St. Paul reminds us today that we are justified by faith. It’s faith which is life-saving for us because it’s faith that gives us access into the deifying, life-changing, transformative grace of God, that gives us the ability to put our trust in God’s work in our lives.
We experience and grow in faith to the extent we’re willing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our lives. Sadly, we can shut out this work of God or put God on the periphery, preferring to put our trust in ourselves, or, as Christ warns today, “in mammon,” in our material resources. God doesn’t force Himself upon us because what He invites us into is a synergistic relationship and communion with the life that He alone is.
The old tired debate between Lutheranism and Catholicism regarding justification by faith or works is a false dichotomy: it’s not one OR the other. Instead, both are needed, both are mutually dependent on the other; both go hand in hand for the sake of our deification.
Faith can never be reduced to a mere verbal pronouncement of belief. At the same time, the primary work of the Church is not philanthropy but the witness of faith, of living out the faith in the midst of those who do not yet believe so that they too may come to know Christ and His salvation. Bringing others to the knowledge and love of God, to new life in Him, is the beginning of Christian philanthropy. But philanthropy that ignores the needs of the soul to be born anew in Christ, accomplishes nothing lasting.
This is the example we have from the Apostles and the Saints: some were martyrs, some were evangelists, some were preachers, some were teachers, etc., but all were witnesses of the one, true faith; they’re known today because they led others to the knowledge and love of God and His salvation through their witness. They give us a living witness of what it means to give all of ourselves for the sake of Christ, His Gospel and the Orthodox life in Him.
So, if our hope is that God will heal and deify us, then if this is our hope, if this is what we desire above all else, then, we pray, we struggle to follow through, to cooperate with what God prescribes for us and to entrust ourselves fully, 100 percent, to Him and His use of us.
But we ask ourselves, is this really my aim? Do I want God and participation in His life more than anything else or am I content to give God just a portion of myself, my time, my gifts, my resources? In this sense, we cannot just be resolved to give a tithe of ourselves and our possessions to God. If we are to grow in faith, we come to recognize that all we are and all we have entrusted to us comes from God and finds its meaning and proper place in God.
Christ reminds us, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
St. Paul also admonishes us in Romans, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Just as Christ does, St. Paul warns us that two choices lie before us: either conformity to the culture, the world, and its priorities and ideas, the pursuit of our own comfort and false sense of ‘security’ through our enslavement to ‘mammon,’ or our transformation through a life lived for and in Christ, which, by necessity means that we are open to continue to change, to grow in faith, to entrust ourselves more and more to His gracious care, so that we can participate more and more in the life that God the Holy Trinity is.
Our temptation is to worry, to think we can procure everything we ‘need’ in life on our own, to be independent, self-sufficient, but this is false, this is not Christianity. Instead, Christ admonishes us today, saying, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” As a Christian, we put our trust in God and not in the world, not in ourselves.
The world, the culture, will pull us in its own direction, may try to convince us that we don’t need God or that in our striving after mammon, in holding on to our will, our own desires, our passions, and all our material provisions, we are somehow safe and prudent. This is the lie fed to us by a materialist and secular culture. Christ reminds us, that “after all these things the Gentiles seek.” This is not the way of a follower of Christ.
As followers of Christ, we cannot be absorbed in, be a slave to, our desire for the things of this world and its false security. Instead, we open ourselves up to a greater generosity of spirit, of service, of giving to Christ and His Church, knowing that He’ll give us Himself in return, that He will minister Himself to us through the Sacramental life of His Church and grow us in our communion with Him, furthering us in His Kingdom.
For this reason, our Lord concludes with these life-giving words: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
And so, here is our choice: we can either respond to our anxieties, our problems, our stress, our lack of faith, our thinking that if we hold onto our time, our gifts, our material resources more tightly, then we’re more powerful, then we’re in control, or, we can come to realize that this projection is just a façade, that we need God, that we need to put our trust, our faith and hope, in Him, who alone is eternal, who alone is worthy of our trust.
If we choose the latter, stepping forward in faith, we can submit all of ourselves, all we are and all we have to Him and His will. The choice is ours; what Christ makes clear is that we cannot serve both Him and mammon.
No one’s beyond the transformation and growth in holiness that God desires to give us. Our growth in faith begins with a desire conceived from a willingness to seek first God’s Kingdom, our communion with Him before all else, to entrust ourselves fully to Him.
When we choose to interject faith in Christ into our struggles, our fears, our desire for financial security or personal control, then they and we can become a means for our further growth in faith and God can return to us His spiritual blessings.
So put faith into practice: pray, repent, entrust yourself to God, open your hand to give back to God what He’s entrusted and freely given you. Step forward in faith and put your hope and trust in Him. He will free you from dependence on this world, from reliance on mammon, from trust in yourself, and advance you in the life that He alone is.
St. Paul assures us, “hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” Put your hope, your trust, your faith in God, cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work in your life, following the prescriptions Christ has entrusted to the Church for our healing and growth in Him. He is always faithful, for as He has promised, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you!”
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
June 21, 2015
Epistle: Romans 5:1-10
Gospel: Matthew 6:22-33
