Gospel: Mark 10:17-31
1st Reading: Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
2nd
Reading: Hebrews 4:12-16
During my
sabbatical, I have mentioned, Sterling and I were able to visit other
churches. Each Saturday evening I would explain what was the plan
for the next day. We would get up and get dressed, eat breakfast,
and then we would go to another church, but it wouldn't be King of
Kings. It would be a different church. Sterling would ask me lots
of questions. Do they have fans? Will we sing songs. Can I bring
my Magnadoodle? About the third week I was explaining all this to
him he asks, “Mom, are we going to visit ALL the other churches?”
Then on the way there he said, “Mom, are you Pastor Aimee?” It
was a question I struggled to answer. I wasn't preaching and
teaching. I wasn't visiting the sick or taking phone calls from
people asking for help paying bills. I wasn't really listening to
anyone's story of faith. At that time I said, “Not right now, but
I'll go back to being Pastor Aimee in the Fall.” That seemed to
satisfy him. About the second week back here, I came to wake him up
Sunday morning to get him ready for church and I was wearing my
clerical collar and he said, “Mom, you're Pastor Aimee again!”
He was pretty excited.
It is interesting
to think about how we define ourselves. Sometimes we don't realize
it until it's gone. Retirement can bring up all sorts of identity
questions as folks try to figure out who they are how they want to
spend their time now that they aren't at work all the time. Losing a
spouse can mean redefining ourselves. Some may not have realized how
deeply they had internalized that role of husband or wife or
caretaker. Sometimes giving up the keys or downsizing to move to
assisted living means some of us are evaluating again what do we
really need to live. What gives my life meaning? What defines me?
What can I live without?
This week I heard
another version of the Gospel that goes like this: As Jesus was going
on a journey a man ran up to him and said, "Teacher, what must I
do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus looked on him with love and
said, "Go and give up your partisan worldview, your
self-righteousness when it comes to Biblical interpretation, your
contempt for those politically and theologically different from you,
and give yourself to those you find difficult to live with." The
man went away crestfallen, for he had great love for his correctness
in all these things, and great love for his partisan identity.
Here's this man in
the Gospel of Mark. He runs up to Jesus. His first step is to
assume how Jesus defines himself. He calls him, “Good,” maybe to
butter him up. Well, Jesus is self-assured, he doesn't need
anybody's compliments. Jesus makes it clear that he isn't there to
promote his own goodness, but to direct people to the goodness of
God.
It seems that this
guy is pretty sure that he's satisfied all the requirements. You
shall not murder. Check! You shall not commit adultery. Check!
You shall not bear false witness. Check! You shall not steal.
Check! You shall not defraud. Check! Honor your father and mother.
Check! Oh, the Ten Commandments, that's a cinch! Check! Here this
guy has done all this, but something brought him to Jesus. Somehow,
something was missing. Was it Jesus' final pronouncement that he
needed, telling him he passed the test? Was it some struggle within
him that didn't quite sit right? Something brought him there. There
was something still missing.
Maybe he was asking
the wrong question. He said, “What must I do to inherit eternal
life?” Maybe what he should have asked is, “What must we do to
inherit eternal life?”
In the German
language, there is the word for you—du, and there is the word for
you plural—sie, meaning all you all. In English you is the same
for one or for many so sometimes we miss the subtleties in German or
in the Biblical languages. In the reading for Amos today, it says,
“Seek good and not evil, that you may live.” We tend to take
this personally, “I should seek good so that I may live.” But it
really says, “Seek good and not evil, that all you all may live.”
This isn't about any individual, but about the whole group. If you
don't live, I don't live. I can't fully live until my neighbor does.
I can't fully live until that prostitute down on 82nd
fully lives. I can't live until people don't have to fear their
power is going to be turned off, until people have enough nutritious
food to eat, until the trees are no longer suffering in the drought,
until the salmon can find their way safely upriver again. Our lives
are all tied up together.
Jesus turns this
man from the “I” to the “we.” He focuses on his relationship
with other people. That's what the commandments help us do. What is
my relationship with my neighbor? How do I relate to those around
us. But the commandments are not a checklist, or a game you can win.
They are a journey of relationship. Honoring our parents is a
continuum. Sometimes we do it more, sometimes less. Sometimes we
honor them by doing things differently than they would. Even murder,
adultery, and stealing are a continuum that Jesus says you are on if
it even crosses your mind to do any of those things. Our whole lives
we are trying to figure out how to live in a way that is true to us
and true to the whole of all those God has made. How do we live in
respectful way to everyone? How do we seek the LORD? How do we
seek what God seeks? How do we journey with other people also on a
journey?
Because our journey
of faith isn't a checklist, there is always one more thing we could
do. Since the man asked for extra credit, so he can be assured of
eternal life, Jesus is going to give him an assignment that will make
him question whether God and the welfare of his neighbor are central
to his life, or whether his things are defining him. The man who has
it all is told he lacks one thing. He doesn't have it all after all!
