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Boy Scout Tr #240

Scripture: Mark 10:35-46

I want you to hang on to your little security blanket during this sermon. Think about what it represents. I’ve been wondering what it represents for me all week because I knew I would be asking you to think about it. It hasn’t been an easy week. I’m hanging onto my blanket. God has been bothering me all week about my stuff. I don’t like that. I don’t like letting go. I don’t like change. I’ve had enough change for awhile. I just want to be comfortable, God. Let me have my security blanket!

Most mornings I drag myself out of bed and go for a run. Yesterday, as I often do, I just let my thoughts rush through me. I recited in my head a litany of mistakes and failures and doubts and anxieties and expectations. I embraced them, daring God to take them away. This is ME right now! Take it away, if you dare! God and I have this kind of relationship that can really test the limits. So here I am, hanging onto this blanket. And I’m not sure if I want to let go of it, even though, I’m going to invite all of you to consider letting go of yours while we sing our last song. I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I even know how.

The text I’m using is the story of “the Rich Young Ruler.” That’s what he is known as, although Mark is the only one who says he is rich, Matthew is the only one what says he is young, and Luke is the only one who calls him a ruler. It’s obviously the same story, so we preachers call him the rich young ruler.

The rich young ruler shows up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke which is a pretty good indication of how important he was, although many of you, like me, might wish he had never shown up at all. Because of him, we have one of the hardest sayings there is, from Jesus, and perhaps in the whole Bible, one that strikes fear in the hearts of would-be Christians and Christians everywhere. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Now, Mark doesn’t say right off that the man was rich, but we soon can tell. Not because his good manners. He ran up to Jesus, knelt at his feet. Not because he addressed Jesus with great reverence once he was there, “Good Teacher,” he said. But because of the question he asked. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It is a rich person’s question, posed by someone whose bills were paid, whose income was secure, someone who was not preoccupied by questions such as, “Where can I find a job?” or “How am I going to feed my family?” or “Where am I going to sleep tonight?” This man was free of those particular concerns. He did not have to spend his days trying to make ends meet in his daily life; he was free to pursue a higher level of needs, the good-life-to-come question because he was secure in the knowledge that he was one of God’s chosen people.

How did he know that for sure? Because he was blessed with wealth. Having the blessing of wealth meant that he was living right with God. Unless his wealth was gotten unfairly, of course. If wealth was gotten by lies and meanness and corruption, then it was no better than poison for those who had it. But if it was gotten fairly, by honest means, then it was seen as a sign of God’s blessing. Bestowing wealth on people was one of the ways God freed them from the daily grind in order to serve the Lord. So, this man approached Jesus with no shame about his great possessions. If anything, they were his credentials, the very things that gave him the right to ask his question in the first place. That was the fundamental belief system he was acting on, a belief system that is far from instinct today.

Jesus was not that impressed, though. Looking down at the man kneeling at his feet, he saw someone who was clearly above average and who worked hard to stay that way, someone who wanted to achieve as much in heaven as he had achieved on earth, and who would do whatever was required of him to add eternal life to the list of things that were his. Maybe the man hoped he would be asked to buy shoes for every man, woman, and child in Israel, or better yet, to throw dustcovers over his furniture and put his furs in storage while he accompanied Jesus on his travels. He saw himself as an extraordinary man who wanted an extraordinary assignment. But Jesus was not cooperative or at all predictable.

“You know the commandments,” Jesus said. “Do not do this, do not do that. Honor your father and mother.” Any first grader in Jesus’ day could have recited the rest. It was the most ordinary answer imaginable, the ABC’s of everyday Jewish life on earth. Since the man wanted something he could do, then that was something for him to do, same as everyone else.

“Teacher,” he replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.” And Jesus looked him in the eye and loved him. Just like that. This is a clue to us that the man did not answer Jesus pompously or impatiently. He said it what he said like a confession: “I have kept the Law all my life, which is how I know it is not enough. I have amassed great wealth, which is how I know that is not enough either. I am a rich man, rich in things, rich in respectability, rich in obedience to the Law. That is how I know none of those things is enough to give me the life I want. What must I do to inherit eternal life, to have the kind of life that lasts forever?

No wonder Jesus loved him. He is a seeker. He is open. He is ready for God. He is every teacher’s dream. He has come to the end of what he can do for himself. He has come to the end of what his religion and his society can do for him. All that is left for him to do is kneel at the feet of a street preacher with eyes like stars and ask him, “What must I do.” So Jesus looked at him, really looked at him, and he loved what he saw: a true seeker, who had kept God’s word and his own word, who had translated his beliefs into a life of genuine obedience to God. A seeker who knows there is more, and who knows whom to ask. That is what Jesus saw.

