Mark 10:17-31
Presented October 15th, 2006, by J.D. Kline
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Give Yourself to God
Sermon titles are seldom long remembered, but quite some years ago I recall a guest preacher entitling his sermon, “Life is Tough and Then You Die.” At first glance it seemed a rather morbid view of life, suggesting that after we get through all the struggles, woes and challenges of life, the only thing left is death. But there is a significant element of truth in the title, for it is only as we face the tough challenges of life head-on that we experience life at its fullest, and reach the point where we no longer fear death.
Perhaps this willingness to confront life’s difficult questions, to grapple with the peculiar mix of grace and challenge in life, is what lies at the heart of this morning’s Gospel lesson. It’s a familiar story to many of us, the story of the encounter between Jesus and the character we have come to label as “the rich young ruler.” Mark begins his account by telling us simply that a man approaches Jesus, and only somewhat later does it become clear that he is a person of great wealth. In Matthew’s account the rich man is further described as young, while in Luke’s version of the story, he is described as a ruler. We put the three stories together, and behold!—we have the rich young ruler who comes before Jesus asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Eternal life. In many people’s minds, eternal life is equated with life after death, with a timeless dimension of life in the realm of heaven. Indeed, when many hear this question, they assume that the rich young ruler is looking for a quick ticket to heaven. But when a first-century Jew conceived of eternal life, he or she envisioned that time when God would make this world into a totally new place. In the age to come, all of life would be transformed and made new, justice and peace would prevail, God would be fully at rule, the entire world would burst forth into a new and endless spring. Tom Wright in his commentary, Mark for Everyone, therefore translates the rich man’s question this way: “Good teacher, what should I do to inherit the life of the Age to Come?”
Jesus responds by pointing to a number of basic commandments. Can you not hear the unspoken question in the rich young ruler’s response? When he asserts, “I have kept all these since my youth,” is it not as if he is asking for something more, perhaps just the right words, the right combination of deeds that will ensure his future. But the rich man is little prepared for what Jesus offers—the conviction that the rich man can begin now to taste life in the age to come, as he takes the risk of living fully for God. Writes Tom Wright in his commentary, “Jesus’ basic demand is not for some logic-chopping extra observance, some tightening of definition here, some sharpening of exact meaning there.” Rather, “it is for idols and covetousness to be thrown to the winds: sell all and give to the poor!”
The rich ruler is looking for something to be added, not something to be deleted from his life. And were he to consider a deletion, the last thing he would consider is his great wealth. We understand that, don’t we—we who live in a sea of materialism and consumerism. Indeed, no matter how often we hear this story, it continues to startle us. It’s one of those tales in which Jesus turns our commonly accepted understandings on their head. Much like the people of Jesus’ own day, we are prone to see material success as a sign of God’s blessing. And somehow we have gathered the notion that living in relationship with God ought to ensure us comfortable lives, lives of smooth sailing. We are tempted to believe that the life of faith comes with a protective bubble that shelters us from the troubles of “ordinary” people. But Jesus offers a very different perspective. Rather than providing life with no glitches, Jesus instead assures us that God is very often to be found in the very midst of life’s glitches!
And surely Jesus’ shocking challenge, that the rich man sell his possessions and give them to the poor—surely this was a glitch in the road for him! There’s a telling line in Mark’s account, one that does not appear in Matthew and Luke. Just before issuing the challenge to the rich ruler to let go of the hold that his possessions have upon him, and then inviting him to follow in discipleship, Mark tells us that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” It’s a remarkable combination—isn’t it?-this mixture of grace and challenge. There are many in the church who are convinced that inviting others to the way of discipleship first means that we must temper the gospel’s challenge to embrace a way of living that runs counter to the world around us, that we must first dilute the call of Jesus to embrace the things that make for peace, that we must first soften the call to seek the kingdom of God before all else. But Jesus chooses both to love and to challenge the rich young ruler, both to embrace him and to urge him along paths of greater faithfulness.
