“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. – Matthew 6:19-24

In The Little Flowers of St. Francis, a collection of stories about St. Francis, his brothers, and the people whose lives he touched, we find a little story about how St. Clare had desired to eat with St. Francis. But St. Francis kept refusing to eat with her. His brothers finally came to him and said, “St. Clare converted at your preaching, and not eating with her seems a bit stiff and lacking in charity.” So St. Francis replied, “Does it seem right to all of you that I should consent to eat with her?” And all the brothers gave a resounding Yes! And so, St. Francis agreed to meet her and her companions with his own brothers at the chapel of St. Mary and the Angels, where St. Clare had performed her religious vows. As they ate, they began to talk about God, and, we are told, the glory of God descended upon all those present to such a degree that they were all in a state of ecstasy. 

While they were lost in the glory of God, the townsfolk of Assisi and Bettona saw that the chapel of St. Mary and the Angels, and all the trees that were leading up to the church were burning brightly, they hurried up to the church because they believed the whole place to be on fire.

But when they entered, they found St. Francis and St. Clare, and their companions enraptured by the grace of God. And then the townsfolk realized that they had seen a spiritual fire and not a real one, so that they might understand the fire of the Divine Love that so inflamed the souls of these people.

“If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light!”

This passage from the Sermon on the Mount is one we often hear during stewardship sermons, because of the talk of treasure, and the direction of our heart. And while it talks about treasure, it is, at its most fundamental level, a sermon about priorities. This passage is intended to get us thinking of why we make the choices we do, and what drives us: is it Christ alone, or do we still hold fears and misconceptions about God and others, or even put other things above God in the hierarchy of what we hold dear?

The 2024 Lesser Feasts and Fasts has assigned May 6th as the provisional day for St. George of Lydda, a soldier and martyr. The feast of St. George is traditionally celebrated on April 23rd, but the Orthodox Church celebrates his feast day on May 6th, so today we also get to learn about the life of St. George in connection with this passage from the sermon on the mount.

George was a soldier in the Roman Praetorian Guard, the elite forces that served the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Around 303 A.D., Diocletian began persecuting Christians, and people such as George were turned into the Emperor in order to recant their Christian beliefs, or face certain death.

George could easily have renounced his faith, and saved his own life, and kept his position. But he had faith, a faith in one God, and not just one God among many gods. He had faith in the promise of life – life even in death. And this prompted him to hold firm to his faith in a God of Love, and face death. If anyone had their priorities straight, it was George, a soldier protecting the emperor who hated believers like George.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light!”

For his courageous faith, George of Lydda is revered by the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Anglicans, and even some Muslims as a defender of a monotheistic faith. This is George of Lydda, soldier, and martyr – a beacon of light in a world full of darkness. 

This is the story that history has shared with us. But the story that most people think about when it comes to St. George is about the slaying of the Dragon. This legend of the dragon was preceded, unfortunately, by many saints, and was officially added to the legend of St. George sometime in the 11th century. 

As the story goes, there was a dragon that was terrorizing a down, demanding tribute from the villages. When they ran out of food and trinkets to give to the beast, the villagers began to send people to the beast. One of those selected to offer herself to the dragon was the king’s daughter. As she was on her way to the dragon, St. George saw the young princess, noticed that she was crying, and asked her why. She told him about the dragon, and she urged him to leave so that he would not also be eaten. But St. George refused, followed her to the place where the dragon lived, and wounded the dragon. He then told the princess to remove her belt, and to put it around the dragon’s neck. The dragon then followed her around like a meek beast.

St. George and the princess returned to the village, and St. George offered to kill the dragon for the townsfolk if they would agree to convert to Christianity. The king, overjoyed at the return of his daughter, agreed. So did fifteen thousand others.

We love this story, and others like it, because it’s a story of good conquering evil, of light in the darkness of the world, of salvation in a broken world. It’s fantastical, it’s allegorical, and it’s majestic.

