Here is Sunday’s sermon:
Introduction
The Lectionary seems to be doing a good job of throwing
challenging passages our way as we progress through Mark’s Gospel. Last week it
was Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce. I know some preachers who majored
on the verses at the end of that passage about welcoming children rather than
tackle the issue of divorce. And one told me she was glad to have a harvest
festival to take instead!
But we’re hardly let off the hook this week with the
familiar but worrying story that is traditionally known as ‘The Rich Young
Ruler’. Well, there is a big part of that would rather not tackle this passage.
But we have to confront these stories – or, better, let them confront us.
Clearly it’s a story about true and false discipleship. Let
me share with you some of the challenges and insights that have come to me this
week in preparation, with the prayer that we may be built up and built together
as Christ’s disciples.
1. Rules
Years ago as a Local Preacher I remember taking a service
where I must have preached quite forthrightly about the ills of society.
Afterwards one dear old lady came up to me and said, ‘If we only brought back
the Ten Commandments and lived by them we would be all right.’
Well, the rich man of this story was a ‘Ten Commandments’
man. Ever since his youth – his bar mitzvah,
when he became morally responsible according to Jewish tradition, he has obeyed
them. He hasn’t murdered or committed adultery; he has not stolen or borne
false witness; he has neither defrauded nor dishonoured his parents (verses
19-20). He’s an upright member of society. If only we had more people like him
in our world, it would surely be a better place. He would certainly have
pleased the elderly lady who heard my sermon over twenty years ago.
But Jesus’ devastating reply is, ‘One thing you lack.’ He
hasn’t done enough! What more could it be? In a few minutes we’ll see that the
‘one thing’ is not another rule to keep. At this point it’s enough to note that
Jesus is saying to this sincere enquirer after eternal life that keeping the
rules will not get him what he wants.
In the Old Testament keeping the Ten Commandments didn’t of
themselves bring salvation. They were given after
salvation. Before God ever spoke the first commandment – ‘You shall have no
other gods before me’ (Exodus 20:3) – he said, ‘I am the LORD your God, who
brought you out of the land
of Egypt, out of the
house of slavery’ (Exodus 20:2). Salvation has already happened. Now obey in
response to salvation. Following the commandments – keeping the rules – rightly
done is a sign of gratitude for salvation, not the means of opening the door.
I guess Jesus knew the heart of the sincere young man. He so
wanted to be accepted by God that he – yes, religiously
– did his spiritual duty with meticulous care. You can be good, says Jesus, and
still miss the boat. You can be religious, he says, and not find eternal life.
And at other times this controversial rabbi was welcoming tax collectors and
prostitutes into his Father’s kingdom, not devout people.
He still does that. How many are the good and worthy people
in our churches, pillars of society, who haven’t found Christ and the kingdom
he proclaims? Their moral conduct is impeccable. Their ethics are beyond
reproach. Yet, as one of my most perceptive members at Broomfield pointed out the other morning at a
Bible study, they may never have made a commitment to Christ.
What’s the problem with a ‘keeping the rules’ approach to
faith? It leaves no room for the grace of God. And that is what we desperately
need. However good we are, none of us can match the standards of God. There is
a painful beauty in Jesus’ response to the rich young man, and it isn’t just in
the words:
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and
said, ‘You lack one thing …’
(verse 21)
He loved him. And
the young man has no room for receiving the love of God in Christ. Why should
he need the love of God if he is already good enough?
So what is the one thing he lacks?
2. Surrender
Jesus says,
‘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.’
(verse 21)
So the one thing he lacks is to sell everything and give to
the poor in order to follow Jesus. Is this what is required of us all? Is this
how we must all respond, rather than just keeping the rules? In the late 1970s,
Ronald Sider, the Canadian
Christian who wrote the ground-breaking book ‘Rich
Christians In An Age Of Hunger’, said that what ninety-nine percent of
western Christians needed to hear ninety-nine percent of the time was, ‘Sell
what you own, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then
come, follow me.’
It’s certainly the kind of prophetic challenge a money-mad
consumerist society needs to hear. And sadly, we Christians allow ourselves to
get infected by it. So Ronald Sider has a point.
But at the same time there is not a unanimous call for
disciples to sell all their possessions in Scripture. Sometimes wealth is seen
as a blessing from God (although it’s not an infallible sign – sometimes wealth
is the consequence of exploitation). Jesus had wealthy women in his circle of
followers who helped fund his mission (Luke 8:3).
The problem with making renunciation of possessions an
infallible guide to discipleship is that again we are reducing the life of
faith to a list of rules. What Jesus requires is our surrender to him. The call
to discipleship is a call to enter into a covenant with him. For his part he
gives salvation, eternal life, entry into the kingdom of God.
For our part, we promise, as indeed the Methodist Covenant Service says, to
live no longer for ourselves but for him.
And that, as I see it, is the problem the rich young man
wasn’t prepared to address. He lived a good, upright, sincere life. But he
wasn’t prepared to surrender. He would not cede control of his life to Christ.
