First Reading:
12Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. 14Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Second Reading:
17As 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?
18Jesus said to
him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God
alone. 19You 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.'
20He said to him, Teacher, I have kept all
these since my youth.
21Jesus, 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.
22When he heard this, he
was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23Then Jesus looked around and said to his
disciples, How hard it will be for those who have
wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
24And the disciples
were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them
again, Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of
God! 25It 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.
26They were greatly astounded and said to one
another, Then who can be saved?
27Jesus looked at
them and said, For mortals it is impossible, but not
for God; for God all things are possible.
There are a whole bunch of different kinds of churches and generally speaking, they do a lot of things differently from one another. They have different music, different traditions, different prayers. Different churches think different things are important. Some focus on preaching, others on ecstatic experience of the Holy Spirit, others focus on conversion… getting people to give their life to Christ and still others look at social justice issues as their calling. The things that we do as churches, and the ways that we do them arise out of our priorities and they reflect our understanding of what it means to follow Christ. The diversity of expression is a good thing but it's also good that at least in some ways we agree… after all, Jesus invites us to put first things first. One of the things that I've noticed in just about every church is that we're pretty interested in drawing people in. In fact churches practically fall over each other to welcome in the newcomer… We don't want to turn anyone away or talk anyone out of coming to church.
And as odd as it may seem, in today's gospel story we have an account
of Jesus doing just that… it seems like he's doing his best to
talk someone out of following him... The young man was obviously
searching for something… people who are complacent or content
with their situation don't usually run up to anyone, let alone a
controversial religious teacher and kneel at their feet searching for
answers to existential questions. But this young man recognized that
something was missing from his life. So in the story, that's
precisely where we find him, kneeling at the feet of Jesus and
asking, What must I do to inherit eternal life?
And as we
might expect, Jesus, who is a teacher and a rabbi begins by directing
the man's attention to God… No-one is Good but God
alone… and next to the commandments You shall not murder,
you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal…
and so
on and so forth. To which the man replied, I have done all these
things since my youth.
Which I interpret as being approximately
equivalent to: Yeah, I know all that, and I already do all that and
still it seems like there's something missing from my life. I was
hoping you could give a more insightful answer.
And Jesus does… The text tells us that Jesus looked at him,
loved him and said You lack one thing; go sell what you own, give
the money to the poor and then come follow me.
On the one hand
it's exactly what the man wanted because it cut through all of the
pretense and everything superficial… but on the other hand it
couldn't have been further from what the man wanted because it
challenged his way of life. It's like our first reading today
said the word of God is living and active, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints
from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the
heart.
One minute the man was asking about the way to eternal
life and the next minute he was walking away grieving. It wasn't
because he was rich. It was because of his attachment to his
possessions.
I'm not going to preach a sermon on the impossibility of being wealthy
and being Christian, though I do think it's more difficult than most
of us realize. I'm not going to preach about the necessity of living
a simple lifestyle though I do think that's a better idea than most of
us are willing to embrace. I don't believe that this story
establishes some sort of a rule that everyone has to give away
everything they own in order to be a disciple of Jesus because I don't
think Jesus was primarily about writing new laws… for the most
part he was much more interested in setting us free from oppressive
laws (Funny how the church has mistaken that over the years…).
But I am going to preach on priorities and integrity, because I think
that's what this scripture pairing is about. The word of God is
alive and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It cuts all the
way through, to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow
come together. It judges the desires and thoughts of the heart.
Jesus Christ is constantly calling us to follow him, to commit ourselves to the journey of growing in health, in wholeness and in fullness of life. And yet we all have things that hold us in place that stand as challenges and get in the way of our spiritual growth. Over and over again the gospels tell us stories of people changing their old way of life to follow when Jesus calls. For some it was leaving their nets or their business, for others it was their families, and still for others it was patterns of behavior. For everyone there are things that change when we begin to follow Christ… and at every moment, there are more things that could change if we want to follow Christ further.
There is an old story of the way people used to trap monkeys in some parts of Africa. They would tie a bottle to a tree… the opening of the bottle was big enough for a monkey's hand to fit in, but not a monkey's fist. They would drop some peanuts into the bottle and a monkey would come along, reach into the bottle and grab a peanut… but with a closed fist it couldn't get its hand back out. I don't know if the monkeys were unwilling to let go of the peanut, or if they never realized that letting go of the peanut was even a possibility and they couldn't conceive of doing it; but regardless, the monkey would be trapped and easily caught, primarily of its own doing.
