Week 11 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Chronicles 24.17-25; Psalm 88/89; Matthew 6.24-34

The Davidic regime is really testing God's patience in the readings we hear these days. After the drama of ensuring that Joash would finally become king, he turned against the religion of Israel establishing the worship of idols and even murdering the prophet Zechariah for criticising him. Zechariah was the son of the man who had gone to so much trouble to establish Joash as the rightful king. It is difficult to imagine a deeper betrayal, a greater corruption.

But it is 'par for the course', as we might say, with the people once again doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord. How often we come across that expression as we read through the historical books of the Bible. It all culminates in the disaster of the Exile, the Lord having tried other less radical ways of encouraging the people to be faithful to the terms of their covenant with him.

Once again the contrast with the teaching of Jesus in the gospel reading is very striking. He seems to have no interest in power or wealth, in the things that drive political life in the world. Cast yourselves on the providence of God is his message, for see how he has already showered his gifts on the world.

Is it romantic, unrealistic, irresponsible? Imagine saying to a poor person asking for help 'cast yourself on the providence of God'! Of course in that encounter it is I who am to be the instrument of God's providence for the poor person. But do I really believe in God's care for me, for us, or is my 'faith' in fact just another political strategy, keeping my options open while at the same time engaging in the worldly occupations of power and wealth with the jealousies and conflicts to which these occupations inevitably lead?

'You cannot serve God and mammon' is one of the clearest teachings of Jesus. Mammon is money. Elsewhere he says we are to use money, 'that tainted thing', but to do so wisely and carefully, remembering that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Only by God's grace, for whom nothing is impossible.

The requirements for citizenship in God's kingdom are clear and radical: to live with total trust in God's care and to live in the freedom and mutual generosity which that trust makes possible. It is to live in the condition of complete simplicity of which TS Eliot speaks, costing not less than everything. Only by God's grace can it be done as we see in the lives of great saints: Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Calcutta, for example. The rest of us look on with admiration and amazement hoping that we might, at least occasionally, glimpse that freedom and practise that generosity.