Gospel: Mark 10:17-31
17As [Jesus] 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?” 18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You 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.’ ” 20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21Jesus, 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.” 22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It 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.” 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29Jesus 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, 30who 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. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Dear friends,
May the word of God this morning indeed be living and active – a sharp surgeon’s scalpel to remove from our hearts that which has not, cannot, will not bring life and love to our neighbor, and by proximity,…love to ourselves. Amen.
Well, as our friend Scott Wopata from the Community Action Center likes to say, “Welcome to the Stomach Ache.”
The stomach ache is that feeling when two truths or two competing goods are in conflict with each other. When saying yes to one seems to mean saying no to the other. And you don’t know what to do.
I’ve had a knot in my stomach all week not knowing how to interpret this text for you, because of all the legitimate, true, and daunting options. And to be quite honest, I don’t quite trust myself with this text. Because I can either sympathize with this rich man, as a rich man myself, and avoid the radical calling of Jesus’ economics here, of redistributing wealth. OR I can self-righteously preach against being rich and hoarding stuff, and list all the statistics that reveal how rich each one of us in this room are in comparison to the rest of the world and completely avoid the very real discrepancies and struggles around money and wealth and poverty that also exist in this room alone.
So if you’ve come this morning looking for easy answers or a clear to-do list, you’re going to be disappointed. I mean, if we all don’t have a stomach ache after hearing this passage from scripture, we probably weren’t paying attention.
So this morning, I want to walk through the text this morning together. I invite you to follow along in your bulletin or bible. I’m gonna highlight somethings. I’m gonna give you a couple of options on which way we could go with the text. This is a bit of a choose your own adventure sermon. And hopefully, we will, in the end, find our way home.
The text begins, “As Jesus was setting out on a journey…” Or really, he was setting out on the way. That’s a big theme in Mark – the way…the way of life, the way of Jesus, the way of discipleship. But in the story, Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. Which is where death and resurrection happen for him. Early Christians were called People of The Way. If we’re gonna be followers of Jesus, we’re gonna be death and resurrection people. People who trust that God can bring life out of places of death.
So, Jesus is on the way, and a man runs up to him, and drops to his knees and ask, “Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
What must I do to inherit eternal life. Now, we don’t find out until a little later, but this is a rich man, he has many possessions. And either this man has learned a lesson that we all learn at some point in life – that having stuff, having more and more things in our in our life never actually fulfills us or satisfies our deepest longing – and he’s searching for something more. Perhaps he has discovered a hollowed-outness of his life and he’s desperate for new life. Or…he is a rich man with a lot of property and stuff he’s inherited in his life and he thinks he’s entitled to eternal life too. All his friends have a brand new, just released 2021 Edition of Eternal Life sitting in the garage, and he wants one.
“Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I already have everything else…”
So this man either recognizes his deep need and is genuinely desperate for new life, or genuinely thinks he’s entitled to more in his life.
Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
But let me ask you – is there anything you can do to inherit anything? No! I was once part of a church where a matriarch of the congregation died, and the farmland was of course part of her will. Everyone assumed it would be given to the daughter. Until the will was opened and, hang on, the land was given to the niece. No one could figure out why that would be, until it was discovered that the niece had taken her slightly confused and impressionable aunt to the lawyer’s office about 6 months earlier to change the will. It was a manipulated inheritance. What can I do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. Inheritance all ways comes as a gift given, because of who you are as someone’s child, not as something you’ve done, earned, or swindled.
So, Jesus says to him, “You know the commandments…”
And many of us stop listening there. We just think, “Got it. Eternal life = doing the commandments. Follow them and you’re in; don’t’ follow them and you’re out.”
But there is more happening here than a laundry list of earning your own salvation.
There are two things to notice here. First, Jesus names the commandments that have to do with human relationships. He doesn’t name – You must have only one God, do not take the Lord’s name in vain, or honor the sabbath day. He names all the commandments that have to do with how we relate to each other. He names the commandments that are about loving your neighbor.
But then the second thing is Jesus tweaks these commandments. You fancy folks who can name all the commandments in order might catch it – 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.
But hang on – you shall not defraud…that’s not one of the 10 Commandments. Why does Jesus sneak in something about “defrauding” into the 10 Commandments? Does he know something about this man and how he acquired all his stuff? Was he like so many of the wealthy land owners of his day – did he gain all his land by unjust business practices, by defrauding people?
