Luke 16:13
As Americans, we usually pride ourselves on the conviction that we are free. We go to great efforts to preserve our political and social freedom, and we are indignant when others infringe on our freedom.
In the realm of our civil life, we do, of course, live in a mostly free society. We do not languish under the kind of dictatorship or totalitarian police state that many people in the world are forced to endure. And certainly, that is a good thing.
But at a deeper level, in terms of what we live for, and why we make the decisions that we make, are we truly free? Is it even possible to be free? Are we not instead, ultimately, all servants of a master?
In today’s text from St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says:
“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Jesus makes the observation that a person can have only one ultimate master. He does not, however, leave open the possibility that it’s possible not to have any master. This is not possible. We all have a master.
We all believe in something. We all make our decisions on the basis of the conviction that there is something in this world, or in this universe, that is more important than everything else, and that we treasure the most.
The way in which we establish and organize our priorities in life, and the criteria we use for making decisions in life, testify to the master that we actually serve in life.
Something else to consider about the Lord’s statement – that we cannot serve two masters – is that the Greek word translated as “serve” has the same root as the Greek term for a slave. It refers to the kind of bond service that a slave performs.
Jesus is saying that you cannot be a slave to two masters, only one. He is not talking about a temporary kind of service to a temporary “master.”
He’s not talking about the kind of service that is rendered to us by a waiter for the couple hours we are in the restaurant, or about the kind of service we receive from a flight attendant for the couple hours we are onboard the airliner.
He means a kind of service – a kind of commitment and fixation – that encompasses all of life, and that defines our life.
There are lots of possible “masters” to whom sinful people like you and me might submit in this world. Some people serve their carnal impulses, and their desire to use other people for selfish gratification. For them, their predatory lust is their master. That’s what they live for.
Other people serve their chemical dependency and their need for whatever drug it is that controls their lives. For them, their addiction is their master. That’s what they live for.
In today’s text, however, Jesus focuses on a different kind of false and illegitimate master – and one that is all too common. He says:
“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
In its explanation of the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” the Large Catechism points out that
“to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. …it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, …that is really your God.”
The Large Catechism then goes on to make an application of this distinction between a true faith and an idolatrous faith, with the use of the words that we hear from Jesus today:
“There are some who think that they have God and everything they need when they have money and property; they trust in them and boast in them so stubbornly and securely that they care for no one else. They, too, have a god – ‘mammon’ by name; that is, money and property – on which they set their whole heart.”
“This is the most common idol on earth. Those who have money and property feel secure, happy, and fearless as if they were sitting in the midst of paradise. On the other hand, those who have nothing doubt and despair as if they knew of no god at all. We will find very few who are cheerful, who do not fret and complain if they do not have mammon. This desire for wealth clings and sticks to our nature all the way to the grave.”
What master do you serve? Do you serve the God who made you, and who has the right to be honored by you? Or do you serve mammon?
I think every one of us here today would say that we serve God. We believe in him, and we are committed to him. But do we say this because we have been well-catechized, and therefore know that it should be true? Or do we say this because it is true?
Remember, too, that people can still look to mammon as the master they serve even if they don’t have a lot of money or possessions. Indeed, those who lack money are probably more enamored with it than those who are financially well off.
If you think, deep down, that money is really the most important thing in life, and that it could solve all your problems, then for you that money is an idol, and you are an idolater. This remains true whether you are serving the money you have or the money you want.
And if you are serving mammon, you are not serving God. You cannot serve two masters.
And it’s also not enough simply to acknowledge God as playing a role in your life. That doesn’t necessarily make him your master. Believing that God is around and that he has a purpose of some kind, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are submitting to him as his slave.
Jesus also says in today’s text from Luke:
“I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”
So, while wealth should not be our master, it is something we can use in this world, for the benefit of the kingdom of God, while still serving God as master.
But there’s a popular theology out there, often blaring at us from religious television, that turns this around. Instead of using mammon for the sake of God and his kingdom, this theology says, in effect, that we should use God and his kingdom for the sake of mammon.
If we have a strong enough faith, and if we plant the seeds for our prosperity by sending in a generous donation to the right television ministry, God will bless us in return and will give us the material wealth we want. According to this “prosperity gospel,” people are encouraged to believe in God so that they can receive mammon from God.
But even if we renounce these particular blasphemies, we might still be operating according to a softer version of this theology. If you have a setback in terms of your physical and material well-being, do you question or accuse God? Do you feel, perhaps, that he is not protecting you or taking care of you as he should?
Do you wonder, at such a time, why he’s not being the kind of God he’s supposed to be, and why he’s not doing his job as God? You believe in him. Why doesn’t he believe in you? And bless and reward you?
Oh, for the faith of Job, who said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
So again: Whom or what do you serve? Whom or what do you consider to be the most important influence in the decisions you make?
Who or what governs your thoughts, your plans, your wishes, your dreams? To whom, or to what, are you willing to surrender yourself? Jesus says:
“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
But Jesus also says this, as recorded in St. John’s Gospel:
“I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
In his human nature, and in his state of humility on earth, our Lord Jesus was only and always in submission to the divine will, and to the divine plan that had sent him to the world, to redeem the world. As the eternal divine Son in human flesh, he very definitely came to serve God and did serve God, in his life of righteousness and love, and in his work of redemption on the cross.
As our risen Savior, he in his gospel continues to do the will of his Father, as he now speaks to us: even in the midst of the confusion of our weak and distracted faith, and even in the midst of our wavering between two masters.
Jesus, our true Lord, and master, speaks to our hearts a word of power and peace, assurance and restoration, which once again transports us to where we belong – with him and under him – and redirects and refocuses our faith to where it belongs: on him.
By his word, Jesus once again stakes out his rightful claim to us and to our obedience, because of the obedience to his Father in heaven that he rendered for us, in atoning for our sins. The sins for which he died include the sins of idolatry, and of misguided service to mammon, that we have often committed.
But Jesus has purchased us as his own precious possession, with the price of his blood. And his blood also washes away our sins – including those sins.
Jesus has in fact liberated me from my slavery to sin and Satan – and to mammon – “in order that I might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness; even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”
In bond service to God, there is actually freedom: true spiritual freedom from hopelessness and despair, from guilt and shame, from blindness and ignorance, from pride and greed.
You don’t have to try to free yourself from these things, or from whatever false masters you may be serving, by your own efforts. Jesus is your emancipator. Repent and believe the gospel, and in that faith be free: instantly and fully free, in time and in eternity.
Whenever you may slip back into an idolatrous love for mammon, Christ’s love for his Father, and for you, will pull you back again, as his powerful and authoritative word is spoken again in his gospel.
Whenever your heart wanders away from its rightful service to God and begins to cling once again to mammon, Jesus will pry you loose once again, and restore you to your proper loyalty. His Spirit, dwelling within you, turns you around and brings you back to where you belong.
You cannot serve two masters, so don’t try. God has given you a heart for him. So serve him. Serve your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Sanctifier.
We close with these prayerful words from the Lutheran hymnist J. A. Seiss:
Jesus, Master, Son of God, Rich in gifts for human good,
Given Thyself for us, for all, Thou dost many servants call.
By Thy mercy and Thy love, Through Thy Spirit from above,
Plenteous grace to each is given, Grace to serve the Lord of heaven.
Amen.