Foretaste of the Sermon to Come
A little nibble of this Sunday’s lectionary readings
Sunday’s readings are Amos 5:6-7, 10-15, Mark 10:17-31, and Hebrews 4:12-16
We are still in the Gospel of Mark and here on the cusp of Jesus’ journey to the cross it hasn’t gotten any easier. I feel like calling “the rich young man” of our text “the poor rich young man”. You have to feel bad for this fellow and probably a lot of us identify with him at least a little. He knows the law means that you must be good to inherit adoption into God’s family and to a secure place in the life to come. He focuses on that word “good” when he calls Jesus “Good Teacher”. He doesn’t know that Jesus is the Good God, the only truly good Being. Jesus spars with him points out that only God is good, letting the young man know that he’s sunk. But the young man doesn’t get it. He thinks he’s good because believes that he has obeyed all the commandments, something that no mortal could possibly do. But Jesus doesn’t call him on that, and he doesn’t point out that hate is murder and lust is adultery which makes the commandments even more impossible to follow.
Jesus takes it all the way by telling the young man to sell all his belongings, give the proceeds to the poor, and then follow him. Well this is not what the poor rich young man expected and he immediately throws in the towel and leaves in despair.
There is a lot of law in the New Testament. In fact, someone has counted it all and there are 1050 commands in the New Testament. I wonder how many people are like this man and see all that law and throw up their hands in hopelessness because they know for sure they can never measure up.
If only they’d hang around for a little while longer.
Jesus focuses on this man’s wealth because he knows it is really his god. He goes after wealth with his disciples because he knows that the culture of the time equated wealth with being blessed. I don’t think that Jesus really cares how big anyone’s bank account is, but he does care whether or not we worship it and whether we also equate our ability to gain and keep money with being blessed. That’s the flawed prosperity gospel and it will drive us to despair right along with the poor rich young man.
He gives the disciples the gospel that we want the rich young man to hear: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
It’s impossible for us to justify ourselves, to focus our whole attention heavenward and “neighborward” rather than being earthbound. We worry about our future, we spend our money in ways that aren’t necessarily the best use of it for ourselves, our families or for our world. We worry about money when we don’t have enough of it. The healthy way to look at our bank accounts is to look at them functionally, and if we can, to give our money, time or talent to God in a sustainable way since it’s all His anyway. Money becomes unhealthy when we worship it. When we worry about it. When we hoard it. When we waste it. When we can’t be happy without it. When we focus on it as a goal rather than its rightful purpose of being just another tool in our toolkit of life.
With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.
Mark 10:27
But all things, including inheriting eternal life, are possible with God because his Son became our greed, our fear, our wastefulness, our want and all of our other brokenness on the cross and then He gave us his righteousness. Thanks be to God.
