One way to read the Gospel of Matthew is to imagine its audience, which would have largely been the urban poor of the first century Roman Empire. Another way is to imagine Jesus' audience, which would have been first century Jews in Judea and Galilee. Most of them were poor, too, but not all of them; and Jesus' teachings recorded in Matthew 6 clearly weren't addressed to poor people who wouldn't have had money to give to the poor (themselves!) whether openly or secretly. They wouldn't have been inclined to show off their piety since it was a basic tenet of the day that poverty was a sign of God's displeasure. They wouldn't have fasted, worried about storing up their riches, or had enough worldly goods to be slaves to them. This is not to say that the poor couldn't have learned a thing or two from the teachings collected in this chapter. The theme here is that the best way, the godly way to live is humbly. They were already humbled by their low station in society, so they could have heard these words as an affirmation of their own place in the world. In a sense, Jesus seems to have been saying that the wealthy do best when they behave as if they are poor instead of showing off their wealth and piety. Poor Christians could have taken a measure of comfort and gained a measure of confidence from hearing these teachings in the gospel.If we think about Jesus' teaching crowds of people in his day, on the other hand, the gospels do make it clear that wealthy folks did stop by to listen to him teach. As time went by, they did more than just listen. They confronted him, tested him, and tried to trick Jesus into making dangerous statements. We can thus imagine some Pharisees or Sadducees standing at the fringes of the crowd, listening in to these words of Jesus; and we can imagine Jesus taking the opportunity of their presence to try to reach them with a different way of thinking about their wealth. His central point was that no one can serve two masters. If these wealthy folks used their wealth to puff themselves up and to thus serve their own ends, then they became slaves to that wealth.
We've heard this tidbit of Jesus' wisdom so often, we take it for granted: where our attention is, where our concerns are, the things we lose sleep over—these things own us, enslave us, and separate us from the Spirit. In the first century, it would have made no sense to the wealthy to include wealth among those things that own us. The very notion would have been startling and even scandalous to the Pharisees and Sadducees. God had given them their wealth as a sign of divine approval, so how could that wealth enslave them and drive them apart from God? Nonsense! Illogical! And dangerous.
It's no wonder they finally had him crucified.
