Mark 10:17-31
There are a lot of different ways of
examining a Bible passage, and one of them is to ask yourself as you read it or
hear it, “What words jump out at me?” In
the gospel reading for this morning, there was one of those words, for me at
least. The word is “inherit”. The rich young man asks Jesus,
“What
must I do to inherit eternal life?”
There
are a lot of other ways that I would have put it, and a lot of other words that
come to mind first. “What must I do to
gain eternal life? … What must I do to receive eternal life? … What must I do
to earn eternal life?” All of those come
to mind easily. Matthew [19:16] has him
ask,
“What
good deed must I do to have eternal life?”,
which,
as I say, seems to be the way most people I know would put it. However, both Mark and Luke have him using
this word “inherit”. “Inherit”? That’s odd.
It has to say something about the mindset of the questioner.
I would guess that inheritance must
have been part of this man’s general atmosphere or environment. He is identified in all three of the gospels
where this story is told as being rich.
People in any class deal with inheritance at some point. The family farm passes down from generation
to generation, and do things less tangible, like a sense of humor or the size
of a nose. It’s only where there’s some
level of financial stability, though, that people tend to think about
inheritance, and only where there’s abundance beyond stability that it becomes
part of someone’s everyday thinking. My
guess is that this man must have fallen into that category, and that Jesus
caught onto that.
The thing about such a level of
wealth is that it can bring a degree of entitlement with it. Inheritance goes to someone, usually, as a
result of birth and biology. When Jesus
replied to the man, he started by speaking to him as part of the people of
Israel, a people who over centuries had come to share a special awareness and
relationship to God. He tells him that
if he wants to inherit, he should be true to his family’s values.
“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.’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept
all these since my youth.’” [Mark 10:19-20]
Still, the man had a sense
that there had to be more to it than that, which is why he had sought out
Jesus.
He was right. What
mattered was not only that he was true not only to the ways of eternal life,
but to its source. Eternal life, God’s
kingdom, is not something for us to possess.
It is something that possesses us.
Robert Frost wrote a poem, “The Gift Outright”, about the
difference discovered in our own nation, between controlling the land and being
a part of it.
“The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.”[1]
Frost
speaks about finding “salvation in surrender”, and that is exactly what Jesus
asked of the rich young man. If he would
discover the meaning of eternal life, he had to trust that it was an everyday
reality, more real than his possessions.
So those other possessions had to go.
“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.’” [Mark 10:21]
If
the rich young man had really known the commandments as well as he claimed, he
would have known that those very commandments say,
“I,
the Lord your God, am a jealous god.” [Exodus 20:5]
That
means that God asks all of our love, not just part of it. God asks all of our loyalty, not just some of
it. Whenever something else enters the
picture, it is likely that we will be asked to choose, as this man was. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I
cannot.
It’s great to have the things that
we have. It is a good idea to ask,
though, not just how much they cost but if there is some expense for them that
comes not from your pocket but from your soul.
There’s a quote (that I haven’t been able to authenticate) that says
“The Dalai Lama was asked
what surprised him the most;
he said, ‘Man, because he
sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to
recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he
does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the
present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then
he dies having never really lived.’"
I
have a feeling Jesus would have agreed with that. What he said was this:
“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either
hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Therefore I tell you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not of more value than they? And
can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all
his glory was not clothed like one of these. But
if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is
thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What
will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for
all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these
things. But strive first for the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things
will be given to you as well.” [Matthew
6:24-33]
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