October 10, 2021
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 said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 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.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 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.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Here is the Bible story most likely to make us groan. Whenever the preacher reads this one, folks hang onto their wallets. That’s particularly true if it’s October and the church leaders have begun to assemble the next year’s budget. I checked my files and I have eight different sermons on this one. All of them were preached during a stewardship season. And as I recall, none of those sermons had the desired effect: after listening, nobody gave all their money away, especially if they sensed the preacher wasn’t going to give away all his money, either.
That’s fair. On the road to the cross, Jesus invites this wealthy man to give it all away, not to the church, not to the synagogue, not even to God – but to the poor. Even back in the first century, smart people would know that you can’t fund a religious community if people have already given all their money away. This is probably a lousy stewardship text.
So you will be glad to know that other than the regular invitation for the offering, there will be no fundraising appeal today. No, we are going to wait on that…until next week. I want to talk about discipleship, about following Jesus. I want to talk about this rich man, for he is the only person in the Gospel of Mark whom Jesus loved. I want to talk about his sadness, his grief. And I want to talk about the confusion of the twelve disciples.
Let’s take them in reverse order. First, the disciples. If you have been traveling with us the past few weeks, you know that Mark’s Gospel describes the twelve followers of Jesus as bumbling fools. They never understand. They never get it right. You can take that literally; I take it rhetorically. This Gospel is trying to instruct us.
As Mark describes him, Jesus invites rank-and-file people to get in step with him. He doesn’t care if they are important or have a lot of education. He is not interested if they come from significant social standing. In an act of sheer grace, he calls them. He invites them. He never tells them where they are going, only says, “Come, follow me.” Where he goes, they can go.
Yet there’s a big hook to this invitation. It is best stated this way: you can come with him as you are, but you’re not going to stay that way. The journey will change you. You will be challenged to grow, pressed to reach for things that you didn’t know were necessary. Some of your values will be turned upside down. We have seen this disruption many times so far in Mark’s Gospel, and we will see it some more.
The big disruption today is money and all the cool stuff that you can buy with it. The disciples are under the impression that the more money you have, the happier and more successful you will be.
Where do they get this idea? Well, maybe they watch Jeopardy at night and salivate over those big cash prizes. Or maybe they have watched a business grow, with increases in sales, customers, and income. Or maybe they are under pressure from their spouses to keep up with the advancements and acquisitions of their neighbors: “Why can’t we move to a larger house like them, or move to a nicer town, or buy a faster camel, or get braces for our kids?” The world is always trying to sell us the notion that bigger is better and more is greater.
And to be honest, we
can find some of that thinking in the Bible. Just take one chapter – Proverbs,
chapter 10:
- “The blessing
of the Lord makes a person rich, and he adds no sorrow to it.” (10:22)
- “The wealth
of the rich is their fortress; the poverty of the poor is their ruin.”
(10:15)
- “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” (10:4)
It’s a consistent message in the Book of Proverbs: you work hard and fly straight, and you make a lot of money. So the twelve disciples can’t understand how Jesus could say, “How hard it will be for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” It’s like a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. Or as someone paraphrased him, “It’s like a Cadillac squeezing through a revolving door.” (Thanks to Fred Buechner.)
The disciples sputter, “Jesus, what you’re saying is counter to everything that the world teaches us. How can you say this?”
He can say it because he not only knows the tenth chapter of Proverbs. He knows the fifth and sixth chapters of Ecclesiastes. “I have seen a grievous ill,” says the sage. “The lover of money will not be satisfied with money, nor the love of wealth with gain. This is like reaching for smoke (5:10).” “Not only that, God gives them wealth and possessions, but they do not get to enjoy them” (6:2). Again, it’s like reaching for smoke.
“All human toil is aimed toward consumption,” says the Preacher, “yet the appetite is not satisfied.” (6:7)
Just remember King Solomon, traditionally believed to be a source for both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, a wise man who could hold a paradox in tension. The Bible says Solomon was one of the richest men ever (although there’s a good chance his assets were over inflated). He was a wise man – and a foolish man. God judged Solomon, and this was the judgment: the king was given everything he wanted. He surrounded himself with extravagance and opulence, and then everything unraveled. His life ended with a dull thud.
