My childhood friend and and college roommate got married the summer he graduated. As his best man, I got an inside peek behind the scenes. And one scene stands out in 3-D clarity from that weekend. The rehearsal, groom’s dinner, wedding ceremony and reception were over. My groom friend and his bride, and their two sets of parents were in a side room off the reception hall. It was time to head off with his bride. Past time. In fact, way past time, and my groom friend had a problem. A BIG problem. Leaving his mother. His beloved mother. The mother that had nursed him and pampered him and made sure he had his cold cranberry juice cocktail poured and sitting alongside his hot bacon and eggs every single morning since he could remember. In Hollywood fashion, he hugged her, and held her, then hugged her again, then walked toward his new wife, then looked at his teary-eyed mother and walked over and held her again.
I literally had to pull him away.
I think this is what Jesus meant when he taught his apprentices, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and wealth.” We, like my groom friend, have to make a choice. Knowing how hard it is to appropriately let go of Momma, Genesis 2:tells a groom, “Leave (in the Hebrew it means ‘abandon, forsake’) your father and mother and cleave (in the Hebrew it means to be glued together) to your wife.” And knowing how hard it is to appropriately abandon or forsake our long-term loyalty to money after trusting in it for so long to meet every need and most of our wants, Jesus in Matthew 6 tell us, ‘You can’t serve both money and God.” According to Jesus, money and the security and stuff that rolls out of it has to take second place – and a distant second at that – in order for us to cultivate an ongoing primary covenant with Jesus. If momma money comes first, we break the First Commandment [Exodus 20:3, also see Colossians 3:5). Our intimacy with our Savior is broken and our soul is damaged.
It is no accident that Jesus used the metaphor that His apprentices that make up the Church, are joined to him like my groom friend was to his new bride. We have to make a choice between clinging to Momma Money or walking through a new door with Jesus our Master.
The Bible speak so often of this issue because so many of us have a problem. A BIG problem.
And frankly, many of us may need a beloved friend to literally help pull us toward the door.
