What Must I Do?

 Mark 10:17-31

October 10, 2021

 

            When I moved to Oklahoma in 2011– which is where I lived before I came home to Tennessee – I went ahead of my family, so I could get started in my position at the church and find a place for us to live. I stayed at the home of some of my new parishioners, who were out-of-town when I arrived. Another parishioner met me and helped me get me settled. After she left, I unpacked a few more things and went to bed early. Around 2 in the morning, I woke up sick to my stomach and with a terrible pain in my chest. I got up. I walked around. I laid down. I got up again. I kept thinking that the pain would go away or at least ease up. It didn’t.

I finally realized that I probably should go to the emergency room, because clearly something was wrong. The problem was that I didn’t know where I was. It was my first night in Shawnee. I had no idea where the hospital was. I barely knew where I was, and I couldn’t think clearly enough at that time of the morning to figure out how to get myself to the ER. So, I called 911. When I explained my symptoms to the dispatcher, they sent an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, they didn’t take me the hospital right away. They hooked me up to the heart monitor installed in the ambulance. It turns out that I was not having a heart attack – thankfully – but I was having a gall bladder attack, which can make one feel like one is having a heart attack.

The EMT’s who worked on me were super nice, and as we had some time while I was hooked up to monitors and we weren’t going anywhere, I asked them questions about the town, their job, and most importantly to me at that moment, the best place for me to buy my first smart phone. Should I go to Verizon or AT&T or some other vendor? What was their suggestion? What kind of smart phones did they have?

Yes, that’s right, I asked about where to buy my first smart phone. And the next day, after I’d finally gotten some sleep and felt a little better, I went and bought one. It was something I had been planning on doing when I returned to full-time work, and I couldn’t wait a minute longer.

Now, smart phones are ubiquitous. But back in 2011, smart phones were still the big new thing and I wanted to get in on the excitement. I realize today that my phone is, what Milton Nesbitt said just recently, an electronic leash. But back then, I was so excited to have a smart phone. So eager to join the ranks of smart phone users, that even when I was on a heart monitor in an ambulance, wondering if I was having a heart attack or not, buying a smart phone was foremost on my mind.

A smart phone is a thing, just a thing, a material, finite possession. But I wanted one. And to be honest, I like to have things. I wrote this sermon on my laptop, which is another material possession, but it serves me in getting work done and in searching the internet – for knowledge and … more things. As much as I appreciate having the ability to have things, I get anxious at times that instead of me possessing my things, my things start to possess me.  I don’t know if this particular anxiety was behind the man’s question to Jesus, but I do think it was anxiety that drove him to kneel before Jesus in our passage from Mark’s gospel.

Although he’s commonly referred to as the “rich young ruler,” Mark does not describe him this way. In Mark, he is just referred to as a man. What we can surmise about him is that he had some wealth because Mark tells us that he many possessions. Wealth was considered a sign of blessing in that time and context, but it seemed that his wealth wasn’t adding up to a contented life for this man. 

He came to Jesus and knelt before him. Usually when someone knelt before Jesus, they were seeking healing – either for themselves or someone they loved. Perhaps this man wanted healing as well. Perhaps he wanted healing from a deep, gnawing fear that nothing he could do, even following all the commandments to the absolute letter, would bring him the eternal life he desired. Perhaps the man was seeking reassurance about just that. He wanted to know that he was living a life that was good enough, that what he did to be a good person was good enough. But there was a dis-ease about him. Something was missing in his life; something was worrying him. Was it only that he wanted to know with certainty that he was good enough, or did he sense that something about his life did not add up?

Whatever it was that gnawed at him, whatever it was that caused him anxiety, he seemed to understand that this man, Jesus, would have the answers he was looking for. So, he runs to Jesus and kneels before him, asking,

“What must I do?” 

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus answers by asking the man why he would call him “good?” No one is good but God alone. As if Jesus suspected that the man had gotten the difference between good and goods mixed up. Jesus goes on to reiterate the commandments, assuming rightly that the man knew the commandments as well.

