First United Methodist Church of Reno

⁶Seek the LORD and live, or [the Lord] will break out against the house of Joseph like fire, and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it. ⁷Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground! ….

¹⁰They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. ¹¹Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. ¹²For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate. ¹³Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.

¹⁴Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. ¹⁵Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

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.’” ²⁰[The man] 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 [the man] 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.

Today’s lesson from The Gospel According to Mark contains one of the most misunderstood sayings of Jesus. The disciples themselves are recorded as being appalled at what he had to say. In part this is because of a folk theology that they’d all inherited which insisted that a good and just person – a person who keeps the Law – should be rewarded in this life and in the life to come. Otherwise what’s the point of keeping the covenant? These poor men and women who’ve chosen to follow Jesus didn’t embrace poverty as some kind of virtue. They were on the bottom of the social order of the ancient world already. They followed Jesus, at least partly, because they hoped that they would be rewarded – some wanted that to happen in very tangible ways when Jesus finally brought about the kingdom of God on earth. But to be told that part of the reward you’re hoping for is a “stumbling block”^³ toward getting any reward at all is very confusing.

It’s hard to imagine, but it must’ve been even more disturbing to Jesus’ followers than it is to the average member of most churches today who still holds out hope that “clean living” and going to church is going to get them some modest reward in this life and at least not be an impediment in the life to come. We’re forced to ask along with those first disciples, “Then who can be saved?”

We ought to resist the temptation to read back into this little story and make it a contemporary critique of American culture. We ought to take the story in its most plain and obvious sense – which begins with the fact that Jesus is speaking to a just and honorable man. There’s no indication that his soul is sick from the poison of theft or money laundering; and it isn’t likely that he’s struggling from our contemporary consciousness of structural economic injustice and so should consider his riches ipso facto unjust. Here’s a young man (albeit a very rich man) who’s worked hard all of his life, who’s sincerely tried to live an upright and industrious life. In his time and place his riches would be considered to be a testimony to his virtue. He has ample evidence to support the effectiveness of his moral accomplishment as well. But he wants more; and he wants to keep it all.

It’s worth noting that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him….”^⁴ Jesus finds him commendable because of the seriousness with which he’s approached his search for the ethical life. Jesus in fact really wants to give him the one thing that he lacks, the one thing that he still needs to finally end his spiritual search for shalom.^⁵ In the paradox of the gospel message, a person can only win by surrender and only gain by forfeiting everything.

“You lack one thing,” Jesus tells him. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…then come [and] follow me.”^⁶ The response given to Jesus by this young man can be described in just three words: “He walked away.” This guy was at least bothered enough by what Jesus meant that the whole scene became very uncomfortable for him. Just by looking at the expression on his face you’d know that he understood and what the cost to him would be. Again, the problem is not that this guy has a lot of money, but that he has an attitude about his money. It’s the most important thing in the world to him.

We’re more likely to reject Jesus’ words outright: “This has to be some kind of metaphor.” But the words are there: “Sell everything you’ve earned; and give it to the poor.” The poor – in California alone that’s more than 13% of the entire population of the state,^⁷ well over 4 million people.^⁸ In other states it’s much worse. And we’re one of the wealthiest nations on earth! The poor – with their food stamps and no insurance coverage – are told to come up with their own solutions to their problem. Jesus’ words mean no room for that new Lexus, no room-sized entertainment center, no wide-screen high-definition TV with six hundred channels, no pool and spa in the back yard or lifetime membership at the local health club, no 3-million-dollar house gated away from all of the violence and crime down in the valley. Holding on tightly to everything that money can buy, we lose our eyes, lose a sense of proportion. Such wealth brings on the kind of blindness of someone staring directly into the face of the sun. The demand for more is infinite. What you accumulate over a lifetime of ownership has the possibility of owning you.

When you do have great wealth, great accomplishments, it’s hard – almost impossible – to have any other identity than one that you’ve come to consider is a self-made identity. Your worth, your self, your righteousness, becomes defined by your accumulated goods – which may be money, but it could also be power, position, family, a record of real philanthropy…the list is endless. The list also never ends. You’ve always got to add something to it. In the nature of things the list can never be complete. There will always be others who have more: more wealth, more power, more moral superiority. This path through life is marked by ceaseless comparing, contentious competition, and self-righteous judgmentalism. This life has everything! …except the richness of shalom.