But Jesus did more than just look at this man. He also looked into him, deeply, like a doctor making a diagnosis. He looked inside of him to see what the matter was, where the problem was, and what the right medicine was to heal him. Jesus looked at him with as much compassion as he ever looked at anyone who was blind or deaf or paralyzed or possessed—aching to make him whole. Then he chose his healing words with care.

“You lack one thing.” Jesus said. And I am sure that the young man’s heart leaped for joy. At last! Someone who saw past what he had, to what he lacked. At last! Someone who would help him find what he was missing. Whatever it was, he would do it. Whatever it cost, he would pay for it. Whatever it required of him, he would earn it. He would do anything to add the prize of eternal life to his treasury, only it turned out to not be a matter of addition, but of subtraction.

“Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, then come, follow me.” I am sure that Jesus said this so tenderly. And it was a rich prescription for a rich man, designed to melt the lump in his throat and the knot in his stomach by dissolving the burden on his back, the load that kept banging into the lintel on the doorway to God. It was an invitation to become smaller and more agile by closing his accounts on earth and opening one in heaven so that his treasure was drawing interest inside that tiny gate instead of keeping him outside of it. It was a dare for 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 was FREE.

Now, I can think of two ways that we Christians tend to mangle this story. First, by acting as if it was not about money, and second, by acting as if it was only about money. As far as Jesus was concerned, money is like nuclear power. It may be able to do a lot of good in the world, but only within strongly built and carefully regulated corridors. Many of us do not know how to handle money carefully. It is easy to get contaminated by money’s power, and we in turn contaminate others by wielding our power carelessly—by wanting it too desperately or using it too manipulatively or believing in it too fiercely or defending it too cruelly. Every now and then someone manages to use it well, but the odds of that are about as good as they are of pushing a camel through a microchip. The story of the rich young ruler is definitely a story about money.

But it is not a story that is only about money, because if it were then we could all buy our way into heaven by cashing in our chips right now and you know that is not so. None of us earns eternal life, no matter what we do. We can keep the commandments until we are blue in the face; we can sign our paychecks over to one of Mother Teresa’s organization to help the poor and then rattle our tin cups for our supper without earning a place at God’s banquet table. The kingdom of heaven is NOT for sale. The poor cannot buy it with their poverty any more that the rich can buy it with their riches. The kingdom of heaven is God’s absolute gift, to be given to whomever God pleases, for whatever reasons please God.

So what is the catch to all of this. What can we do? The answer is: we can’t do anything. The catch is: we have to be free to receive the gift. We have got to be free! We cannot be otherwise engaged. We cannot be tied up right now, or too tied down to respond. We cannot accept God’s gift if we have no spare hands to receive it. We cannot make room for it if all our rooms are already full. We cannot follow if we are not free to go.

That was why the rich young ruler went away with great sadness and a heavy heart, if you ask me: he understood all at once, with the words Jesus said, that he was not free. His wealth was suppose to make him free, but kneeling in front of Jesus he understood that it was not so. Invited to follow, he went away sorrowful instead, for he had great possessions that he lugged behind him like a ball and chain. He was the only person in the whole gospel of Mark who walked away from an invitation to follow. He was the only wounded one who declined to be healed. Poverty scared him more than bondage. He could not believe that the opposite of rich might NOT be poverty—but FREEDOM.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” They were amazed at his words, positively astonished by them, Mark says. Jesus was challenging the social order, turning it upside down. Those who rode through the gates of Jerusalem on golden litters would find their handle bars stuck on the gates of God’s Kingdom. But so would everyone else who could not leave things behind.

I’m not so sure why the disciples were so amazed. Two of them had left their fishing nets behind, two more of them a fishing boat (not to mention their father). Another one left a lucrative career, pushing his chair away from his tax collector’s desk to follow the strange man with the burning eyes. All of them had walked away from something, but not because it was a prerequisite for becoming a disciple. It was more like a consequence, really. He called, they followed, and stuff was left behind. Not because it was bad, but because it was in the way. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Jesus called, and nothing else seemed all that important anymore. Jesus was so much more real to them than anything else in their lives that it was no big heroic thing to follow him. He set them free. That was all. It was not their achievement. It was his gift.

You have got to know that I preach these sermons because I need to hear them! There are days when threading a camel through a needle seems a lot easier than following Jesus, than trusting God, than being free. But at the end of my run yesterday, on the home stretch, maybe because I was out of breath and tired and it was more uphill than down, I hear this message in the midst of my litany of thoughts. The message was trust God, trust yourself, and you can do it. It was so clear that I wrote it down when I got home, not that I was going to forget it. Maybe I will let go of this little blanket. Maybe, I will at least try it and see what happens.

Because the question I have is can I be saved from myself? The same question put another way is: Am I brave enough to be set free?

The question has not changed much, but neither has the answer: for us it is impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible. For God, nothing is impossible—we can be set free!

Amen.