PENTECOST 18

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 18
PROPER: 23B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 15,2000


TEXT: Mark 10:17-31 - As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . . . . . . .Jesus looking at him loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.

ISSUE: - This passage from Mark is definitely a radical one, as Jesus calls for the rich young ruler to sell everything, and abandon his present life for life in the Kingdom of God. Having all that the young man has till leaves him with a sense of some emptiness. The passage appropriate in its time, as it is today must not be minimized. It calls all of us in a secular world enchanted with wealth and possessions to put God and service with Christ first and foremost. Without that kind of commitment and relationship our humanity is empty, unreal, meaningless, and not authentically human.
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This passage from Mark is a really challenging one. “Go, sell it all, give to the poor, and follow me!” The preacher is tempted to try to find ways to make this radical scriptural passage more palatable. Well, Jesus maybe didn’t quite mean that you sell all and follow him. As we might want to minimize the passage, the fact remains that all of the synoptic Gospels tell this story: Matthew, Luke, and Mark. In fact, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, tells how in fact early Christians did sell lands their lands and gave it to the apostles to be used by all. An old professor of mine in New Testament Studies at the University of the South repeatedly reminded his students, “It’s our Bible, and we’re stuck with it!” It’s our faith, our Lord and we can respond or not.
A rich young man, or ruler, runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Again in this culture, questioning was usually confrontational, or aggressive. He refers to Jesus as Good Teacher, which may well have been sarcastic. Calling someone good, “buttering them up”, may have implied that Jesus was assuming too much honorable status. ‘So how do you smart guy presume to tell us how to get eternal life?’ Jesus again takes the young rich ruler on: “What do you call me Good? No one is good but god alone.” Jesus dismisses any idea that he has any honor. Only God has honor and status. He confront the young man on his own level, you know what gives eternal life, the commandments of God: don’t murder, commit adultery, don’t steal, lie, or defraud you neighbor; honor mother and father.” You know the rules Jesus implies that gives us the best of life. So the rich young ruler proudly replies, “been there; done all that since I was a child.”
“Well then,” says Jesus looking at him lovingly - he is a fellow Israelite committed to the law - “Maybe you lack still one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Or a place in the domain of God). The implication is that then your life will be an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, real human life. But the young rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Jesus humorously responds, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for the rich (greedy) to enter into the kingdom, the domain, or the realm of God!”
What is also interesting here, is that the disciples themselves are amazed. They’re confused. Who then can be saved or enter into the realm of God, if the rich can’t? The belief of the time was that the poor, the dishonorable, the blind, lame, deaf and mute, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the last to be worthy of God’s Kingdom. They were the cursed. The wealthy were seen as the blessed and honorable. They had clients that looked to them for help and favors, and thus they were the ones with status and honor, and thereby worthy of being in the domain of God. They were the ones who had, like the rich young man, the ability to keep all the laws from the time he was a child. But here again, Jesus is proclaiming a great reversal: “the first shall be last, and the last will be first.”
The rich young man wants to hold on to the stuff that gives him honor and status. You might say that he has become possessed by his own possessions and comfortable way of life. However, at the same time it is likely that by the very fact that he comes to Jesus at all, his life is unsatisfactory. He has so much, and is yet still uncertain as to what is meaningful in life, what gives a purposeful, useful, authentic, real life of value. He wants to keep the rules, the religious laws and regulations, and visit the shrines the give him the semblance of respectability. But Jesus looks lovingly at the young man, and says if you want real authentic life you have to give your stuff away and enter into a way of sharing, caring, serving, compassionate way of generosity. You have to change your priorities as to what is really important. Even the disciples are confused who can be saved?
Jesus calls the man and his followers to renewed trust, faith, loyalty, and commitment. By the grace of God all things are possible, new things can happen, and lives can be changed. Jesus Christ makes the promise: go, sell, give to the poor, follow me, and you will still have a life with more than enough in the family of God with houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions, meaningful, eternal, purposeful, authentic, real life. But the young rich ruler unable to grasp it, unable to get it, goes away grieving, lamenting, his inability to find release from his possessions to claim the real prize of the Kingdom, Domain, or Realm of God.
Today we Americans are living in the most affluent age of all time. One of our hit television shows is “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” “The Survivors” TV show has its contestants try to vote one another off the island in hopes of becoming a millionaire. The prospect of such wealth keeps people enchanted and vicariously glued to their TV sets. Who doesn’t want to win the Lottery? We also have an instant lottery for those of us what need instant gratification. We send our athletes off to bring home “the gold.” Americans are maybe profoundly obsessed, don’t you think, with commitment to solid portfolios for the purpose of security in our old age. We want to win as many chips as we can. Remember the man with the most toys wins. These comments are not meant to say that we are all bad. We aren’t. But often goodness and being religious, gives us status and respectability, like the young man in the passage. We have filled lives with so much to do and so much to buy and so much to take care of, and yet our lives often feel unfulfilled; filled lives by yet unfulfilled.
In the midst of our national affluence, in this time of building great monuments to our rich athletes at Camden Yards and the Ravens Stadium, we have schools for our children that are less than effective, old and deteriorating, and a diminishing number of people willing to work and teach in those schools. Our money and resources, our political interests are going elsewhere. We have a tragic yearning among so many of our nation’s young people for drugs to give them a “high” that nothing else in their lives can do. We are a people that have a hard time keeping our human relationships together, and sorting out our priorities and values as to what is really important beyond a big house with lots of ground around it. It may getting to the point that our good fortune, our affluence, our wealth is bordering on, if it is not already, being seen as the greediest nation of self-centered, lackadaisical, apathetic people in human history.
A self-confident, sophisticated, educated, wealthy young religious whipper snapper (a first century yuppie) comes to Jesus wanting to know what’s the deal. How do I get more? How do I get eternal life. Tell me about that old man Jesus, if you think you’re so smart. I do all the right respectable things. And Jesus, the old man, dares to say, “Sonny, you’ve got cash in your chips. You’ve got to become generous; you have to cash in your life that you think has given you such security. Give it to the poor and follow me.” Unless you are willing to die to a stifling greedy life, you can’t know what it means to be a real, authentic human being. You can’t know what it means to have a life of real purpose. Unless you die to yourself and popular feel-good psychology and popular pious respectable religion, you can’t be a follower of mine on the way to the Kingdom of God’s Domain in a world where justice prevails. Jesus sets off a depth charge in this passage that shakes the very foundations of popular thought and religious piety. He requires wholeheartedness, half measures won’t do. He requires death and rebirth. He dares to challenge his followers to put their money and their respectability where their mouth is. Cash it all in. Scary isn’t it. He even shook his own disciples. How is that possible? Maybe we need to try it. We might like it. We might even find lives that seem more human, more worthwhile, more loving, and caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like, more like the real Kingdom of God with eternal quality and substance. All things are possible with God. Instead of praying to win the lottery tonight, maybe we might pray to be changed, for a new life with Christ that leads to God.