But the man doesn’t miss a beat – “I’ve done all that. I’ve followed all the commandments. I’ve followed the rules. Is that not enough, Jesus?” He’s either followed the rules and wants his trophy now or he’s followed the rules and it’s amounted to nothing of substance. There’s still an emptiness in his life.
And then the text says this very specific thing – it says Jesus looks at him.
Have you ever had that experience – where someone looked at you…like really looked at you. And you know they knew you. They knew the truth about your life. It can be a wonderful thing. It can be a terrifying thing.
Jesus looks at him…and loved him, it says.
In fact, he’s the only person in the gospel of Mark that it says Jesus loved. Which ironically is the only thing you can’t buy or earn. You cannot buy or purchase or do something to make someone love you.
We often (myself included) think the gospel is God loves you. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel is God knows you and God loves you. God looks at us and knows us – knows what we’ve done or not done, knows what’s been done to us – and God loves us.
Knowing this guy and loving him, Jesus tells him the truth, “You lack one thing.” Which is such a wonderful phrase to a man who appears to have everything. You who have everything….you lack one thing.
What does he lack? He lacks lack! He lacks having any need. Any need for anyone or anything else. He thinks he can acquire all the wealth he needs, follow all the commandments, and all the bases are covered. Eternal life will be his. He’ll have pitched the perfect game of life – without any need to receive anything from anyone. No vulnerability here, thank you very much. And yet that alone is the critical error. He lacks lack. To have no need for anyone else is to live an impoverished life.
And so Jesus says, “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.”
I think this is the most fascinating part of the passage, if we can stand to sit in it for a moment. What happens to this man if he does what Jesus asks? If he sells everything and gives the money away? He becomes poor. He becomes the very thing he’s worked so hard to avoid – in need of another. He becomes part of the very community that he has possibly spent his life defrauding.
Jesus loves this man, and part of love is speaking the truth and holding accountable. This guy is worried about the next life and Jesus is saying, “No, you still got to worry about this life. You have too much. You have no lack. And others have too little.” And he asks him to redistribute his wealth. To sell everything. Let me ask you: When is it that all of someone’s stuff sold and the money given away? When someone’s died, right? To sell of his things sounds like an estate sale. To give it away sounds like someone’s getting an inheritance. To do what Jesus is asking him is to ask this man to die. Or better yet, it is to tell this man, “You are already dead. Your way of life is no life at all.” Jesus is asking to die to his way of life. And if the poor is who inherits all this man’s money, doesn’t that make the poor….his children?
This man was looking to gain something, instead Jesus takes something away. He takes away this man’s life and replaces it with another life and a new human family. Jesus asked this man to die to his way of life and invites him to join Jesus’ way of life. “Sell everything, give it to the poor. Then follow me.” Follow me, Jesus wants this guy as a disciple.
But the man doesn’t do it. He walks away grieving.
And that’s the part that really makes us nervous. I think we all regularly walk away from Jesus’ invitation to follow him. I know I do. What does Jesus have to say about our wealth? Are we rich? Or is it just those in the next tax bracket who are rich? We like to work very hard to make sure this text is not about us and not about this life. When I was at seminary, everyday, parked in the parking lot was a big, bright, shiny white SUV. On the back was a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t let the car fool you. My treasure is in heaven.” Got it. So as long we don’t love our stuff too much, and we love God more – we can have as much as we want.
What do you think Jesus wants from us? What do you think Jesus wants from the wealthiest nation in the world? What do you think Jesus wants from us when the gap between wealthiest and the poorest has grown during the world’s greatest time of need in the past 100 years? What do you think Jesus wants from us when the land our homes and churches and business sit on, when the land we’ve inherited is stolen and defrauded land, which now brings us wealth?
Welcome to the stomach ache.
There is so much we don’t know about how to read and understand this text. But here’s what I do know.
I know every one of us struggles with money in some form.
I know what we do with our money and our possessions matters to God. And I think we all know that.
For as much as we either despise this man or identify with him, Jesus looks at him. He sees him….and he loves him.
I know that one of the most difficult journeys in life is learning a new way of life. Many of us have to learn a new way. Many of us don’t want too. But Jesus is calling us to a new way and it will involve struggle. It will involve loss. It will seem impossible.
But with God….all things are possible.
Amen.
Untying the Cerebral Knot 