Jesus is not adding anything to be done by a man who’s been doing his religion all of his life (and very well, I might add, by the standards that his community would apply). Jesus is simply calling him to drop all of those things that he’s come to depend upon and in radical trust stand with nothing before the God who can give him everything. This is his invitation to discipleship. It’s not about praising the life of poverty or vilifying the wealthy. It’s following Jesus, not the renunciation of wealth, that will lead him to eternal life.

The truth is all of us have areas in our lives that we are content to give over to God. This guy in Mark’s story was willing to conform his entire life to the Ten Commandments. But there was one thing he was not willing to do. Each of us may have one thing that we will never surrender to God. It may be my ambition. It may be my standing in the community. It may be the admiration of my peers. It may be my deep-seated hatred for somebody. God can have everything in my life, except this one thing God cannot have. God can have my service and sense of duty, my neighborly love, my time and talents…but this one last thing? No way.

The curious thing about Jesus, and the life that he calls us to, is that he always leaves the choice up to us, but promises that we will find God when we give up this one thing that is the hardest for us to surrender. The uncertainties, the doubts and struggles with which we torment ourselves, that rob us of our peace and hopelessly block our ability to follow Jesus, aren’t just located in intellectual conundrums; they’re at this one point in our life that we refuse to give up. For the young man in our story it was his money. What is it for you? What is it for me?

The rich man wasn’t looking for much more than you and I are: he was looking for life. He’d kept the statutes of the covenant ever since he was a young boy, but now, faced with a concrete choice, his many possessions possessed him. He was a rich man, but not a wise one. Again, the point is not the condemnation of possessions. But neither is the point some kind of glorification of poverty, suffering and death. As I understand Jesus he stands firmly opposed to all of these and to any such forces that would continue to dehumanize people. The biblical meaning of wisdom, finally, is knowing what goodness is and doing it. Period. It’s the kind of life-giving love that moves the heart of Jesus and the kind of living courage to do likewise no matter what the cost.

These are questions and concerns that we face every single day; and I don’t doubt that at times they’re critical, complex, subtle, challenging, difficult – often all of those things and more. They deal with nothing less than the upbringing and education of our children and grandchildren, our investments, our employment and housing, our social, religious and political involvements and attitudes. We are faced every single day with hard decisions. It is hard to enter the kingdom of God. It is hard to know what “the will of God” is and harder still to do it. True wisdom will often mean that we’ve got to risk it all – our securities and our positions – that we may have to choose less so that others may have what they should.

The bottom line is not in what we accumulate by way of our possessions, but in what we invest our lives – mind, body and soul. Will our possessions possess us? Or when we’re put to the test, as Jesus tested this rich man, will we be wise enough to leave it all and follow him – even if it kills us? These are scary questions. And we wonder along with those first followers, “Then who can be saved, for God’s sake?”^⁹ If we listen deeply enough, freely enough, we’re given Jesus’ assurance that “for God all things are possible.”^¹⁰ We might even find our salvation in this lifetime. So, what is the one thing more that we’ve got to do?

1 The people of northern Israel were on a journey that was destined to take them to the wrong destination. So Amos brings to his prophetic pronouncements a variety of literary forms and poetic images to get them to head in a different direction – to simply “stay the course” will lead to disaster. This reading is one that we all need to hear, even today. The consumer culture in which we live would have us simply pay no attention to the fact that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer – the two happen at the same time; in fact, one requires the other. The danger of extravagant wealth is that it may continue to blind us to the realities of economic injustice.

2 In the ancient world, even more so than today, wealth was a sign of God’s favor (from Deuteronomy 8: 18 – “…remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant….” And, a bit more flamboyantly, in Ecclesiastes 10: 19 we read, “Feasts are made for laughter, wine gladdens life, and money meets every need.”). What matters most to us in our lives, and where it may be taking us, is the subject of both of our readings from scripture today. The paradoxical tension between what we’ve accumulated and what we have to give up, then might lead us to discover what true wisdom – “living the good life” – really is.

I hope you notice as well here (at least in this more ancient record of the gospel) how Jesus refuses to have his nature equated with the nature of God. If what Mark remembers him saying is true, though, then how can we continue to accept what the church came to claim in its formation of the Doctrine of the Trinity?

5 As always I use this rich Hebrew term in its fullest sense: health, wholeness, well-being, harmony…peace – even a kind of self-actualization which would mean becoming everything a person was meant to be as a child of God.

The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA

October 15, 2006