The Call to Live

I looked so bad this morning that the congregaton sent me home. I can't blame them, my head cold is pretty bad and Marie has a touch of pneumonia. Still, this sermon would have been heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berrryville, Arkansas on Sunday October 11, 2009, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

From time to time, you might be curious about what is involved in preparing the sermon, the Word of God interpreted. Let’s begin here, that’s what I start with. The sermon is the Word of God interpreted and if it is anything less than it is wholly and holy inadequate. The purpose of the sermon is to share the Truth of the Word of God (with a capital “T” here) with the people of God in this time and place; and the first priority is God’s word before all else.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

“We must not be afraid to spend the time and effort required [to become acquainted with the Holy Scripture as the Reformers knew it, as our fathers knew it]. …How are we supposed, for example, to achieve certainty and confidence on our actions and in our personal life and in the church, if we do not stand on solid scriptural ground? Not our own heart but God’s word decides our path.”[1]

Yes, time and place matter, but the Word of God matters more than the time and place where they are heard. Only through the Holy Spirit by critically reading and seeking the Word of God in the written Text, in the Holy flesh or in the spoken word; only by being in the word of God will we live Bonhoeffer’s words achieving “certainty and confidence on our actions and in our personal life and in the church.”

So this, this particular piece of scripture gets dicey. If I bring this message of the Good News of Jesus Christ poorly, I will make you shut it out considering it to be what we call in the United States very, very bad news. There is a “Gospel of Prosperity” heard in churches around the world that is as pervasive as the “Law of Prosperity” heard in the time of Jesus. In Jesus’ time and even long before, those who were rich, or as in this case “have many possessions,” were considered to be very blessed by the Lord God. Where the world and the common interpretation of the Law saw this man as blessed, Jesus saw what this man lacked and told him what to do about it.

Most Presbyterian Churches are blessed to have members of power and wealth, but there is a slippery side to power and wealth. Marie Bolerjack tells the story of a Mississippi man who wanted to join the Presbyterian Church in their town because that’s where the “movers and shakers” were. While I do not see that man’s motivations in this part of the Body of Christ, I will not say it’s absent from every church in America, particularly the Presbyterian.

So yeah, this gets a little dicey.

An unmeasured look at this Word reminds me of the title of an old song by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “Give Me Your Money Please.” A more measured take would be from the 1990’s; “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But being the guy reading the scripture, and being the guy who will later say, “Do good and share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God,” it is perfectly reasonable for you to hear “Give Me Your Money Please.”

The man runs up and kneels before Jesus and asks him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to inherit? The man tells our Lord that he has been a good boy, and a good man. He has kept the law; the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.

Jesus loves the man and tells him what he did not expect to hear, he begins with this little phrase, “you lack one thing.”

So here’s the good news, the man is doing all of the right things, or at least he’s doing nothing wrong. He’s keeping the law; he’s evidently not cheating anyone. He honors his parents and doesn’t covet his neighbor’s ox or ass. I assume he gives his tithes to the temple and keeps a kosher table. He’s a good doo-bee, but he lacks one thing.

That’s when Jesus drops the bomb.

“Go and sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The man goes away grieving because he has many possessions.

I love the word “grieving” in this passage. I don’t have a lot of stuff, not compared to many who “chase the American dream;” but I love my books. I love to read them. I love to study them. I love to use them in work and in play. I love to organize them. I love to discuss them. I love to teach them. So if I were told I had to give away all of my books, I am sure that I would ultimately ask, “You mean this one too?” Surely as I would ask that question I would hear “Especially that one.” I get that kind of grief.

Jesus looked around at his disciples and said, “How hard will it be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

Yes Paul, “Especially that one.”

But did you notice what Jesus did here? He shifted the focus of the dialogue. The man asked what it took, what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus shifts the talk on life to talk on the kingdom of God.

Eternal life and the kingdom of God are two distinct things, if it were not so, Jesus would not have made the distinction. But is there a difference between these distinctions? Let me share a couple of stories with you.

