Text: Mark 10: 17 – 31 /
Message by Rev. Carol Kniseley
The
question the young man asked of Jesus is really a very good one. In fact, it’s every person’s question when
we get right down to it.
“What must I do…Jesus…to inherit
eternal life?”
It
was a sincere question…being asked by someone who seemed to have all the
answers. To look at him was to look at
someone at the top of his game. He was
rich…in every sense of the word.
Young…good looking…dressed in the finest that money could buy. He had amassed great wealth, or so it seemed, and in so doing was
thought by many to be highly favored by God.
Because that
is one of the things that wealth meant in his day. His riches were his credentials, the very
things that gave him the right to approach Jesus in the first place.
Notice
that Jesus was not impressed. “You
know the commandments,” he says, and spouts off half of them. Do not do this…do not do that. Honor your father
and mother. Any confirmation student
could have easily recited the rest.
Seeing how the man wanted something he could “do”…then that is exactly what Jesus gave him, and us. Only to hear the man reply with absolute
honesty that he had kept all of these since his youth. He has come to the end of what he could
do for himself. It is then that Jesus
turned…and taking a real good look at him, the Gospel says…he loved him.
What
Jesus saw in the rich young ruler, I suspect, is something that he sees in many
of us sitting here today: true
seekers…folks who have honestly kept God’s word to the best of their ability
and applied that word to their life in genuine obedience to God. In other words, Jesus is in a sense…talking
to the choir. The rich young ruler…if
he were here today…would be one of us.
One of God’s people…who knows
there is more to life than what he has experienced thus far…and who knows to
whom he must go to find the answer.
“You
lack one thing,” Jesus says, and surely the man’s heart must have skipped a
beat in anticipation of the long awaited answer. At last!
Someone who sees past what he has to what he lacks and who will help him
find what is missing.
Whatever
it is, he will do it. Whatever it
costs, he will pay it. Whatever it
requires of him, he will earn it. He
will do anything to add the prize of eternal life to his already full treasure
chest…only he never anticipated that it was not going to be a matter of simple
addition…but instead, of subtraction.
“Go…sell what you own…and give the money to the poor, and then you will have treasure in heaven. Then come…and follow me.”
Of
all the words that Jesus could have said, those are not the ones we want to
hear. Mark’s Gospel says the young man
was absolutely shocked and went away not happy… but deeply grieved… for he had
many possessions.
There
have been times in my life, when I must admit to having wondered if the story
of the rich young ruler is not that of our own. There have been times when I look around at
all the wealth we as a nation have accumulated…and wonder if we have done all
that we can do…to help our fellow human beings? Have we truly given all that we can
give? Can any of us say that we have
given it all away to the point that we are actually diminished in some way
because of what we have done?
In
hearing the story of the rich young ruler, I can’t help but think of something
that John the Baptist once said when looking at Jesus one day: “I must
decrease…and he must increase”. You
want to know how a camel can fit through the eye of a needle? In the same way that you and I are able to
enter into the
What
the rich young ruler failed to grasp was that the
If you ask me, that is why the rich young ruler…went
away so sad. All at once, he understood that he was not
free to go. Which makes him the only
person in all four Gospels to have received a personal invitation from Jesus to
follow…and he turned and walked away.
I know what you are thinking right now. The college tuition…the mortgage
payment…the doctor’s bills…caring for an aging parent…saving
for the future. I know. It’s the same for me. There are days when threading a camel
seems easier than following Jesus.
So…who can be saved you might
ask? And who is brave enough to be free? The question…hasn’t really changed all that
much. But then again, neither has the
answer. For you and me, it is
impossible. But not
for God. For God…all things are possible. Now go…and follow the Lord. Amen