9th Trinity III
Matthew 6:19-34
Arya Sheffer
"Do not save up your
treasures on the earth, where moths and rust destroy and thieves tunnel in and
steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth nor rust destroys, and
thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where you
have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you.
"The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted, whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark, what great darkness!
"No one can serve two masters: either they will hate one and love the other, or they will put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed's demon of riches [Mammon - spirit of hindrances or avarice].
"Therefore I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?
"And why do you worry
about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow.
Jan de Kok
They do not work, and
they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his
glory was ever arrayed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild
grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He
not do much more for you, O small in faith?
"So do not worry, saying, 'What will we drink? What will we wear?' The nations ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God's kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.
"So do not worry about tomorrow because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today's trouble is enough for today."
9th August/Sept Trinity
September 18, 2022
Matthew 6:19-24
It seems that suddenly the days have been shortened. It gets dark so early. Everything begins to seem so pressured and insufficient. A half-conscious anxiety creeps over us—we worry whether we will get everything done today, this month, this lifetime. We sense that the light is declining.
This gospel reading comes at a good time. It tells us to look closely at the worries and fears that darken our inner landscape. It tells us of the importance of maintaining the inner light in the face of growing outer darkness. It encourages a light generated by an undivided trust in and devotion to the divine, in whose hands we are held.
Ultimately worries and anxieties can be traced to the greatest fear that our little ego has — the fear of annihilation. The poet Rilke* gives us an interesting view of this fear:
I
cannot believe [he says] that little death
 |
| Collot d'Herbois |
should
still trouble us so.
I cannot
believe that he is that powerful.
I’m
still alive, I have time to build.
My blood will outlast the rose.
For, (as he points out):
My
knowing is deeper than the teasing way
he
[death] likes to toy with our fear.
I am
the world
he stumbled out of.
What a thought! We human beings were here first. The fact that we live comes first; death is a secondary aspect of our existence, an emanation out of us. “I AM, I grow, I know” is primary and far more powerful than death’s mocking threats of annihilation.
Death and life are not polar opposites, like black and white. Just as the year does not end in total darkness, but gradually segues into another spring, so death is not the end of life. The moment of death, like the moment of birth, is actually a kind of solstice, the transition to yet another phase of life. Life does not end with death, but life and death become resurrection, life in another form, on another level, another kind of life.
To recognize this threefold aspect of our existence, to recognize the life/death/life cycle is to know and therefore experience the revelation of God, as demonstrated by his Son. Being born, growing, dying, rising, knowing — this is the pattern of all human existence, the pattern which Christ, the Human God, fleshed out for us. This pattern lives in the smaller events in our lives and in the overall pattern of life itself.
“So be not anxious; seek first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order.” To connect with Christ is to know the Truth and to connect with the Way, the path to another level of Life.
*Rilke,
Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, page 72
