Mark 10:17-31
Presented October 11, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mitch Albom, most noted for his book Tuesdays with Morrie, has a new book, Have a Little Faith, in which he describes relationship with two faith leaders—his life-long rabbi, Albert Lewis, and an African-American pastor, Henry Covington. He includes a story from an early sermon of the rabbi’s—the story of a young girl who returned home from school, eager to show to her mother a drawing she had made in class. The little girl danced into the kitchen, where her mother was preparing dinner. “Mom, guess what?” she squealed, waving the drawing. Without looking up her mother questioned, “What?” “Guess what?” repeated the little girl, and again the mother, tending to the tasks at hand, asked, “What?” “Mom, you’re not listening.” “Sweetie, yes, I am,” the mother responded, but still not shifting her focus from the work she had been doing. “Mom,” answered her daughter, “you’re not listening with your eyes.”
Every time I encounter this morning’s Gospel lesson—the story of the one who approaches Jesus asking, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” I imagine Jesus listening to the man, not with ears alone, but with his eyes—and indeed, with his whole being. We all know them—don’t we?—those persons with the gift of really noticing us, actually looking into our eyes and grasping who we are. Jesus had that gift, and in this morning’s story, listens with his eyes to the one who comes seeking more than he can fully express.
We know it as the story of the rich young ruler, although only Matthew describes him as young, and only Luke calls him a ruler. But each of the three Synoptic Gospel writers—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—tell the story, and that very fact would suggest that surely it was a well-known story in the early Christian community, a story perhaps every bit as surprising to the first hearers as it is now. Through the centuries, many have wished that the story had not been as well-known, for Jesus’ response to the rich young ruler has cut against the grain of cultural norms in every century—norms about the ways in which wealth and material success are to be honored.
Recall the story with me. The rich young ruler asks Jesus about the pathway to eternal life. One senses that the rich man is looking, as Tom Wright suggests in his commentary Mark for Everyone, for “some tightening of definition here, some sharpening of exact meanings there.” We soon learn that he is someone who has long taken the law and its commandments seriously. And yet, something seems to be missing. Something more needs to be added, for, try as he may, eternal life, the kind of life that really lasts, has seemed to be elusive.
The ruler is little prepared for the challenging response of Jesus, a response that turns upside down everything the rich man had long held as dear. After listening with his eyes and looking deeply into the rich man’s heart, Jesus chooses his words with care. In effect, Jesus is claiming that a radical revision of the heart is what this seeker needs. “You lack one thing,” says Jesus. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). Writes Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor,
It is an invitation to become smaller and more agile by closing his accounts on earth and opening one in heaven so that his treasure is drawing interest inside that tiny gate instead of keeping him outside of it. It is a dare to him to become a new creature, defined in a new way, to trade in all the words that have described him up to now—wealthy, committed, cultured, responsible, educated, powerful, obedient—to trade them all in on one radically different word, which is free.
In a sermon based on this text, Barbara Brown Taylor goes on to make the observation that this story has been mangled through the years by Christians in at least two ways. “First, by acting as if it were not about money, and second, by acting as if it were only about money.” It is about money, for Jesus recognizes the grip that money can have upon us. “Every now and then,” writes Brown Taylor, “someone manages to use [money] well, but the odds of that are about as good as they are of pressing a camel through a microchip.” More likely, money quickly becomes an idol in our lives, so immersed are we in a culture that, in the words of Quaker author Richard Foster, is prone to equate covetousness with ambition. Hoarding, says Foster, “we call prudence. Greed we call industry.” With little critical reflection we are prone to accept the advertising world’s claims that genuine happiness is only one more purchase beyond our grasp. The materialism of the surrounding culture readily takes root in our lives; as people of faith, we need to acknowledge that Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler is indeed about money, and like that ruler we too need to examine the hold money has upon us.
But the encounter is not exclusively a story about money; it is about something far deeper, it is about our yearnings for connectedness with God and God’s vision for human life. It is about a new kind of freedom, the freedom that comes when our lives are centered upon the kingdom of God, when we seek life in God’s realm above all else. Writes Brown Taylor,
We can keep the commandments until we are blue in the face; we can sign our checks over to Mother Teresa and rattle tin cups for our supper without earning a place at God’s banquet table. The kingdom of God is not for sale. The poor cannot buy it with their poverty any more than the rich can buy it with their riches. The kingdom of God is God’s consummate gift, to be given to whomever God pleases, for whatever reasons please God.
The catch is, you have got to be free to receive the gift. You cannot be otherwise engaged. You cannot be tied up right now, or too tied down to respond. You cannot accept God’s gift if you have no spare hands to take it with. You cannot make room for it if all your rooms are already full. You cannot follow if you are not free to go.
This is why the rich young ruler goes away sorrowfully, for he understands that he is not free. He thought his wealth would make him free, but all of a sudden he realizes it is not so. Still, the possibility of poverty scares him more than does bondage. Says Brown Taylor, “He could not believe that the opposite of rich might not be poor, but free.” The rich young ruler is unwilling to embrace a life of creative insecurity, a life in which he acknowledges a new level of dependence upon God, a life in which we could make the freeing affirmation that all that he has, all that he is, comes as gift from God.
Consider what might have happened, had that rich man not heard Jesus’ words as burdensome command, but had instead continued in conversation with this Jesus who was willing to listen with his eyes as well as his ears. Ponder what might have happened if that ruler had been willing to grasp in a new way that faith is not so much an answer book as it is a resource that enables us to live creatively in the very midst of life’s uncertainties and life’s insecurity. Consider what might have happened if the rich man had allowed himself to really hear the challenge of Jesus—the challenge to live in a markedly new way, to live, as Peter Gomes suggests in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, in the very midst of life’s tension “between what it takes to be successful in the world and what it means to be faithful to a world that is not yet.” This is the tension inherent in the life of faith—the call to live by a new set of values, the call to live in the light of God’s unfolding kingdom—a realm of life in which compassion and abundant grace, justice and peace, forgiveness and overflowing goodness are the order of the day.
With the rich young ruler, we too need to heed the call to rethink what it means to put God first in our lives—to love God wholeheartedly and to serve neighbor compassionately, to live, as our Brethren forerunners admonish us, “for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors.” In his book The Call to Conversion Jim Wallis reminds us:
The first evangelists did not simply ask people what they believed about Jesus; they called upon their listeners to forsake all and to follow him. To embrace his kingdom meant a radical change not only in outlook but in posture, not only in mind but in heart, not only in worldview but in behavior, not only in thoughts but in actions. Conversion for them was more than a changed intellectual position. It was a whole new beginning.
And so it is for us as well. Years ago a guest preacher at my former congregation chose as his sermon theme, “Life is Tough, and then You Die.” It’s true—we live in times of uncertainty, we face one unanticipated difficulty or struggle or grief in life upon another—but through all of life’s ambiguity and insecurity, we find eternal life—abundant life, life that lasts—as we embrace a faith that enables us to live creatively, to celebrate the good news that ours is God who loves us through tough times and smooth times with a love that will not let us go. Through it all, we hear the call to embrace a new kind of freedom—the freedom to begin anew, loving God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Amen.