The text tells us that Jesus looked at the man and loved him. When he
looked he saw what was at the heart of the man's resistance. And then
in love Jesus also helped the man to see it. You only lack one
thing.
And it was clear that Jesus spoke truth and also that it
affected the man deeply because he was shocked and went away grieving.
Now every time I've heard a sermon on this passage, it assumes that
the man grieved because he either couldn't or wouldn't leave his
possessions: perhaps he was unwilling to let go or perhaps he never
realized that letting go was even a possibility; and he wasn't able to
conceive of doing it. Either way, if he left under those
circumstances, then when he did, he walked away still trapped by his
possessions. He no longer owned them… they now owned him.
But the text is actually a little bit vague. It says that he walked away grieving because he had many possessions. It is possible that he walked away grieving because he realized that he was now faced with a difficult choice. In the traditional interpretation, he has to let go of the image of himself that said he was willing to do whatever it takes to seek eternal and abundant life. But he could also have been grieving that he was about to let go of the possessions and wealth which had become his safety net and which he was so accustomed to having… When he fell at the feet of Jesus and began to question, his spoken priority was seeking eternal life, and now when it came time to act… the question became; would his actions match his stated priorities? Would he be able to take the risk of letting go of what held him back in order to walk toward following the Christ? Whichever decision he made, it wasn't going to be easy… so he walked away grieving.
Now this passage focuses on wealth and possessions, not because they're the only trap that's out there but because they were his trap. Money won't be the only issue or perhaps even the primary issue for many of us. In fact I think it's a little ironic that the lectionary text for this week is so directly tied to money when I had planned to focus the stewardship campaign on questions of life and not only finances. Christian stewardship is a much bigger question than how much money you plan to give to the church next year. Stewardship is about how you use and interact with, and care for all the gifts God has given… So a part of what it means to be a good steward, is to allow our relationship with Christ to enter into every arena of our lives… To examine our own stated priorities, our intentions, our goals, and also to take a look at how our actions line up with them. When we find a discrepancy between the two, we just may have found a trap that we're already caught in. So we can begin to ask the question: What is it that I'm holding onto so tightly that it gets in the way of my own spiritual growth? And we can also ask the flip-side of the same question: What is it that I could do to help open myself to spiritual growth… to allow work of the spirit in my life or in my community?
You see growth can happen in a lot of different ways but learning to trust God almost always takes being outside our comfort zone. Sometimes we're thrust outside our comfort zone… due to illness, or injury or a death of someone close or some tragedy. In those times we are forced to trust because we don't have any other choice. Other times we're able to recognize something that we're holding onto that gets in the way of growth and we find ourselves outside our comfort zone when we let go of it and trust that God will be able to help change our patterns of thought and behavior so that we don't need that in the same way anymore. And sometimes we find ourselves outside our comfort zone when we choose to take a risk… to go out on a limb and try something new… You see, we have all been given some measure of resources… Some of us have money, some of us have time, some of us have energy and gifts and skills and talents… and if we're really lucky, some of us might even have a combination of those resources that could be able to be used for God's purposes. And when we examine our own intentions and actions we do it in order to allow them to be transformed by the Holy Spirit working in us.
Realistically, we have every opportunity in the world to avoid change
and avoid commitment — If it's true that the word of God is
alive and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It cuts all the
way through, to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow
come together. It judges the desires and thoughts of the heart,
We
can choose to not ever read the Bible or let it's message affect our
lives… In this day and age it's relatively easy to avoid
silence, reflection, meditation and prayer. We can start talking any
time the still small voice of God comes into our awareness and we can
ignore the nudges of the spirit. When something is missing there are
plenty of places to turn rather than kneeling at the feet of
Christ…
And yet, like the man in our gospel story, we know that there is something more. We've heard the promise of freedom and fullness of life. And so friends lets become like the man… kneeling at the feet of Christ seeking… What must I do to inherit life… What gets in the way of my growth… what might I be able to do to open myself to God's grace and God's promises? For when we ask God to open our eyes, we won't only see the traps we're in, but we'll also have the opportunity to move from them… toward abundant life by stepping out of our comfort zone and learning to trust the living God. This is my hope and my prayer for stew season. Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on October 11, 2009.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
