Who is Your Master?

What are some of the most important things to you in your life? Take a moment to think about this question. What is most important to you? Is it health, family, friends, intellect, success, your job, stuff, entertainment, or experience? Ultimately, God wants our faith to be most important, he wants us to love him first with all that we are. This shouldn’t be surprising to you as it is the greatest commandment, but today, Jesus is showing us what this means. Our love for God cannot just be one of many things that are important, it has to be the one thing that is important. Many people today think they are good at multitasking, but my experience of this in myself and others is that multitasking just means both tasks are done worse and/or one task has the majority of the attention. We can’t multitask when it comes to God. Just think about how easy it is to get distracted at a Sunday service. Think about how hard it is to keep God present at work or in a relationship. Or think about how quickly we stop ourselves from sharing our faith in a conversation. God so easily gets pushed out. We need to be singular-minded. We need to act for God. We need to live with him at the centre of who we are and how we live. Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons we have already looked at, but today’s passage shows us that we need God to be first because he is the only one who gives us what we truly need, he is the only one who gives us things that will last, he is the only one that can fill us with light. I know if we truly look at ourselves we all long to be filled, sustained, to last, and know what is right & good.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus has already looked at how easily we can become hypocrites when we give, or when we pray, and now when we fast. All three things can become about us, how we look, and how we feel, instead of our relationship with God. It’s interesting that Jesus still tells us it is transactional, “If you do it for your Father your treasure will be in heaven”, but the fundamental part is who are we doing it for: our Father. What we want: the treasure, the goodness, the feelings become a natural consequence of a closer relationship with God. All of us have to grow in our understanding of this simple fact so listen closely: when we grow in our relationship with God we are given far greater things than this world could ever give us. If you don’t believe me, try it out, spend time on it, spend your money on it, spend your life on it and you will see the amazing result. A fuller relationship with God may not mean more stuff, though it can, but it will definitely mean more joy, peace, friendship, life, purpose and so much more.

The three practices we hear from Jesus, charity, prayer, and fasting are ways that we put something aside so that we might put Jesus first. Through giving we are saying God is more important than our finances, he can give us more than money ever could. Through prayer, we are saying God is more important than my time, or any other relationship, God can give me more than time, or any other relationship. Through fasting, we are saying that God can give me more than my life, more than my obvious needs, than my sustenance. We are joining with Jesus and saying that we do not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from God. It is hard to say this or feel it in its absolute sense, but the more we give, the more we will experience and see that God is more important than money. The more we pray the more we will see and experience that God is more important than what we do with our time or relationships. The more we fast, the more we will see God as the source of our life, as the sustainer. So we should really be asking ourselves, challenging ourselves in our giving, our prayer, and our fasting.

I don’t know many of you that have a regular practice of fasting. That might just be that you keep it to yourselves, but I know it is a dying practice in many churches. When I talk about fasting, I don’t mean the times when you go without eating because you are too busy or not hungry. I mean the purposeful times when you abstain from food so that you might centre yourselves on God. I would greatly commend you to create a regular habit of fasting. If you have health issues, be thoughtful about it, but even if you don’t have health issues we should be thoughtful about it. Start by purposefully skipping breakfast on a Sunday so that communion, so that Christ might be your first meal of the day. Then try fasting the day before or the day of something really important or when you need help with something - make prayer a part of it too. Fasting is traditionally from food, but if you find something has become as pivotal as food in your life, like games, your phone, TV, or books those can be forms of fasting. Even though I have slacked, my experience with fasting has shown me that God gives me energy and capability where it had never been before. He fills me when food doesn’t. On the opposite side, it has shown me where my weaknesses still ly, where distrust, irritability, or anger still remain under the surface - in my experience, hunger makes it harder to pretend. Purposeful and thoughtful fasting has also shown me how prevalent temptation is. It has really made me conscious of the enemy’s presence and how much the enemy wants to lead us away from a better relationship with God. All of these experiences with fasting have only told me more and more how central our relationship with God is.

