Labor Day Observed, Year A: Matthew 6:19-24
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
September 6, 2020
Jonathan Hanneman
To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 21:15 in, in case the link doesn’t drop you at the right place).
“No one can be enslaved to two rulers—indeed, either they will hate the one and be devoted to the other, or they will be attentive to one and scorn the other. None of you can be enslaved to both God and Mammon.” – Matthew 6:21[1]
I recently received two opposing recommendations in how I should preach during this season of open public conflict. One wanted me to urge people to fulfill the Church’s baptismal covenant by speaking more openly in support of social causes, like Black Lives Matter.[2] Less than a week later, another warned that under national legislative structures, I need to avoid and am really not allowed to publicly address political issues, like Black Lives Matter.
As a member of the clergy, I’m responsible to serve all the people at Holy Cross. I want to, and I deeply care for you and your wellbeing. But as long as we think the events happening around, among, and within us are simply political or social issues, it’s impossible for me to address them without causing permanent damage to some part of our congregation. I’ve spent the past year here doing my best to focus on applying the Gospel to our everyday lives, and that remains my duty as we move forward together. But I cannot be all things to all people. So for the sake of my own sanity, I need to start this morning by differentiating three important concepts, as I understand them: politics, social causes, and religion.
The purpose of government is to provide safety and stability for its people. Its main function is to protect the weak from abuse or oppression by the strong. The identities of the weak and the strong often vary from situation to situation, which is why laws need to be carefully worded and why sometimes even seemingly foundational ones eventually need to be amended. Based on that idea, the realm of politics is governmental policy. Its primary focus should be legislation, followed closely by interpretation, implementation, and review of the resulting code. The broad questions of politics and governance include things like, “Is a given law still helpful or does it now cause more harm than good?” “How might this phrase affect our trade relationship with such and such a country?” “If we spend more in this area, what happens to the needs over there?” And, “Are we enforcing that law fairly?”
Social causes tend to be about how people treat one another on a day-to-day basis, both as groups and as individuals. They draw awareness to problems occurring in a specific context. Social causes often expose questionable aspects in the way a law was written or how it’s being applied. Once confronted with the problems, the government is responsible to address[3] those issues through policy. So the work of politics naturally results in revelations from social causes which politics then needs to rectify. The two are cyclical with one another.
Religion, although it certainly interacts with the political/social cycle, deals more formally with issues of worship. Many people, at least in the United States, view worship as a side aspect of life—church on Christmas and Easter or some other ceremony or festival to attend a few times each year. Most of us think of it as a societal obligation or maybe a way to manipulate God into either ignoring us or doing what we want.
But worship is not a side aspect of life. Worship influences and underlies everything a human or society does. A person doesn’t need to “believe in” any particular god to still worship. Call them whatever you like—emotional tendencies, worldviews, group complexes, obsessions, etc.—relationships and interactions with gods infuse the mortal experience. Worship is a whole-life reality because how a people view their god(s) affects both their political structures and their social interactions.
Narrowing things down further, the Church holds active sway over a more limited audience—those who wish to be Christians. Its purpose is to guide its people to serve and honor God in each area of their lives by observing and following the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Its mission of reconciliation covers the full range of human experience, everything from discerning the basic image of God in each person we meet to concern for the moral direction of society at large to respect and care for Creation as a whole. The Church cannot (and should not) legislate for the general public, but those public matters all lie within its proper sphere of concern. They’re all places it needs to have a voice.
Politics and governance set the basic limits of what registers as harm among a given people. Social causes then draw awareness to further areas of harm within that culture. But the Church encourages people not just to limit or unmask harm but to actively help others thrive, to “love our neighbors as ourselves.”[4]
You might disagree with what I say today, and I’m fine with that. Disagreement is not only your right but at times your responsibility. Growing up, my church’s theological conclusions led to demands for strict social isolation and conservatism.[5] Unfortunately, part of that conservatism led to an authoritarian mindset: everyone was expected not only to obey but to agree with those in control. We literally had people functioning as “thought police.” I have no interest in creating, returning to, or maintaining that kind of organization.
