Consider the lilies....

My sermon for last Sunday, 8th in Ordinary Time, Year A:

There's a story about one of the hermits living in the desert in the fourth or fifth century, who came back to his hermitage one day to find a couple of robbers making off with his few possessions. Instead of protesting or trying to stop them, he began to help them remove his few goods from the house. He seemed to look on the experience of being robbed as a test of his vow of poverty or an opportunity to show, even to himself, his level of non-attachment to material things.


Maybe that kind of action shows Christian simplicity on a heroic scale, but you could also argue that it's easier for someone who has chosen a solitary, monastic way of life, removed from the ordinary responsibilities of work, home and family, to make such a gesture.

Most people, including most Christian believers, have families to support, bills to pay and so on, and have to be a bit more "attached" to money and food and clothes - the things Jesus is talking about in the gospel today - than the saintly hermit. And especially in the present economic climate, it's surely only natural for people to be worried about keeping their jobs, for example, feeding and clothing their children, or keeping up their mortgage payments.

If someone feels anxious about those kinds of issues it doesn't mean he or she is a materialistic or unspiritual person. It's worth remembering that in Old Testament times it was the poor and economically dependent person who was the special object of care and pity on God's part; and the community that worshipped God was always being exhorted by the prophets to make sure that they were looked after and to not allowed to fall into destitution.

Jesus' teaching here in his Sermon on the Mount doesn't contradict the Old Testament ideal. Jesus isn't unsympathetic to people whose situation is precarious because of a lack of money or material necessities.

Jesus is more concerned, I think, that his followers should have a proper sense of perspective about material possessions: that our relationship with God should be the primary concern in our lives, while material things are secondary; that we should never make money and possessions the main source of happiness and security in our lives; and that we should always trust in God to look after us and carry us through the bad times in our lives as much as the good.

Most people in Christ's time weren't rich or even particularly comfortable. But he still felt that it was appropriate and necessary to talk to them in this rather black-and-white language about making a clear choice either to serve God or to serve Mammon. We can't choose both, and we can't divide our loyalty between the two, Jesus urges.

Like the Old Testament prophets Christ was very alive to the danger of idolatry, or worshipping false gods, and that didn't always mean turning away from the true God to say prayers and offer sacrifices to some pagan deity. It could mean becoming so preoccupied with our physical and material wants - things like money, food and clothes - that we end up giving these objects the time and energy and the place in our lives which we should only give to God.

So as a counter to the temptation to idolise material things, there are three basic spiritual attitudes that Christ wants his followers to take.

The first is to be detached from our possessions - maybe not to the same extent as the hermit in the desert, but to always see them as secondary to the spiritual side of life and our relationship with God. Seek the Kingdom of God first, Christ says, and then worry about these things. Food and clothes and money are important and necessary in their place. But they're not all-important. Union with God, now in the present, and in the next life, is all-important.

Second, Christ's followers must always practice generosity, or sharing, or solidarity with those who lack the basics or existence. Christians who happen to be fortunate enough to have everything they need materially can never take an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude and look on other people's poverty as their tough luck.

The Bible teaches that everything ultimately belongs to God, not to us. We're stewards, not owners, of the material things of the world, and we're obliged to divest ourselves of our goods and to share them if we come into contact with people who are more needy than we are. That's one of the main principles that we'll be judged on at the end of our lives.

Last of all, in this gospel passage Jesus recommends that his followers always turn to God and rely on God to provide them with what they need in life. That always means what God knows we need, not what we think we need. God never provides us with a luxurious existence or makes us rich or keeps us free from all forms of suffering through life. We can leave that sort of thinking - the "prosperity gospel" as it's called - to American television evangelists.

What God will provide us with is his presence, his support, his grace so that - if we don't turn our backs on him, which is always a temptation during anxious and miserable times in our lives - we'll come through our experiences of suffering with a stronger and purer faith, and a clearer sense of what's really important in life.

So I don't think Jesus wants us to feel guilty if we happen to get into financial trouble or if we're worried about how we're going to pay for some things. That's not his point.

But what he does want us to do is to always put God first, not to make anything else into a false god, and to always trust God to give us what we really need in life. Those are the basic Christian attitudes to life that today's gospel passage is directing us towards.