The man certainly knew them, and reassured Jesus that he had been keeping them his whole life, since he was a child. This begs our question, what did the man want to hear from Jesus? What answer was in search of, what anxiety drove him to put this question to Jesus?

If it was reassurance the man was seeking, I suspect Jesus’ answer did not satisfy or help him.   

“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.”

I think this a prime example of not asking a question that you really don’t want to know the answer to. The man clearly did not want this particular answer. In fact, it would have seemed liked a shocking, even radical answer to receive. As I said, wealth was considered a sign of divine blessing. If you were wealthy, you must be doing something right with God. But Jesus tells this young man that the opposite is true. The way to inherit eternal life is to sell all that you own, give the profits away to the poor, then follow him.

The man can’t do it.  He walks away from Jesus grieving, sorrowful it would seem that he would have to give up his many possessions. 

What must I do?

We live in a society where the material – material possessions, material wealth – are given high value.  To not own the latest, the greatest, the newest and the most improved is to somehow fall short of being the best person you can be. None of us are completely immune to this. None of us are exempt. I know that I can live without a lot of material possessions, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want them. I lay strapped on a gurney in an ambulance, not asking about the state of my heart, but instead about where I could buy my first smart phone. I’m not immune to the lure of possessions.

Does wanting that phone, does that buying that phone mean that I have about as much chance of getting into heaven as that camel does in going through the eye of the needle? I don’t know. 

Maybe material possessions weren’t all Jesus was referring to here.  Maybe he wanted the man and all who would listen to consider what it is that impedes them in their life of discipleship.  What stops them from answering the call to follow him?

Perhaps Jesus was saying that it isn’t what we own, but what owns us that throws a stumbling block in our paths when we try to follow Jesus. What is it that owns us? What do we need to root out of our lives so we can follow? Is it a thing? A person? Is it a belief or an ideology or a behavior? Is there something in our lives that could literally come between us and our call to follow Jesus? Is it our fear?

What must we do?

It seems to me that there is a tension in this passage that we cannot ignore or make light of. We live in a world caught of enormous wealth and equally enormous scarcity, and that divide is only growing exponentially. Poverty is literally and figuratively all around us. It camps out on our doorstep. The number of people who are hungry, homeless, and hurting haunt me. But I still wanted … things.   

I want to be a disciple. I want to be faithful. I want to follow Jesus. But I want the comforts that are out there as well. I know how lucky I’ve been, in my opportunities, in my lifestyle, in the riches I’ve been given. But could I give up everything up and follow? What owns me?

Tension. What we must do and what we want. What we are called to do and what we can do. How to be in the world and yet not of the world. 

This is the tension of this passage. Jesus continues to call us through the gospel, reminding us to look first at the least of these, and calling us to accountability through his words and actions. To whom much has been given, much is required.

There is no easy, all-sufficient way to resolve this tension, and I don’t have any quick answers to offer. I know that I’m not going to leave here today, sell my car, pack up and sell our house and give everything to the poor. Are you? But it does seem to me that leaving this text without feeling unsettled, without feeling a sense of dis-ease, that all is not well with us, means that we have somehow missed the radical nature of Jesus’ words.

This passage is about a man looking for reassurance, and in his story, I suspect that we look for our own reassurance as well. What must I do? At first glance, that reassurance doesn’t seem to be there. But listen again. Listen carefully. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. His love for him didn’t end even when the man turned and walked away. Jesus loved him. When the disciples, who are just as shocked by Jesus’ words as the man, ask,

“Then who can be saved?”

Jesus gives us a far greater reassurance than any we could imagine. 

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

For God all things are possible. I know that I can be a better steward of God’s gifts then I am. I know I can be a better disciple. I can do more. But I also know, and this is not an attempt to let myself or any of us off the hook, that sometimes I can only do the best I can within my limited realm of possibility. There will always be more need than I can meet, and those needs will always have to be held in tension with what I want. My realm of possibility is limited.  But God’s realm isn’t. That’s the good news. That’s the good news of Jesus’ words. For God all things are possible. The world and all that is in it, including us with our conflicting wants and desires, belongs to God. For God all things are possible. Our hope lies within the realm of God’s endless possibility. 

To that, let all God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.