I once heard someone say, ‘God is a capitalist: he only believes in takeovers.’
The young man wasn’t willing to be taken over by Christ.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of the kingdom. On
the one hand the kingdom
of God means freedom from
sin in terms of forgiveness, growing holiness and the ultimate conquest of all
sin. It means healing, and it means purpose in life. But at the same time
living in the kingdom is a call to live under the reign of God.
So this story might make us review our own commitment. Are
we people who have surrendered our lives to Jesus Christ? If we have not yet
said, ‘Lord, your will not mine in my life,’ then we have not yet become a true
disciple. We are like the rich young man who would not accept terms of
surrender.
We might also be people who have made that basic commitment,
but we then find there are certain areas of our lives where we are struggling
to accept the reign of God. The story doesn’t compromise the need for surrender
but we do hear the heart of Jesus as he calls us to turn over the control of
our lives to him: ‘Jesus, looking at him, loving
him, said …’ It is with a tone of love that he makes the same call to us.
He is not here to exploit us or demean us, but he calls us to surrender out of
love. It delivers us from self-centredness to the higher cause of the kingdom.
Is there some issue today where Jesus is telling us he needs the final say in
our lives?
3. Rewards
The rich man goes away in shock, but the disciples stay.
Jesus tells them it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God,
but what is humanly impossible is possible for God (verses 23-27).
But this confuses Peter. He’s seen Jesus challenge the rich
man. Jesus has said how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom, but that
it is possible with God. ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you,’ he
complains (verse 28). He seems to be saying, ‘What’s in it for us? We’re not
the rich, and we answered your call to surrender. We’ve done it to the extent
of leaving our loved ones behind and going wherever you go.
Jesus replies in kingdom
of God terms – partly in
terms of the current age, in which the kingdom has partially come but still
faces evil, and partly in terms of the age to come, when God will reign without
opposition.
In the current age, he says, there will be both blessing and
trouble: blessing in terms of people and places (‘houses, brothers and sisters,
mothers and children, and fields verse 30) and trouble (‘persecutions’, verse
30). In the age to come there will be the unadulterated blessing of eternal
life (verse 30).
Yes, says Jesus, you have suffered loss for me and you will
also suffer opposition in this life for being my disciples. I’m not going to
disguise or water down what following me will cost you. But you will be
blessed: you’ve left family and their property, and you will be blessed with
the new family of the kingdom.
So there’s a frightening thought: you are sitting in the
midst of Jesus’ blessing to you – the church, the fellowship of God’s people.
You may not always feel they are much of a blessing! But Jesus intends us as a
community to be a blessing to one another. He has given us to each other as the
kingdom community. It is central to our calling to live out together so rich a
common life that we are ‘brothers and sisters, mothers and children’ to each
other. We cannot be a religious club. We cannot be spiritual billiard balls,
just bouncing off each other from time to time.
No, we are to be as family to each other. Christ rewards us
not only directly with the blessings of eternal life; he also rewards us
through others – through our brother and sister members of his family. One of
our regular prayers needs to be, ‘How can I be a blessing to others today?’ And
we must equally be willing to receive blessing from others. We are not
self-sufficient islands; we have been made to be dependant upon God and
inter-dependant with each other.
And how important this is when we face pressures and even
persecution for naming the name of Christ. But that means it is too important
to be left to the time of trouble. Right now we need to cultivate a culture in
the church of mutual support, encouragement and edification. The kinds of
church programmes where we are unable to develop deep relationships with one
another are seriously destructive to the call Christ issues to his church.
If you want a serious positive example of a Christian
community that has intentionally built itself together and then found that a
strength in a time of terrible trials, then look no further than the Amish
community in Pennsylvania that suffered the shootings of some schoolgirls the
week before last by the milk truck driver. As one of the few non-Amish who was
allowed to attend the funerals observed,
they have taken seriously Jesus’ command not to resist the evil person (Matthew
5:39), knowing this left them vulnerable. But in the face of the wicked
tragedy, one bereaved grandfather said, ‘It is
important to teach our children not to think evil of the man who did this.’ In
their weeping they have looked for reasons to be thankful. Their families and
intimate relationships have been infused with prayer and love, and so one
grieving mother, tending the body of her daughter in an open coffin, told the
other children through tears, ‘See, she’s with God in heaven now.’ And they
immediately offered forgiveness to the family of Charles Roberts, the murderer,
and invited them to the funerals. One of the Amish leaders said, ‘God has
offered us forgiveness for our sins in the work of Christ on the Cross, but we
must accept that gift to enjoy it. Once we’ve accepted it, then we can share it
in small measure with others.’
It is not for us to give the blessing of eternal life in the
fulness of the kingdom. But in the present kingdom where we co-exist with the
kingdom of darkness it has to be a priority that we so live out church that it
will be said of us as it was said of those early Christians: ‘See how they love
one another.’ Could it be said of us?
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