Do you want to end up like that? Of course now. What’s going on with the rich man who approached Jesus? He came and knelt. Not only that, he butters him up with a title: “Good Teacher.” Then he says, “How can I gain eternal life?” Not merely heaven, you understand, but the life of eternity here and now – the whole thing, the life of God – “how can I gain that?” Because it is the one thing he cannot buy. He knows it. That is his sadness.
In this, he’s not all that different from the twelve disciples. They hear what Jesus says to him, watch him slump and shuffle away, listen to what Jesus says about the struggles of rich folks, and then Simon Peter pipes up, “Hey, look here, Lord. All of us have left everything to follow you.”
Jesus laughs. “Oh Peter, of course. Anybody who leaves it all behind to follow me will gain a hundred-fold here, and eternal life then. But you’re missing the point once again. Life is not a transaction, it’s a gift. If all you want to do is scramble for the top, you will fall flat on your face. And if you are flat on your face, you will be lifted up. It’s that first-last, last-first thing.”
When I hear Jesus say this, I mull over the whole conversation. Money can be both blessing and curse. We know that. Wealth creates opportunities; we know that too. When I make the last payment on my car in two weeks, we may purchase a new chair for the living room. We’ll have the money to do that. But we will buy a new chair because the old one is worn out. That’s the burden of owning a chair, of owning or possessing anything. They have an expiration date. Just like you and me – we have our expiration dates, too.
So here’s what I wonder. Do you suppose the rich man went away sad because he had so much and couldn’t give it up? Or do you suppose he went away sad because he had so much that he was unable to receive a gift? Probably a bit of both, but the inability to receive a gift is always the greater burden.
Think of it: there are some folks who have so much, you don’t know what to get them for Christmas. By their own admission, they are over-saturated. Like my dad. At the height of his earning power, we would say to my dad, “What can we get you for Christmas?”
“Oh, I don’t need anything,” he’d say. “Well, maybe an ice scraper for my windshield.” Christmas would come. Dad would get four ice scrapers. Then we’d feel guilty, spending a buck-twenty-five on an ice scraper, so we’d each get him a sweater. He had a closet full of sweaters and a garage full of ice scrapers.
But do you know what he really wanted? A cup of coffee, a good conversation, a hug, time spent together, and an “I love you.” If there was anything he needed, he’d go out and buy it. But what he really wanted was to be loved, to have his dear ones spend time with him, to ask him for advice, to sit with him for an hour or two. That was the greatest gift. Can’t buy those things. They are gifts.
Jesus looked at the rich man. He took a good, long look … and he loved him. He didn’t love him for his money. He didn’t love him because of his designer tunic or the fancy rings on his knuckles. He loved him because he was his neighbor. He valued the man because of who he was, not because of what he had or because he wanted. He loved him because they were both fellow travelers, breathing the same air, walking the same road, and living on borrowed time. That’s who all of us are.
One of the Bible scholars taught me something new about this story. When you already have eight sermons in the file, you’re tempted to think you heard it all, but no, not the case. When Jesus looks at this man, loves him, and says, “You lack one thing,” he offers a four-fold invitation in the original Greek language. He says, “Get up, sell what you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me.”
Now, we’ve heard three of those verbs - “sell, give, and follow.” But we’ve never noticed that first verb: “get up.” That’s what Jesus says five other times when he heals somebody: “get up!” They are down, they are sick, and he says, “Get up!” So this is his invitation – “to be healed of the sickness of accumulation.”[1]
It’s difficult to follow Jesus in the worst of times. But it’s no easier in the best of times when we are loaded down with a lot of stuff. Sometimes we just need to let it go. Travel lighter. Cash it in for those who need the essentials because we are burdened with the extras. So drop it, and then, get up and get moving.
I don’t know about
you, but the further I travel with Jesus, the more I can lay down, the less I
need to carry. Whatever else you want to say about this Gospel story, it is an
invitation to freedom. It’s a reminder that no matter how much we have, there
are some things we cannot buy, only receive. And the greatest of these is love –
the love of Christ for all of us, the love that invites us to be free.
[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong
Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Press, 1988) 273.
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