This look at eternal life comes from the Kiester, Minnesota Courier Sentinel:

A little girl was distraught that her cat had been hit by a car and killed. Her mother, seeking to console her, said, “Well, honey, at least you know that your cat is now with God.” The girl screwed up her face, thought for a second, and said, “I don’t think so. What would God want with a dead cat?”[2]

This look at the kingdom of God comes from the C.S. Lewis classic “The Screwtape Letters.”

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is “finding his place in it,” while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on earth, which is just what we [the “we” here are demons of which Screwtape is a manager] we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.

The truth is that the enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in his own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else.[3]

The little girl and Screwtape have the right ideas. What does God want with a dead cat? What is eternal life if we are dead? It is in our living here on earth that we have our foretaste of the kingdom of God. The Lord has given us a place and it has little to do with our place in the world. Our life in the kingdom has little to do with power and importance, good work and an agreeable home. As we strive for the things of this world, we often feel that the important things in life are slipping away, and this is Lewis’ point. As we strive for life on earth, the kingdom presses on us oh so much more, making us realize that it is not stuff that makes life worth living.

Life worth living is about relationships. Kingdom life begins with a relationship with Christ and flows into relationships with people and the world around us. In a way, this is what Jesus was telling the man. Eternal life is something we receive, but it is in the kingdom of God that we live.

The man asks what he has to do to receive the inheritance. Let me ask you, what have we ever done to receive an inheritance? Our inheritance laws are a little different from those of ancient Israel and Judea. In that day and time what you had to do to receive an inheritance is to be a son. To inherit eternal life we are called to be disciples of Christ Jesus, this is how we join the family. We become heirs of the eternal life. There is nothing we can do to earn an inheritance. An inheritance comes from family and we are the family of God.

We are called to be members of that family, we are called to take up our cross and follow God. We are called to become citizens of the kingdom. These passages from Mark make it clear that one of the crosses we all have to bear as citizens, particularly those who have much, is dealing with how we use our wealth.

We’re back to the dicey part.

So here is a point worth making, we are to give, but if we don’t give well it can be worse than if we never gave at all. This is perhaps our most difficult undertaking. You know, anyone can just give it away, but giving it away well is a completely different matter.

Living in central Austin, the Seminary warned us students and family not to answer our doors to strangers; seems pretty obvious. Honestly, as students on financial aid, if we answered the door for every person who came by for a handout, we would soon be opening a café. The only difference between our set up and a regular restaurant would be that nobody but us would be picking up the check. There was one woman in our complex who did open her door and give and give and give; until it became a revolving door. It made her so anxious that it ruined her health and a barrier formed between eternal life and the kingdom of God in her life.

Say every single one of us liquidated our stuff; land, property, cars, the whole kit and caboodle; say we took this pot of funds and went to any one of the hundreds of homeless shelters between Memphis and Fort Smith. Suppose we tossed the accumulated millions of dollars into the air giving it to the poor, what do you think would happen? Honestly and horribly, I can say from experience, that the next millionaire would be the owner of the closest liquor store owner. I don’t say this to be cruel; I do say it because unfortunately it is true. I have seen people begging for money in Austin and Kansas City and walk away when someone offers to buy a sandwich instead of giving cash on the barrelhead.

To give well is important in the call to give. Giving poorly, as these circumstances show us, is giving dangerously. This is the difference between giving and good stewardship.

We never hear what happens to this man with many possessions after he goes away. Here’s what I would love to have happened. I would love to believe that the man did as Jesus commanded. I would love to hear that he liquidated his assets and helped the poor. Maybe he gave to the temple, maybe the Salvation Army; maybe he started a foundation or a school. Maybe he started a school for kids in places where schools are uncommon. What if he funded the Qumran community, sitting on the library board perhaps? This is my hope; that he followed Jesus without ever leaving home.

And maybe, just maybe, we never hear from him again because he is so busy living his life in the kingdom of God, he no longer worried about eternal life. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, maybe he was able to achieve certainty and confidence on his actions and in his personal life and in the church by standing on solid scriptural ground with God’s word deciding his path.

Life in the kingdom of God is better than a dead cat any day.

[1] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, I Want to Live These Days with You, a Year of Daily Devotions, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, page 294.
[2] From the Keister, Minnesota Currier Journal, cited in http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1593
[3] From C. S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters” cited in Christianity today found at http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1034.