“You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
This scripture passage might be confusing at first pass
because it looks like Jesus is commending us
an example of the dishonest steward.
But if we go a little deeper here, we will get to
what Jesus is really trying to tell us.
He is not holding up the dishonesty as a model
but the ingenuity or creativity of the steward
that he is willing to do for self-gain.
Then Jesus turns to us and says,
“If only you could do that for the gain of eternal life.”
And then he gives us this phrase of:
“You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Often times, we hear this phrase “mammon” and we think money;
that is how is translated in some cases.
But mammon doesn’t quite mean money
and it doesn’t even quite mean wealth.
What it means is leftover money, surplus wealth.
It is the surplus when your needs are met.
Now what do you do with that surplus?
Here is what is interesting: We all have basic needs.
The basic need of food, shelter and security.
Those are the most core, basic needs.
Once those are met then we have a surplus out of which we can give.
The Lord is saying that is where you need to be creative.
That is what you need to look at;
he doesn’t exactly say how he wants it but over the years,
we have had lots of people, saints, and popes in our tradition
who have suggested possible ways to do so.
Even right now, Pope Francis has challenged us
to use our creativity, our ingenuity in a different way,
quoting this very passage that we see today.
In his book “Fratelli Tutti” which he wrote in the middle of the pandemic,
he said we have to be creative
because things have not been working quite the way we would like it;
the economy isn’t really working for a huge portion of people
and we have to be creative and
not just return to the way things were before the pandemic.
Rather we need to look at how we can do things differently
where it could work for more people.
Pope Francis quotes an early Catholic saint, St. John Chrysostom;
most of us would never have heard of him.
Pope Francis quotes John Chrysostom saying
“Not to share our wealth [think mammon] with the poor
is to rob them and take away their livelihood.
The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well.”
He goes on to quote Pope Gregory the Great saying,
“When we provide the needy with their basic needs,
we are giving them what belongs to them, not to us.
Once our needs are met then that next layer of money
is not yours but becomes for the common good;
that sense of sharing,
that sense of being willing to have
other people’s needs met after our needs are met
and then we take care of our wants after that.
It is not an outrageous concept.
I get it that we might argue over what our needs are
but I think at the very basic level,
we could all agree that food, shelter and security
are at least at that level of basic needs
that we all would need to meet or to have.
No matter what circumstances come our way,
there are times when things happen for all of us that are challenges.
It is hard to argue that reality.
So the question is, “What do we do?”
For example, look at the amount of money
that has been spent on this war in Ukraine.
The massive amount of wasted money
that could have gone to solving such poverty
not only in their country but throughout the world.
And that is just one of many ways
in which we are spending in sort of a crazy way to spend.
I know that is all the way over there
but what are we meant to do.
That is just not something we can deal with;
I get that we cannot change international policy
and we cannot change Putin’s mind.
What are we to do locally?
What if we took that mindset that when our needs are met
then we go to the needs of others;
and we meet other people’s needs next.
It is safe to say here that we probably have all our needs met.
I do not know if there is anybody here;
there may be one or two who struggle with it
but I think most of us here have a surplus,
mammon, in large amounts.
The question is “What do we do with it?”
I think we do pretty well here at St. Simon Parish.
For example, when we put a call out for St. Vincent DePaul
for school supplies, we get plenty of school supplies.
When we put a call out for the homeless and the needy, we get it.
But if truth be told when we put that call out for school supplies,
those wooden boxes out there should be flowing over.
If I am being honest, we have such surplus, such mammon,
that I should say “Stop. Stop. Stop. Okay. Okay.
We’ve got enough. Okay.
We’ve got enough. Okay. Stop.
We’ve got enough of school supplies. Okay.
We’ll move onto something else now.”
That is what we should have. Right?
Because not all of us put things into the school supply request.
Or when we go to feed the homeless,
we should be so overflowing that we say,
“Oh, we’ve got to do something else as well.
Thank you. Let’s figure it out.”
Maybe next time that comes up,
we ought to open our hearts a little bit more
and see what we can do and teach our children
to have that sense of needs met,
then somebody else’s needs,
then our surplus and their surplus.
But what can we do as a community?
Let me give you an example:
This week, I had lunch with a friend of mine
who is a pastor in one of the parishes on the east side.
They have Mass in three languages every weekend.
It is a small Church so there is him and one other priest.
I said, “Oh, you look tired.”
And he says, “Oh yeah. It’s tiring. It’s a lot of work.”
I said oh yeah. “It’s kind of the way it goes as a priest these days.”
He told me a little bit about Sunday weekend Masses.
“We have 13 Sunday Masses every weekend.
He says, “Oh yeah. That’s our standard load.
And there are just two of you?”
I’m thinking to myself
“There are three of us and we only have six Masses!
There are only two of them and they have 13 Masses!
That is not including the Quinceaneras and the weddings
that they must put on.
I said, “WOW. No wonder you’re tired.”
I asked him, “Why don’t you put in for another priest?”
because we do have more priests
but he said we can’t afford it.
Another priest is over $100,000 with all the costs.
I thought to myself what if we,
after we get our needs met here,
after we reach our budget,
maybe after the Annual Diocesan Appeal,
we say the next $100,000 is going to them.
Because that is going to pay for that priest.
And we would pay for their priest. Why?
Because that is from our mammon.
That is from our surplus.
And I suspect that if I asked you all that well,
maybe we could quite easily do that,
because we have so much mammon in our community.
That is the creativity that Jesus is looking for.
That is the ingenuity that Jesus is trying to hold up to us.
We, who have so much, need to be more creative.
We need to look at ways of how we could do things
like this to help and serve more people
not because they have a need
but because we have a need to give;
that we have the need because we have the surplus.
We have the mammon to do more.
This week as we go forth from here,
look in your own life and find out how can you be creative?
How can you be a little ingenuous about how
to give away a portion of your mammon to those who are in need?
And maybe we, as a community,
could find a way to be creative beyond
just our own individual gifts
but be creative as a community to serve others
not because they have a need
but because we have a need of what to do with our mammon.
