into mere chauffeurs for our kids without engaging emotionally in their lives. Why would it be any different with God?
So in your multi-tasking, pour your consciousness into the places where it all comes together. The many things you do for your children come together in your love for them and your desire to see them prosper in body, mind and spirit. The many things you do for your job come together in your commitment to make the world a better place and to put wooly mammoth burgers on the table for your family. The many things you do for yourself come together in a meaningful life as a human being.
These singular place where our multiple tasks come together is best understood as ministry-the gift to another person of something higher than ourselves. The difference between ministry and mere checklists is the difference between growing as a soul and surviving as a busybody. Life is increased by ministry but diminished by forgetting why we do things we do.
The source of ministry is God. God is the one who fills the things we do with transcendent purpose in the service of love, integrity, justice, mercy, kindness. God is the one whose purpose is to turn simple acts into ministry to souls. The meaning of such actions is ours as well when God is the master we serve.
So the question we should ask every minute of every day is simply this: Do I serve the things I'm doing because they demand pieces of me, or do I serve God who reframes them all into forms of ministry?
I recall a lament from the early ‘sixties: "The busier I am the behinder I get." Maybe we could update that to a 21st century version: "The more I do the less I am."
A Christianity response is equally simple. "The more I do for God, the more I am who I was made to be."