When I eventually came to the Episcopal Church, the remnants of that lifelong formation didn’t just magically disappear. Although I was slowly disentangling the Bible from my Fundamentalist upbringing, I remained cautious in changing my own practices. I definitely didn’t agree with some of my new denomination’s social or theological positions, but that turned out to be okay because, surprisingly to me, no one expected me to. The people of that parish accepted me for who I was, celebrated the good I could bring, and allowed the Holy Spirit to continue to lead me.
However, that love and acceptance didn’t prevent them from moving forward as a church body, sometimes in ways I didn’t like or that were too fast for my comfort. But despite my personal qualms and sometimes significant internal conflicts, I found I could still worship with the people there. God was clearly working through them, and God continued to work in me. They allowed me to be who I was and think what I thought, but they didn’t remain stagnant on their collective path of following Christ. It was okay for me to know where I stood on an issue, but I couldn’t rightly expect everyone else to refrain from following the Holy Spirit until I was completely ready.
It’s easy to think of the conflicts around us as clashes between political and social ideologies. We’re accustomed to seeing life that way. But at their core, the divisions in our nation and church—and often within our individual selves—are all matters of worship.
In the traditional rendering of today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “you cannot serve God and Mammon.” Mammon was an ancient personification of the economy or wealth. But frankly, Mammon isn’t the only god Jesus would want to warn us about.
Have you ever heard of Molech? He’s one of the few deities that the Bible explicitly condemns by name. We don’t have many records about him or his role in Ancient Near Eastern culture. We do know that one of his primary forms of worship was child sacrifice. We also know how other people around the Mediterranean related him to figures within their own, better-preserved pantheons. Phoenician society saw him as embodying two of their gods: Melqart and Ba’al Hammon, the patrons and protectors of Tyre and Carthage. As Rome gained dominance throughout the region, their religious leaders once again recognized in those two figures a single god I had never heard of until a few weeks ago: Liber.
Liber’s only obvious influence in modern society is found in our word “liberal” in the non-political sense: generous. He was popular among Roman commoners due to his lavish provision of wine and encouragement in the expression and success of male fertility. He was also a god of free speech. Since Liber always “told it like it is,” on his feast days plebeians were free to express their opposition to governmental policies and personalities, openly speaking their minds about subjects the aristocracy generally forbade. He really was a god “of the people,” and, as an American, it’s easy for me to see why someone would like him. But Liber’s genial nature relied on the stabilizing presence of his wife, a god whose English name you’re certain to recognize: Liberty.[6]
Ancient societies often understood their gods to have both masculine and feminine characteristics. While we hear it as gendered, the concept is closer to our understanding of positive and negative magnetic poles. The existence of one pole demands the equalizing action of the other.[7] “Feminine” gods generally revealed the communal, nurturing aspect of the pair’s core essence while “masculine” gods tended to display its more individual and expressive side.[8] Either pole, absent its partner, was problematic, as it would eventually lead its followers toward disarray and/or destruction. For example, left to herself, Liberty would abandon all her boundaries and become so passive that she’d allow anyone to take advantage of her any way they wanted. Liber, on the other hand, would drive so hard into unrestrained individual freedom[9] that society itself would collapse in the face of his irresponsibility, selfishness, lack of mercy, and all-consuming greed.[10]
The disruption and disunity we see happening around us this year is not just the outworking of political or social issues. We’re living on the battlefield of a cosmic war between the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and a completely unbalanced Liber—or as the Bible would call him, Molech.
For at least the past few years, our collective actions have echoed much of the ancient ritual worship of this entity. Recent examples abound. Currently the simplest and most frequent one regards wearing a mask in public. It should be a basic courtesy to attempt to protect one’s neighbors from exposure to a life-threatening illness. But millions of people protest the masks—sometimes violently—as an affront to their individual civil rights. Across the nation, officials sworn to ensure public safety are encouraging and celebrating self-appointed “peace keepers” who openly endanger and threaten Constitutionally protected assemblies of other people by asserting their right to brandish loaded assault rifles. Locally, this summer saw a largely peaceful Occupy protest in Capitol Hill gradually consumed by a committed core of anarchists, people who won’t be appeased because they don’t actually want to be appeased. They want to indulge their own version of freedom, and in the process they’ve become followers and agents of Chaos.
