Sermon for August 26

The reading 

Mark 10:17-31

17 As he 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?" 18 Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19 You 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 He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." 21 Jesus, 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." 22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

23 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!" 24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 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." 26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" 27 Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

28 Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." 29 Jesus 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, 30 who 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. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

The message

Last week, we started our look at Stewardship with Jesus’ message about the conflict between faith and possessions during the Sermon on the Mount.  There, it is worry that interferes with faith, our struggle to trust God’s word over the material stuff we accumulate, save, store, protect and put our trust in. This is as true today as it ever was. This week, I just read an article  (one of 1000’s out there) about the huge amount of cheap stuff people are buying online, most of which no one needs and most of which has harmful effect on our environment, mental health.  

This week, the conflict between faith and possessions come up in response to the question of a rich man, what must I do to have eternal life.  Jesus, 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."  When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Now, what stands in the way of faith is money, well more specially, an obsession with wealth, a fear of living without it, grief at its loss.  I am not going to focus too much on that since, its sort of obvious and there is something much more important here, the question of how we you inherit eternal life.

This conversation between Jesus and the rich man happens right after the story I use at the beginning and end of each school year at Rainbow with our preschool children. People were bringing little children to him for him to bless but the disciples scolded those who brought them.  But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”  After he took the children in his arms, Jesus placed his hands on them and blessed them. 

Having shared this story of Jesus welcoming the children so many times, I have had a lot of time to think about it but I honestly never thought about it in terms of how it relates to the encounter with the rich man that comes immediately after it. Mark’s Gospel is extremely fast paced and sometimes there is just no clear connection from story to story, in this case I think there is a connection. The first encounter with Jesus and the children is about who enters the kingdom of God (those who receive it like a child).  This is one example of Jesus becoming angry, indignant. This shows the importance of what he has to say. The only examples of Jesus anger are times when the good news is being misinterpreted or overshadowed, in this case by his own disciples, a public witness Jesus would not allow to pass. 

This one comes at the heart of the Gospel and Jesus must correct them. Other than some very rare instances, where young people have to fend for themselves and do, children are dependent on others for food, shelter, protection, all of the things needed to sustain life.  Like children depend on others for life, we all depend on God for eternal life.   Salvation is not possible without God’s intervention, we cannot buy it with money, claim it with great arugments or earn it with good deeds (if we could why would Jesus have died and rose again).  Children have an easy time understanding that, they do not earned great wealth to take pride in, they do not have a long list of good works and accomplishments to present, they have not studied the scriptures and history of the church extensively. 

The next story, today’s reading, is also about who enters the kingdom of God.  This starts off with a strange question, a rich man asks Jesus “ What must I do to inherit eternal life”.  Most of the questions people ask Jesus are more concerned with concrete, daily concerns “it is lawful to get divorced” , “how should we pray”, “should we fast”.   Jesus answers this question about eternal life twice. These answers are complicated,  a possible mix of sarcasm, humor and exaggeration, ultimately teaching that the law is ridiculous as the way to salvation.  Right after this, and completely oblivious to the last conversation,  James and John have a dispute with the other disciples over status, then we get to the start of Jesus passion, death and resurrection.   

Jesus first answer about eternal is you know the commandments and lists a few.  Perhaps because this rich man accumulated his wealth in a questionable way, Jesus adds, You shall not defraud, (the other ones are all part of the 10 commandments.)  In response to this, the man says “I have kept all these things since my youth”.   Now Jesus gives the second, extreme part of the answer,  Go, sell all that own, give it all to the poor and come follow me.  This is Jesus invitation for the rich man to enter the kingdom of God right then and there, to live depending on God alone, without worrying about protecting your stuff, caring for your money or the jealousy of others.  Now, instead of okay, ill get right on it, the rich man leaves quietly, grieving , there is nothing he can do to inherit eternal life.   Of course, there are people who have done this, who have given up, away great wealth and followed Jesus, Desert monks who leave everything behind to pray and study, St Francis are examples that comes to mind. 

Now, Jesus tells his disciples, “how hard will it be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God”. Jesus disciples who have given up everything, not exactly great wealth but whatever they had, to follow Jesus, start to get uncomfortable,  After all, Jesus has spoken so openly about the  arrival, welcome and power of the kingdom of God, now, we get to the fine print on the admission policy, it just got a whole lot more difficult to enter.  Did even they do enough to get in, how much more would Jesus ask of them.  

Jesus, seeing his disciples were confused and anxious, repeats the answer, this time with an illustration “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.  Now comes the question that is the whole point of this conversation, “then who can be saved (we can add by their works or behavior)”.  Everything, so far, has escalated, leading the disciples to think  “barely 2 or 3 people in the world can be saved by their work”.  Remembering the first story about Jesus welcoming the children, we notice that when Jesus talks about the camel and the eye of the needle, he addresses his disciples as children, the ones who would inherit the kingdom of God, the ones dependent on God’s grace, not their stuff or their work.  That salvation by grace through faith is how with God all things are possible.

I remember a workshop in school where we learned about test taking.  One of the odd lessons of the class that was not really part of anyone’s test taking approach, was to read the whole test first, look through it, learn the parts, judge the time it would take for each section, see if there were essays, etc.  At the end of the workshop, we were given a test (you had to get a certain grade to pass).  The long questions were incredibly hard fill ins (not even multiple choice) from some grade and subjects way above ours and we only had about 10 minutes to complete it. Everyone got started, ignoring the lesson about read the test first (which was in the instructions too), we just didn’t have time.  At the end of the test, there was some fine print, To get 100, leave the test blank, just write your name on top of each page. You will lose 2 points for each question answered (regardless of the answer being right or wrong).  The only way to fail was to complete the entire test, to try and jam a camel through the eye of a needle.  This blinds us to simple instructions.  This is the confrontation between our exhausting desire to do it ourselves and to rest in Gods promise.  Some people have even looked at the camel going through the eye of a needle and tried to do that.  First was the suggestion that the eye of the needle was the name of a gate in Jerusalem which Jesus was referring to and a camel could easily walk through (this fails when you know that gate was built almost 1000 years after Jesus said this).  A more modern attempt to answer this was to say an early camel embryo could easily go through the eye of a needle (which fails when you realize Jesus says an actual camel, not a microscopic group of cells that will one day may be a camel)

Here at the edge of Jesus passion, death and resurrection, he invites people to get out of their own way.  We learn that Jesus answer to the disciples question, who can be saved by their work, is no one, There is even finer print, You are saved by Grace.