In spite of noting the loving eyes of Jesus, the rich man turns away sorrowfully. The very idea of selling his riches and sharing with the poor was more than he could bear. For he had not yet learned that faith is not so much a matter of saying the right words and adding the right forms of behavior as it is a matter of allowing ourselves to be overtaken by the spirit of our God. Eberhard Arnold puts it this way in his book, Why We Live in Community:
Faith…means being overwhelmed by God, [Faith] helps us to find trust again and again when, from a human point of view, the foundations of trust have been destroyed. Faith gives us the vision to perceive what is essential and eternal. It gives us eyes to see what cannot be seen, and hands to grasp what cannot be touched, although it is present always and everywhere.
I heard someone this past week suggest that we stand in real danger whenever we are tempted to reduce our spirituality, our deep yearning and thirst for connectedness with God, to mere religiosity, to a matter of following the rules that somehow we hope will put us in God’s favor. Whenever religiosity gains the upper hand over spirituality, we settle for mediocrity. That’s the issue for the rich young ruler, who wanted another rule to follow, but was not willing to take the risk of giving himself fully to God. He was not willing to take the risk of allowing himself to be overwhelmed by God’s abundant, gracious, and surprising love.
In her novel about the Gospel writer Luke, entitled Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell portrays the young Luke seeking God, then, when God did not provide that protective bubble, becoming embittered and turning from God, only to return in his later years as he encounters firsthand God’s gracious love in Jesus Christ. It was after that encounter that Caldwell has Luke, seemingly by happenstance, encountering the rich young ruler, named Hillel ben Hamran in her novel. For several months Hillel had been at sea, seemingly trying to forget something, but unwilling to communicate the content of his struggle, even with his family. The ship’s physician had been killed in a storm, and the captain begs Luke, a physician, to come aboard and provide medical care for Hillel.
Hillel is at first unresponsive, but when Luke speaks of his trust in God’s power to bring healing and peace to the soul, Hillel whispers weakly:
It is too late. He called to me, and I turned from him. But I did not forget him, and one day I knew I could not live without him, though what he asked of me was very arduous. So I went seeking him again. It was too late. The Romans had killed him, had nailed him on a cross like a criminal.
Luke shares the remarkable news of Jesus’ resurrection, and proclaims the promise of forgiveness. But Hillel cannot grasp the promise, remembering only that he had turned away from Jesus when invited. He then speaks to Luke of that call of Jesus to sell his possessions and share with the poor, and it is only when Luke shares similar struggles with the challenging call of Jesus that Hillel begins to sense some healing to begin in his spirit. The novelist has Luke saying to Hillel,
I did not know, as you did not know, that Jesus takes only to give, bereaves only to extend comfort, blinds only that we might see light…
I can see that you never forgot Jesus, that he haunted your life and your dreams, and you could not flee from him. Rest now, and be consoled, for you have suffered much and Jesus has forgiven you and asks only that you follow him and leave him never.
Does that not capture the spirit of the encounter between the rich man and Jesus? Wealth has a way of getting in the way of living fully “of God, for God, with God.” We who are immersed in a culture of rampant consumerism often come to believe that meaning, happiness, joy can be captured as we grasp hold of one more gadget, one additional convenience in life. But when turbulent times come, as they surely will in each one of our lives, we may well discover how little those possessions mean, and how much more central is it to ground our lives in the gracious love of our God.
Is this not the power of committing ourselves to weekly giving to the church? We give, not because of some legalistic mandate, but as an expression of our gratitude to God for abundant love. Weekly giving reminds us that there is more to life than our own personal pleasure and gratification, that we are part of something greater than ourselves. When we find ourselves overwhelmed in the face of God’s abundant grace, we are set free to respond to God’s abundant challenge—the challenge to do justice, love tenderly, embrace peace, and walk humbly in the spirit of Christ’s compassion and self-giving love.