But to me, the most disturbing thing I’ve observed reflects an ancient historical record from Carthage. For years, that city’s elites had imported or raised slave children as burnt offerings for Ba’al Hammon, but when a major crisis eventually arose, they ended their “inferior” offerings and began sacrificing hundreds of their own children instead. In the last year or two, many of us have become aware of how our country has snatched foreign children from their parents and caged them along our southern border. But this past summer, we, like Carthage, almost imperceptibly switched the debate not just to whether or not to sacrifice our own children (and their teachers) but how to do it instead.
I hope you take these words not as an attack but as a warning. I’m not trying to accuse or single out any particular person, social cause, or political party, but because of how we’re constantly being trained to interpret each other’s words and actions, I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard each of the examples I just mentioned in that way. You’re free to think that, and you’re free to disagree with my analysis, even vehemently. (I am going to be on vacation this week, so for immediate complaints, please see Jim.)
But despite knowing that my words may burn or sting, it’s still my responsibility as a servant both of this congregation and of Christ to remind each one of us that all of your life is an act of divine worship. Does how you’re living—everything about how you live—fall in line with the revelation of God as displayed in Christ Jesus, or are you inadvertently worshipping some other god?
The danger is real, and it appears to be mounting. Over the coming weeks and months, I’d ask you to keep a sharp eye on what’s happening not only around but within you. Where is God moving, and where does it look more like Molech? On a broad level, as you watch the news or drive down the street, wonder about how individuals or groups may be asserting their rights at the expense of others. After that, consider where we—personally or collectively—seem willing to risk someone else’s safety to satisfy our own desires. Finally, reflect on how your own actions, attitudes, and affiliations add to either the flourishing or diminishment of the people around you.
I wish I could say otherwise, but this isn’t a neutral battlefield. As much as we wish we could, none of us can claim to be passive victims in this war: your life will reveal your allegiance. Does it point toward the God of Mercy and Life, or do you find yourself leaning closer to sacrificing your neighbor or their children?
Pay close attention—please! Where do you see yourself going? Who or what do you find yourself supporting or serving? If you don’t like the direction you’re headed, if you discover your god isn’t who you thought it was, you do have a choice. You don’t have to listen to the past. You can stop what you’re doing. You can turn around! Through Christ, God has granted you the power to change. And if you fear you’re already too far gone down the paths of Death, you can be resurrected or even completely reborn into the communion of saints. Your entire life is an act of divine worship. Does how you live genuinely fall in line with service to the God revealed in Christ Jesus, or has society secretly enslaved you to something else?
Jesus said it plainly: it is not possible to serve both the God of the Bible and Mammon. But don’t look at “Mammon” as the end of the list—Mammon is where it begins. Replace his name with anything that draws you away from committed love and service to your neighbor. Maybe that’s an unbalanced Liber/Molech. Maybe it’s a spurned or abandoned Liberty. Maybe it’s some other god that you’ve never even heard of.
A deeper reality is playing out in our lives right now, and we’re under immense pressure to turn from the worship of the one, true God to manifest and embody the desires of something else entirely. Both as a church and as individuals, we need to be not only “wise as serpents” but also “harmless as doves.”[11] We need to strive not just to say the right thing but to “become doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”[12] “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.”[13]
Because the truth is,
“No one can be enslaved to two rulers….None of you can be enslaved to both God and…”
[1] My translation
[2] And black lives absolutely DO matter.
[3] Not suppress
[4] Loving your neighbor cannot be divided from loving God. How you treat your neighbor simply reveals how you relate to God.
[5] Not really “conservatism,” although it still calls itself that. The reality is closer to the idea of “stasis” or “retrogression.”
[6] Latin Libertas
[7] One could easily view the relationship of politics and social causes as a similar structure.
[8] Similar to the idea of Yin and Yang in Eastern cultures
[9] aka: “Rugged Individualism”?
[10] Left to himself, Liber had another bad habit: he had a deep, unsatisfied hunger for babies and children. In fact, to avoid offense to Saturn (known in Greek lore as Cronos or more generally as Chaos), the Roman government eventually had to legislate that Liber’s worshippers offer him bulrushes instead of sacrificing their own offspring.
[11] Matthew 10:16b (NRSV)
[12] James 1:22 (NRSV)
[13] Romans 2:13 (NRSV)