“What is it?,” he wants to know! I must have that, too, to add
to my collection. That thing is not something he can own. It is
something permanent, unlike all those other things he's got. His
assignment is to let go of his possessions and quit letting them
define him and take his focus, money, attention, and care. “Go
sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.”
The truth is, most
of us are not willing to do this. It would be irresponsible if we
did. Others would be left with the burden of caring for our needs.
We would be less able to visit the sick or distribute food or knit
warm hats.
I read a review
this week on the New York Times website for a book called “Strangers
Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and
the Overpowering Urge to Help.” This book is a series of profiles
of extreme do-gooders, people who put themselves on a very
restrictive budget so they can give most of their money to the poor,
who forgo small pleasures, measuring their cost in the number of
malaria nets or school kits that could be purchased with that money.
The book is getting great reviews and maybe I'll find time to read it
this year. The reviews seem to point out that serving others doesn't
always mean selflessness, but can become a contest to win or a test
to pass. Serving can be a selfish act, their acts of goodness held
over the heads of friends and family. That doesn't mean they aren't
doing great good, but made me think of how we define ourselves and if
we don't sometimes make ourselves the savior instead of Jesus.
Does it have to be
all or nothing? If we were Jesus, we would give it all up and suffer
and die. But we aren't. But we value the one who did. He did it
for us. He wasn't here to make himself comfortable or to party down.
He was here to give life and to help us realize what life is really
all about. So when the time came that we lost everything we ever
owned, when our parents or spouse or children died, when our friends
abandoned us, we would still have hope. And we do. You meet people
all the time who have lost it all, and far from being bitter, they
are often grateful. People I know who suffered a miscarriage, are
grateful for the children they were able to carry to term or the
child they were able to adopt or their nieces and nephews they were
able to care for, or the school children they were able to mentor.
People who have moved into assisted living realize they didn't need
all that stuff. The only thing they want is a visit from someone who
cares about them. When people have lost a home to a fire, they are
just glad that no one was hurt. When people make it through a car
accident or surgery, they seem to have a real sense of what matters
in life.
“Go sell what you
own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven.” When we are anxious and afraid, when we are not sure who
we are and are searching, Jesus directs us to look to others, and
change our mindset from me to we. And I am going to congratulate you
all on this. I see you doing this in your volunteer work here and in
the neighborhood. Many of you do so many things throughout the week
to help those in need. We do this every time we work on quilts that
go to local nursing homes, when we work on a house for Habitat for
Humanity, when we stock the shelves or go shopping for the pantry,
when we participate in cleanup day here at church, when we take in a
rescue animal, when we write a letter to our legislators. We are
taking our time, which is precious and putting our treasure not for
ourselves, but for others. And that is heaven for us—it is peace
of mind, it is tangible hope. And it is heaven for the other
person—if one parent is educated about why a baby is crying and a
baby is spared shaking, if a person is wrapped in a warm quilt, if a
child finds food the weekend in his backpack and a warm hat at
Christmastime, that is heaven in that moment, a piece of abundant
eternal life. Not many of us are going to give it all up on purpose,
but together we can have the effect as if many people had given up
all they own. Then our lives are not all about me, me, me, but
instead about us, us, us.
I hope you will
find yourselves encouraged this week by Jesus words, rather than
going away grieving. On our own, we can't give up everything and be
Jesus. There is only one Jesus and he lived and died to give us
life. In thanks to him, we give away our time and money and skills
to help others. In response to him, we try to keep our priorities
straight. And because we know the love and peace of Christ, when the
time comes and we lose it all, we are still at peace because we
belong to Christ and rest securely in his love, and no one can take
that away from us.
I like to think
that this grieving was not the last word for this fellow who spoke to
Jesus in the Gospel. It touched him deeply. Surely he looked at his
possessions differently from that day forward. Perhaps he stood at
the foot of the cross not long after this. But even if nothing
changed, Jesus looked at him and loved him and that's what God does
for us. What seems impossible, that we would put God first, may be
possible in that God loves us and put us before himself. Somehow we
find ourselves standing next to Jesus with our checklist and he
crumples it up and says, “Let me love you. Give me a hug.” And
in that moment, nothing else matters. It isn't long before we have a
deeper joy and we don't need the latest thing and we can live more
simply and we can live with Christ's love being shared in a free
exchange.
I don't know about
you, but I can't bear the burden of the world. When I let in all the
world's pain, I get overwhelmed and afraid. But Jesus bore that
pain. He could do it, because he was there from the beginning to see
how things got this way, and he could see the end of the story, how
God's love would unite us all and bring peace. So I have to let
Jesus carry that pain, and to allow in as much of it as I can take
without going into despair, knowing Jesus can bear that with me and
that we all bear that together, and that God is working through all
of us to bring peace and new life to us all.
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