I DON’T HAVE any hard statistics on this, but I suspect that many people who have worked in an organizational context, especially a hierarchical one, know what it means to have the people above them on the org chart disagree with each other. Sometimes, these leaders lack either the skill or the willingness to come to a joint decision, and others suffer for it. Each side tries to do an end run around the other and separately impose their will on the people below them.

The latter, of course, feel squeezed into an impossible bind. They don’t have the institutional power to speak the truth about the situation, and fear that they’ll be punished if they don’t do as they’re told.

But what are you supposed to do when you’re being told to do mutually exclusive things?

That’s the extreme scenario. More commonly, we might get caught in a disagreement between our direct supervisor and the people above them. When we receive an unreasonable or out-of-touch directive from higher up the food chain, our supervisor may try to smooth things over with us: “Yeah, you’re right. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Look, for now, it’s better to lay low. Just do this and this. And don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”

That’s the kind of boss anyone would want, right? But what we may not notice is this: the more the boss is on our good side, the more the others to whom we’re accountable get on our bad side. If your supervisor is your hero, someone else is the villain. Love one, hate the other.

IN MATTHEW 6, Jesus uses three metaphors to teach his hearers about the importance of their priorities and passions. And in order to make the point, each metaphor is couched in terms of strong contrasts. On what do we set our hearts? That’s our treasure, and it can be earthly or heavenly, secure or insecure, temporal or eternal. On what do we fix our eyes? That can be a source of light or darkness.

And though the New International Version translates Jesus as describing our eyes as either “healthy” or “unhealthy” (Matt 6:22-23), some translators believe that Jesus is suggesting a contrast between a “generous” and a “stingy” eye. If so, that fits well with what he says next:

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. (Matt 6:24, NIV)

Jesus begins with a metaphor that his hearers would understand: being caught between two bosses who don’t agree with each other. He makes the strongest of contrasts: love versus hate, devotion versus rejection. The words translated as “devoted” and “despise” suggest clinging to one master and looking down on the other.

It’s only after he’s painted this word picture for his hearers that he gives them the punchline, which they might have expected from what he’s already said: the two masters in question are God and Mammon, which many English versions translate as “money.”

But Mammon isn’t just “money,” as if Jesus might be referring to whatever loose change we have lying around. It’s an Aramaic term that may suggest something we treasure or in which we put our trust — in this case, the security of wealth. And in contrasting God and Mammon in this way, Jesus seems to suggest that we not only like wealth, we may worship it or be devoted to its pursuit.

BUT IS JESUS saying that we should literally “hate” money? I don’t think so. Think, for example, of what he says in the gospel of Luke:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

Here, Jesus isn’t saying that his followers have to despise their families or wish them harm. How could that possibly be the case when he’s taught his disciples to love even their enemies? Nor does hating “their own life” mean having a death wish. He’s talking about how important it is to have your priorities, allegiances, and loyalties straight. If push comes to shove, will you be loyal to your family, or to Jesus? If your family wants you to do something you know would displease God, whom will you obey?

But let’s be clear: hatred is not just a metaphor for preferring one master over another. While Jesus is not telling his followers to actually hate their families, the social reality of that time and culture was this: if you were more loyal to Jesus than you were to your family, they might hate you. You would be dead to them. And as persecuted Christians around the world can still tell you today, your family might literally want you dead.

“YOU CANNOT SERVE both God and money,” Jesus teaches. The word “serve” means being a slave, a common institution in the Roman Empire. Slaves were owned by their masters, and they were expected to be both loyal and obedient. The question, then, isn’t whether it’s okay to own stuff; the question is whether our stuff owns us.

I think here of the story of the rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus told him what he already knew: obey God’s commandments. But the young man replied that he had done this ever since he was a boy. Apparently, he was being honest; the version of the story we find in the gospel of Mark says that “Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:21).

But then Jesus told him, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Mark tells us that the young man’s face fell in disappointment, and he walked away. He wanted to follow Jesus. But he wanted to keep his wealth more.

AGAIN, JESUS USES strong contrasts to repeatedly make the point: if we’re going to be big-picture people who want God’s kingdom, we’ll need to take a hard look at our priorities. He’s not saying that the choices are always starkly black or white: serve God or serve Mammon, period. The reality is that our loyalties are divided: we want both God and money, and are prone to deceiving ourselves as to how much our possessions have a hold on us as opposed to the other way around.

It’s not impossible, of course, to be devoted to God and to possess wealth. As Jesus himself says, “All things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). But he says this in the context of giving his disciples a startling image as the rich young ruler turned his back to Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (vs. 25).

We need to hear these words rightly. Jesus wasn’t speaking in angry judgment; he loved the young man’s sincerity, and I imagine him shaking his head with regret. Jesus knows our hearts. He has compassion for our insecurities; he knows how so much of what we do is driven by anxiety and a sense of need.

And that’s why those anxieties are up next in the sermon.