“Giving It All to Get It All” – Sermon on Oct 7, 2012
Scripture: Mark 10: 17-31 October 7, 2012
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him. He fell on his knees before Jesus. “Good teacher,” he said, “what must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Jesus went on: You know what the commandments say. ‘Do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false witness. Do not cheat. Honor your father and mother.” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “You are missing one thing,” he said. “Go and sell everything you have. Give the money to those who are poor. You will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” The man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he was very rich.
Jesus looked around. He said to his disciples, “How hard it is for rich people to enter God’s kingdom!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter God’s kingdom! 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.” The disciples were even more amazed. They said to each other, “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 said to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you!” “What I’m about to tell you is true,” Jesus replied. “Has anyone left home or family or fields for me and the good news? They will receive 100 times as much in this world. They will have homes and families and fields. But they will also be treated badly by others. In the world to come they will live forever. But many who are first will be last. And the last will be first.”
Sermon: Giving It All to Get It All Rev. Doreen Oughton
So this is a passage that freaks a lot of people out. Jesus tells a man who has asked how to inherit eternal life to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor. He then goes on to say how very, very difficult it is for rich people to enter God’s kingdom, harder than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I case you don’t know what the eye of a needle is, it is the little tiny hole that you put thread through when you sew on a button or something. See the comma on the bulletin, it is smaller than that. So hard to imagine a camel going through an opening that tiny, even if it was a toy camel, even if it was a sponge camel that you could squish way down.
Some people, of course, wonder, does Jesus want ME to sell everything I have and give the money to the poor? What do you think? I couldn’t answer for anyone else. There may very well be people who would be better able to follow Jesus if they did so. But Jesus doesn’t seem to have told anyone else to do that. He did call his apostles to leave behind their families and their businesses to follow him, but there’s no story about them being asked to sell everything and give it to the poor first. And Jesus didn’t seek him out to instruct him this way. This was his second response to the man’s question to him about how he can receive, or inherit, eternal life. Is that a question you have asked Jesus, or God? Is that something you have wondered about? Sometimes I’ve wondered about how I might be judged by God, whether I have disappointed Jesus, whether I might have to do some penance in this life or the next, but that eternal life question just leaves me almost without words to even wonder. The idea of eternity is just too vast.
So I focus on the idea of entering God’s kingdom. Now for some, that may sound like the same thing, and there is some part of it that is eternal in a way I can’t fathom. But some of it is not somewhere else, is not some time in the future, after I die, or the world ends, or any of that. Jesus said God’s kingdom is at hand. Jesus said God’s kingdom is within and among and between you. So that is the kingdom that I focus on entering, and I think that is the kingdom Jesus was inviting the rich man to enter by selling his belongings, giving all to the poor, and following Jesus. It is a kingdom where you have everything you need, and you know it. It is a kingdom where love and mutuality, peace and trust permeate everything. It is a kingdom of blessing for everything and everyone. There is no fear, no anxious hoarding, no climbing over one another to get more. I don’t think I’ve been there, maybe stuck a toe in, certainly have glimpsed it. Would it take selling everything, giving the money to the poor, letting my whole life be taken over by Jesus? Possibly… probably, even. Yes, this reading can really freak a person out.
Does it mean we will never enter God’s kingdom if we don’t do this? I don’t know. But I do believe that there are many, many paths up the mountain so to speak. I can’t imagine there is only one gateway to the kingdom, but what Jesus told the man probably is the fast track to getting there. And Jesus’ teaching about how hard it is for rich people to get into heaven, well many of us figure we are all set there, not feeling very rich after all. Not exactly living the high life. But of course many of us are in the top 1 percentage for wealth worldwide, and most are going to be in the top 25% world-wide. But what Jesus was concerned about , I believe, was not the money, not the possessions, but our attachment to them, our dependence on them, our belief that those are the things are what keep us alive and well and all right. Jesus is concerned that we put our trust in ourselves and in our things, instead of in God. Without those things we may not be as comfortable, we may not feel as safe, we may not feel as controlled and confident, but Jesus tells the rich man, Jesus tells us, that we will enter into life as God intended us to live it. And God intended nothing but the greatest good for us. God wants us to have so much more than what we can ever manage to get for ourselves. But it is a life beyond our imaging, and so we are more likely to stick with what we know.
And so I thank God, how I thank God, for Jesus’ comforting reply when the disciples lament over the impossibility of entering the kingdom. For us to do on our own, to figure it out, to obey enough or do enough or pray enough, it is impossible. But God does not leave us to ourselves. Jesus has come for us, that we might have eternal life. We may walk away from him, scared, disheartened, untrusting, but he will never walk away from us. He keeps coming back over and over to remind us of who we are, of whose we are, and that our Father has something wonderful in store for us however and whenever we get there. And so let us now move into the ritual in which Jesus reminds us again, as we share the bread and cup of Communion.