I think that everyone of us would love to have a story like that: of watching thousands find their way into a faith we share, of standing firm in the face of danger, or of slaying dragons.

Thankfully, I have a story about slaying a dragon.

My legal first name is not Michael, and when I went to college, I realized that everyone, from professors to staff were calling me by my first name – since that’s how the systems are set up. But my parents had always intended to use my middle name, which is Michael. Since everyone was calling me by my first name, and since there were far too many Michaels in my freshman class, I decided to change my name. I went by that name for about fifteen years. 

A few years later, my sister and I went on holiday, and we were sitting on the porch of a coffee shop, talking about names. My sister, Gabriele, mentioned that our names speak to who we are, and for her, a missionary, the name Gabriele, after the Archangel Gabriel, spoke to her about her vocation as a messenger. That got me thinking about my own name, after the Archangel Michael, the commander of the Lord’s armies, and the slayer of dragons. I had finished seminary by this point, and was involved in ministry, and I was feeling that God was asking me to change my name back to Michael. I had used my former name for about fifteen years, and so I wanted confirmation from God that I should change my name back.

A friend and I went camping in the Mojave desert, and had laid our sleeping bags down next to a fire pit. During the middle of the night, I woke up, and I saw that one of the logs had settled in such a way that it stood upright. Embers had crisscrossed the front of the log so that it looked like scales on the belly of a dragon, and the top portion of the log looked like the mouth of a dragon with a burning tongue, and two little eyes on fire. 

I burst out laughing. And I said, “Okay, God, I get it. You want me to go back to being Michael.” Then I paused and said, “Do you want me to slay the dragon too?” I picked up another log, reached into the fire pit, knocked over the little “dragon” and said, with a smirk, “There you go, God. I’ve slayed the dragon.”

And I heard God say, “Good. Now slay your own dragons. And then the path before you will become clear.”

“If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

This began a journey of self-discovery and self-examination. When we begin these kinds of inner travels, we often discover that the things we think are light are just the shiny trinkets and tributes we feed the dragons in our lives. And we feed these dragons, because we know nothing else, and can see no way out. And because we are so blinded by these trinkets and tributes, we also find that what we think is darkness is not really darkness, but instead, a flame so bright that we involuntarily close our eyes, and stare into a darkness of our own making.

Perhaps this was part of St. Francis’ original hesitation to have lunch with St. Clare: a personal dragon. After all, the brothers had to convince St. Francis to go, by telling him that he was being uncharitable toward her. Of course, we can never know for sure, because the story we heard about St. Francis came to us through a narrator. And yet the slaying of this personal dragon brought with it the light of Christ, the light of the World, which others could see for miles away. It appeared as a fire, and brought people rushing in to see clearly the flames that burned in the hearts of those who found God in the breaking of bread.

St. George, the legendary slayer of a dragon, had to slay a personal dragon of doubt in order to give rise to his solid faith in eternal life, and he found the light of the world, even as he lost the light in his own eyes.

“If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

The slaying of dragons relates to our own fears, our own doubts, our own misgivings, and especially our judgments. It relates to our priorities, because the dragons that prosper in our own lives are the ones that we feed – with trinkets and shiny objects, or with our own blood, sweat, and tears. 

And, just like the dragon in the legend of St. George, they never affect only us. These dragons rear their ugly heads in such a way that those around us face the dragons that we feed.

“If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

The church is just a collection of many people with personal dragons. But if we ever hope to be a church on a hill that burns with the Holy Fire of God and which draws people from miles around to witness the love of God in the hearts of all those present, then it is a true necessity for each of us to slay those dragons, and allow God to fill our bodies with light and love.

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[This was offered as a sermon at an Evening Prayer with Eucharist on Wednesday, May 6th, 2026. Or, rather, a muddled and nearly incomprehensible version of this was offered at that service, as my sermon notes failed to print in their proper format, and also printed incompletely. And, I had not committed the sermon to memory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thankfully, I have a blog, and can go back and provide a remedy for the past.]