It's always interesting for me to write about money, given my profession. However, it is an ever present issue for all of us. Not only in our culture and time, but for as long as there has been wealth and the human ability to produce, acquire and gather it.
Here in this teaching Jesus puts money and wealth in its proper context. It does not exist for your own glorification, it exists as a trust. If you love 'it' however...and the things 'it' affords you, then you have formed for yourself a god. A god that is here today and gone tomorrow, a god that will not listen and cannot speak, a dead god. You rise and fall according to it and it has no care for you. Jesus takes it a step further though and says that God and money are like two masters, and you can't serve both. They are on opposite ends.
At this the Pharisees mock Jesus, because...it says they loved money. Now the Sadducee were the ones with the real money from the temple, but the Pharisees saw equated the land and what it could produce as a means of wealth which was a major economic reason for them to get these foreigners out of their land. What was really driving them to hate these foreigners? Love of wealth or love of God? Perhaps we could ask ourselves the same questions when dealing with our own approach to immigration? What really drives our decision making?
Now Torah has many examples of a tie between wealth and God's blessing so the Pharisees mocking, may at first seem warranted. Jesus however calls them out on the previously mentioned conflict...'You people let everyone else know that you're in the right - but God knows your hearts!' Oh, please hear this Christian!
To the leaders of Jesus day, the law and prophets (the old testament) lasted till John....they were only part of the story...from now on God's kingdom is proclaimed! And look, everyone attacks it! But it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of an 'i' to drop out of the law. 'Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a person who marries a divorced woman commits adultery'. There is only one way forward for God to deliver the promised New Covenant not only to repentant Israel, but what does the LORD say "I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’ To a nation which did not call on My name." through death and out the other side is the only way to get there, let the reader understand.
'In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.' Woe to those who do not learn the lesson of the wilderness.
Father, let us not be led astray by that temptress called 'Love of money', but let us wisely steward all things which have been given into our hands for the up-building of Your Children and Your Kingdom, the manifestation of Your Glory into all the world as the waters cover the sea. Amen
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