Matthew 6:24: Trying To Rep Both Sides

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. - Matthew 6:24

When my wife was a real estate agent and I was her trusty sidekick, it was a big deal when she would get a client-either a buyer looking to find a house or a seller looking to put theirs on the market. She was responsible to represent the buyer to sellers or represent the seller to potential buyers to the best of her ability. When the deal was concluded, my wife would receive a commission for her work and the other agent-the one who represented the other party-would also receive a commission.

There was always the question: could a real estate agent do both? Could you represent the buyer and the seller and thus get both commissions? The answer was (I don't know now) yes, it was legal. But it was full of potential difficulties. Sure, in a normal case, things flow smoothly and everybody is happy. But what if issues come up?

Real estate agency has always contained the danger that the agent would pursue the sale at the expense of the people involved. Maybe by glossing over an issue with the property or contract conditions that were not in their best interest. The commission can be an incentive for personal advantage at the expense of those you represent. In our experience, when you represent one party, they are "your" people and you can feel an attachment to their well-being. We were so involved in the lives of my wife's clients that I once presided at their wedding. This can change when you represent both people and neither party is "your" people. Instead it is you (the agent) and them (the buyer and seller).

But the real danger comes when there is a conflict between the parties. If you try to represent both sides, you are either squeezed or you end up favoring one or the other.

This is the issue Jesus highlights when he refers to "two masters". It seems good when you are receiving the benefits from both sides and all is going well. When they come into conflict, in terms of goals, dreams, hopes or even failures, that is when you see which is really directing your heart. The fault line in your heart can be ignored before the earthquake, but it is waiting for the tension to build to a point where the tectonic plates of our desires must go different directions.

I believe that God leads us into difficulties and temptations to reveal to us where our loyalty lies. He knows to where our heart tends, but we are often ignorant of its inclinations (or deceiving ourselves).

One of my favorite parts of the Lord's prayer is "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." It is a puzzling phrase that even has given the pope trouble recently. But I see it as the prayer of a man or woman who wants rescue from the divided life before God must use stuff in our life to make it obvious to us.

God, please show the way out of the split-loyalty life before you have to use more drastic measures to draw it to my attention. In my mind, I call this the coward's plea: a request made from someone who knows he is flawed and accepts that God should do whatever it takes to make him whole, but prefers the gentler path if possible.

This requires careful examination of what is tugging at your heart. What is delighting you? Or maybe more telling, what is frustrating or irritating you? I have found that finding the root cause of these questions often reveals something that wants to be rep'd on an equal footing with God in my life. Sometimes it isn't clear because my heart is full of mixed motives swirled together and the Spirit must be involved to help me sort it all out. Sometimes it is frustration for the right reasons: for example, my heart is frustrated that the world is not as it ought and I long for something better. But usually, it is my own desires to be recognized or to be central. I can't rep both myself and God.

Psalm 29: Untamed Holiness

"But holiness is in wild and furious opposition to all such banality and blandness, the specialty of sectarian groups who reduce life to behaviors and cliches that can be certified as safe: goodness in a straitjacket, truth drained of mystery, beauty emasculated into ceramic knickknacks...This God-life cannot be domesticated or used; it can only be entered into on its own terms." - Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

After many years of church growing up, it certainly seemed that holiness was some sort of synonym for boring. It was static. It was the throne room of God where he sat in perfection and we all sort of stood around watching him be perfect.

But the writer of Psalm 29 seems to have a different idea:

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. - Psalm 29:2

Sounds pretty Sunday-school-esque. Safe. But then:

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. - Psalm 29:3

Holiness is being set apart, whether by nature (as God) or by designation (by God). While it is true that we are made in his image, there is so much more to God that we do not and cannot possess. This gap creates a tension that we are tempted to resolve by imagining God as a bigger, cleaned-up version of ourselves. There is an other-ness-a transcendence-to God that we are not equipped to fathom and this means that every encounter with the holy stretches us and even confuses us. It cannot be tame or bland because it is wholly not our own.

Listen to his voice! Here in Psalm 29, as in Genesis 1, he speaks his creative word over the swirling chaos of the waters and the world leaps. The world responds, not with the gentle dance of the sugar-plum fairies but with visceral leap of the created towards its creator.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning.
The voice of the Lord shakes the desert; the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. - Psalm 29:4-9a

Only the cardboard-cutout of God is ho-hum. Sometimes I have enshrined my impressions of God from earlier in my faith walk. Sometimes I have chosen convenient caricatures of God that make him more manageable. Sometimes I have reduced the eternal person-hood of God into a few impersonal principles that can be obeyed and therefore controlled, but not loved.

God, destroy any image in me which is short of yourself. It is a continual breaking of me, finding that my imagination lacks the capacity. At the same time, I am happy because you are so different and so immense and so undiscovered. Let me join in response to the beauty of your holiness where "...in his temple all cry, 'Glory!' (Psalm 29:9b)