“For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”
When I was very little, I would sit on either side of mom or dad on the couch and my brother, Bill, or sister, Mary Ruth, would sit on the other side, and they would read stories to us. Along with the many stories that Golden Books published for children, I remember specifically two books that my mother would read to us that were different from the others. We knew them as the red book and the green book. The drawings were less elaborate than those found in the Golden Books. The red book, taught the proper manners to be used in social settings, covering everything from excusing oneself from the dinner table to how to address others with respect. The green book was about learning proper behavior.
There were two characters in the green book. One character was called “Me First” and the other, “You first.” One was never to copy the behavior of Me First, who could be best described as selfish and greedy. Me First would budge into line, take all of the dessert, interrupt others who were speaking, steal from others and so on. That green book left quite an impression on me. Quite simplistically todays scripture readings illustrate the same difference between Me First and You First.
In the very last sentence of the gospel, Jesus states that one cannot serve two masters. One cannot serve God and worship mammon. Mammom was the name given to the demon of wealth. Jesus is telling us we need to choose whom we will serve. We need to pick the God whom we will serve. Choosing who to serve will give us two different paths in life. One path will be that of serving God and our neighbor, the other path will be serving our own self. Jesus is not condemning money, for money, in itself, is not evil. Money is a tool. Jesus warns us that in choosing the God to serve, our money and gifts may be used for good, or for evil. This choice as to which God to serve goes all the way back to the Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
God created us male and female in God’s own image. Each and everyone of us has God’s DNA inside of us. And because we carry God’s DNA, we yearn to be divine. This yearning drives us to either become Godlike or to become gods. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had everything going for them. All their needs and all their wants were lovingly met by God. However, Adam and Eve were not satisfied, they were greedy. They wanted more than to be Godlike. They wanted to become gods. The serpent tells them that if they eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, the Tree of Knowledge, they would no longer be mere creatures of God, they would become gods. Their avarice, their greediness brought ruin upon themselves and continues to plague we who are their descendants.
To this very day, all human beings have this inherent desire to become a god. We want everything in the world to revolve around us. In the parlance of the Green Book, we all want to be Me Firsts and will do anything and everything in our power to be Me First. Truth be told, the problem with this desire to be a god, is that the position of god can be held only by one person, not multiple people. This inherent greed to be a god leads to the ruin of many people. The principle tool that many people use to try become a god is money. If we look all around us, we find that money is power. Money can buy us positions of power. Money can buy us influence. With money we can buy, sell, and control people. This leads us to the conclusion that money can also buy us to become a god over all, and the original Sin of Adam and Eve grows within us like a cancer, transforming the goodness of our humanity into evil. Utterly caught up in our own avarice to become a god, we end up serving Mammon, the demon of wealth, and not the God who lovingly created us.
Jesus shows us that the path by which we can become Godlike is not to accumulate and augment our wealth and self, rather we must diminish and impoverish ourselves in service to others, particularly to those most in need. Jesus did not use the immense power he had as God to increase his divinity. He used his divine power to increase the goodness of his humanity. One could say, that he impoverished his Divinity so that he could become the humanity that God meant humanity to be at Creation and at which Adam and Eve so miserably failed. Noting the striking difference between Adam and Eve and Jesus, St. Paul rightly calls Jesus, the New Adam.
Throughout all four gospels, Jesus tells you and I that if we intentionally wish to be his disciples, if we intentionally desire to become Godlike, we must live in service to others. The wealth and the gifts that God has given to us are not meant to increase ourselves but be used and shared with those most in need. The perfect example of this Mother Teresa, canonized a saint last Sunday. The DNA of God within her grew as she gave of herself to God and the poor. While she may have argued she was anything but Godlike, those of us who observed her saw how greatly she grew in God’s likeness. In the Last Judgment scene of Chapter 25 in Matthew’s gospel those who are actively engaged in seeing the Godlike presence in others by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting those in prison, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger are the only ones admitted to heaven. Those whose lives were spent in only serving themselves and refusing to serve those in need are sentenced to eternal damnation. Our path to heaven is in the giving of ourselves to others. We cannot buy our way into heaven, we can only buy our way into hell.
Over and over again, Jesus tells those who wish to be his disciples that we must first sell everything we have, give it to the poor, pick up our cross and follow him. To become Godlike, to have the DNA of God grow within us, we must diminish ourselves, impoverish ourselves in the manner of Jesus by the giving of ourselves and our gifts to others. As St. Paul states so very well in the second reading for today, “For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”
Jesus gives us a choice at the end of today’s Gospel. We can either serve God or Mammom. We can either be You First or Me First. Whom will we serve?