Jesus then goes into comparing two types of treasure - earthly treasure vs. heavenly treasure. Very simply either the things that come from earth or the things that come from heaven and God. Ultimately, everything comes from God, so that distinction might be a bit confusing, but the important part is where are we turning for our source of good things, or of treasure. If we look at what the earth provides, money is fickle, fleeting, and can only give us so much. Our jobs give some sense of purpose, but we will not always be there, we’ll have to retire sometime, and success or respect can be even more fleeting. Our relationships can maybe be the most providing and yet we know people die, they move away, they cannot fill our needs, they betray us, and more. Even the very best things on this earth are fickle and will rot, be stolen, or rust and die. On the heaven side, with God as our reward and treasure we already have everything we need and more. Even if we have no money, no job, no friends or family, with God we are overfilled. Yet, with God at our centre, the things of this world also become more. Money becomes an instrument to share God’s love, providence, and graciousness. Jobs and success become an avenue for us to share our eternal purpose and to build something that will last which is God’s Kingdom. Our friends and family may leave or die or betray us, but through the Holy Spirit, we find forgiveness and loving connection across inconceivable distances.

But even still, God needs to be our greatest treasure beyond all of these things. It is the only way the world and its relationships can be transformed into what they need to be. It is the only way we can be transformed, because where our treasure is there are heart is also. This means that if we are really caring for anything of this world before God, our heart which is our intellect, our decision-making, our feeling, and our very personhood is centred in fickle, lacking, disappearing things. That means our whole lives will be shaped by fickle things till some extent we become fickle too. We are eaten up by rust, rot, or theft - we die like the things we hold onto. What else is fear, but the knowledge that without God everything can and will eventually disappear? Without God death is the end of everything, but with God death can end nothing. That includes us.

It is also important that God be our treasure, because our heart, our passion, our joy, our celebration, and even our mourning will be in line with the things that come from God. That will empower us to mourn and change the things that are not of God. Only with him can we sort through the complications of war and politics to find the singular way forward. It will also empower us to live in trust, hope, joy, and celebration in the midst of everything so that our passion and joy can lead others to what is truly needed and good.

This brings us to our eyes, where we look and keep our attention. Our eyes are so important. They are a big part of how we absorb and take in information. Jesus is not ignoring our other senses, he is using eyes to encapsulate the whole and as the very thing that actually interprets and understands light. He is going a step further though and saying, that what we take in, what we see and look at, changes our insides, it changes who we are. This challenges me to really think about what I am reading, what I am watching, what I am listening to, and why. Because it is shaping me. But that is just the beginning. If I am distracted by all of these other things and not keeping my eyes on God, I do not have his light living in me as it should and I am to some degree being shaped by darkness. If we think about our eyes like a window, there is a big difference between the light in a house provided by a window when it is in the daytime and when it is night, when it is cloudy vs. when the sun has a clear sky. That is the difference God’s light makes on our inner selves when we are centred on him - a dark room vs. the morning sun. Even distractions can cloud him out and change our light. We need to be consistent, singular, and healthy in our continuous connection with him. Our eyes need to be set on God and remain on him if we want his light to live in us. It is impossible for me to stress how important this is because we have seen and live in far too much darkness and we need the unadulterated light of Christ.

So, everything we have looked at is really just pointing to the simple and singular fact, we cannot serve two masters. We cannot have two most important things as one will always get pushed aside, or be diminished or clouded. We know God must be at the centre or else everything else is less, even the things we try to serve, including ourselves. I know to some degree this has been a fairly spiritual argument, but we have experienced it too. Our fear, worry, or anxiety is a witness that everything can leave, disappear, or die. Without God, everything will disappear, but with God, everything can become more than what we currently perceive. Most of us probably don’t understand how true this really is, but Jesus invites us to experience it by testing it out. Give, pray, fast, and see how God fills you in that openness and uses those gifts to create something more. Only just start to build up your treasure with him and you will see what truly great treasure it is as it changes you and the world around you to be something that lasts and gives light. AMEN

What is most important to you? Take a moment to think about it. Let me put it another way: where do you spend your time, energy and money? These two questions might bring about two very different results. We might want something to be more important, but the proof is in the pudding. 

Jesus has already passed on practices like giving (charity) and prayer, but this Sunday we look at fasting and more. These are all meant to be practices that help us put God first in mind, body and spirit. This is more important then we realize, because if our lives are based, centred, directed towards anything else first, then we only find and see the things which are lacking, which disappear, which cannot support us. Our lives then become only what these things or people can give us: full of fear and anxiety, loss, without purpose, without stability or peace. As the passages remind us: where are treasure is there our heart is also, we cannot serve two masters, and unless we are facing the light our lives will be filled with darkness. Let us seek after God and be filled with the good things that come from him alone.