Lord status

Morsels of food are delicious because of the little things, the subtle seasonings, the dash of salt, the sprinkle of garlic, the garnish of parsley, the touch of glaze, or the hint of lemon.  Ahhhh - so delicious!

David wrote a psalm about doing the right thing (Psalm 37).  He recognized the world around him was full of people who didn't treat people right.  So, he wrote lyrically contrasting the two types of people.  His words inspired Jewish readers to do the right thing for many years afterward.  One of the most inspiring verses comes in verse 25.

"In my journey from youth to old man, I have never seen those who live decently left destitute or their children begging for food."

Matthew 6.24-34 doesn't record Jesus' thoughts in order to know if these psalm lines were on his mind, but the words he used echoed in his sentiments.  Early in his public teaching, Jesus seemed to have been struck by people always thinking about making enough money - whether just to live on or to impress others. Apparently it seemed to Jesus that accumulation of money and the things that accumulation would bring permeated people's thinking.  He felt the need to say a few words about that permeation of thought (verse 24).

Οὐδεὶς δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν· ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἀγαπήσει, ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει. οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ

(Nobody can serve two masters.  Either he will despise one and show a lot of care for the other or he will be loyal to one and have little regard for the other.  You cannot serve God and the accumulation of money.)

Jesus had just made a bold statement.  He had elevated the status of wealth.  Everyone knew that money was important.  People have to have it to live on.  So, yes, money was important.  Why would Jesus make it a big deal?   I think the answer is in the breakdown of how money comes to people.  To Jesus it evidently was in showing care and loyalty.  People spend a lot of time caring about whatever accumulates money for them.  And, when they spend that much time accumulating something, they inevitably are loyal to taking the time to bring in more.

To Jesus the two ingredients of serving a master were showing care and being loyal.  That was a problem for him when he looked at people and saw them showing those two characteristics for accumulation of money instead of for God, his father.  Jesus elevated the status of pursuing wealth from something people do for a living to a consuming pursuit being master of people's lives, a God pursuit.

The secret to understanding this elevation of status is found in the word κυρίος (lord).  The word poses a fairly significant problem for Americans.  When the constitution was passed in 1787, it contained provisions against elected officials accepting titles related to a monarchy, such as Lord.  Lord, of course, has been one of the main translations for κυρίος since the King James Version was published during the days of the British monarchy, and its influence on subsequent translations has been enormous.  The constitution had no diminishing effect on the use of lord as a translation for κυρίος even though an elected official couldn't accept the title.  But it did diminish the use of lord in Americans' everyday speech, so much so that Americans only use the word now when referring to the royal line of succession or  the upper class of people living in a monarchy in a historical era.  Master, used above, is not really a suitable substitution, but given the American proclivity against all words monarchical, it was almost the only word left that still contains most of the semantic domains of κυρίος.

One of the great problems with the word master is that it implies the idea of slavery, an idea that is more repugnant to Americans than lord.  Both lord and master leave bad tastes in Americans' mouths because of such a raw, mistrusting experience with the rulers and owners who embodied the ideas meant with these words.  People don't usually consider the implication of benevolent with either word.  κυρίος, on the other hand, did imply that a person in charge of others' lives in some way was worthy of the title because he could be trusted to take care of the people he was over.  Usually it was for protection, but in many areas of the Mediterranean Sea, it was also for organizing society in a way that allowed people not to worry about how they should go about daily living and fulfilling their basic needs. 

Thus, when Jesus used the word κυρίος, he was implying a benevolent protector/provider.  This would explain Jesus' consternation with the Jews' idea of accumulating money.  The effect of wealth allowed a person to depend on it to provide and protect, God's place.  But for Jesus, his father, God, was κυρίος, not the accumulation of money.  There was no substitute for his father's provisions.

Verses 28-30 have a morsel of flavor in them as Jesus continued to illustrate his point.  He illustrated first that people could trust his father to give them food and drink.  Then, he addressed provision for clothes by asking a rhetorical question.

Verse 28

Καὶ περὶ ἐνδύματος τί μεριμνᾶτε; καταμάθετε τὰ κρίνα τοῦ ἀγροῦ πῶς αὐξάνουσιν· οὐ κοπιῶσιν οὐδὲ νήθουσιν

(Why are you stressed about clothing?  Learn from the lilies dotting the countryside.  How do they become so beautiful? They don't work hard or make their own clothes.)

Verse 29

λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐδὲ Σολομὼν ἐν πάσῃ τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ περιεβάλετο ὡς ἓν τούτων.

(I tell you that Solomon in all his splendor was never dressed as finely as they are.)

Verse 30

εἰ δὲ τὸν χόρτον τοῦ ἀγροῦ σήμερον ὄντα καὶ αὔριον εἰς κλίβανον βαλλόμενον ὁ θεὸς οὕτως ἀμφιέννυσιν, οὐ πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὑμᾶς, ὀλιγόπιστοι

(If God dresses up the meadows with wild lilies today and and people throw them in their little bread ovens tomorrow, don't you think he would do much, much more for you, smallfaiths?

This last illustration shows how much Jesus was dismayed with the way that people didn't trust in their father and his for the necessities of life.  Instead, they depended on money accumulation.  It wasn't enough for him to raise the status of people's dependence on their own ability to eat and dress, and do so nicely, to κυρίος (lord) status, he also coined a term for the people exhibiting this attitude.  No secular records exist using the word Jesus called such people.  He combined the words for small and faith and used it as a term of address.  He was probably just stating facts by using this word, but it would be easy to see how the people who heard him might take the term as sarcasm.

These three verses (28-30) also have a little sting to them.  Where it might be slightly veiled whether or not Jesus had Psalm 37.25 on his mind when he started talking about people's trust in God for their basic provisions, it isn't veiled at all that Psalms 37.20 is used.

"But the wicked will die,

The Lord's enemies are like flowers in a field - 

They will disappear like smoke."
(New Living Translation)

The apparent innuendo of Jesus' words definitely show the connection of "the Lord's enemies" in Psalms 37 to those in his own crowd of listeners not trusting his father for the basics of life.  Jesus' reference to the flowers of the field disappearing in smoke is a dead give away of the connection.  And in case there was any misunderstanding of who κυρίος was in either Psalms or his own words, the Old Testament reference uses יהוה Yahweh), translated as Lord in verse 20 above, the most sacred of the names for God,   Yes, that stung a bit.

But the words sting a bit for me too, I who live in this great modern era.  I  see myself working hard and priding myself on the type of clothing I can buy and the type of restaurants I can eat in when not cooking at home.  I fully understand the God replacement idea Jesus spoke about.  While I am not wealthy by my own country's standards, my country's standards for "working class" are still head and shoulders above most of the rest of the world's standards for the same designation.  I find myself in need of a picture of lilies dotting the countryside being better made and more attractive than the clothes on my own body.  I need an understanding of how temporary those lilies-more-beautiful-than-my-clothes are since they are thrown in a fire and burned, yet my clothes remain because my father thinks that much more of me.  I need a good reminder of Jesus' sentiments echoed in Psalms 37 of living decently, doing the right things, showing a lot of care for my creator, and being loyal to him for any accumulation of things that come my way.