MATTHEW 6:22-34

Matthew in the Margins…8th S. after Epiphany…2017 

Six times in this passage MT quotes Jesus using a word translated variously as worried, anxious, don’t fret, or even, more modernly, ‘don’t get het up’. ‘Worry’, & the way we commonly use that word may not bite deeply enough to do justice to the basics of discipleship Jesus is on about here. As ‘servant’ is inadequate when ‘slave’ would be more appropriate in a particular context.

Life was hard for many in the Palestine & world of Jesus’ day. It still is for many cold, or hot, & hungry, & homeless, & hopeless, at the bottom of life’s pile. Including in wealthy & ‘successful’ countries based on economies rather than on human beings & their needs. Not to mention refugee camps & detention centres! Jesus makes it clear (vv.33-34) that far from simply taking the status quo ‘on the chin’ & getting on with it, we’re to do something about, bring God’s way of looking at things, to bear, on the states many people are living in & under.

‘Set your hearts on God’s kingdom first, & His justice…’ (v.33) is the locus round which Jesus’ teaching in this passage & its application to discipleship & life itself revolves around. Then we’re enabled to see things differently. Through ‘God’s eyes’. God gets a lot of blame for the inequities & iniquities of the world. I’d only been a priest a short time when I had to call on a family recently arrived as post W.W.2 ’refugees’ from England. I was flabbergasted, but far from wise enough to make an adequate response, when told, “We stopped believing in God when Hitler started bombing London!!!” Start from the wrong end, & we probably end up still at that wrong end! 

When we seek the mind of God, & act in ways that further God’s compassion & justice, God’s kingdom rules. Even where & while human injustice still rules in its own ways. Often in countries that would object colourfully if told the cap fits, so they have to wear it! Being blind in the biblical sense means not seeing as God sees (v. 22-23). It leads to us behaving as slaves to evil in any form (v.24). Deal with injustice & God will deal with the rest. But it is through us acting rightly, justly, that God rules on earth as in Heaven, here a little, there a little!  

Jesus calls for a completely different set of values that he reveals to us in His life, death, & resurrection, & their continuation in & by His Spirit. If we choose & hold a different set of priorities from those God reveals in Jesus, we are placing ourselves outside the community of faith. Any faith worth its salt. Then we become the ‘Gentiles’ Jesus speaks of here. But no-one has to remain outside!