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
I like to start with something that has a little more pizzazz than this. I like starting with stories that either take an unexpected turn or stories that seem completely unrelated to the Gospel I had just read. Every pastor has their own way of beginning a sermon, but this one was illusive.
I mean these are some pretty heady readings. Hebrews tells us that Jesus has been tempted and tested just like we are yet is without sin. So let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence. At first look from a cautious point of view that doesn’t sound like such a good idea. Jesus was tried, tempted, and tested just like we are everyday, but he didn’t succumb to Satan’s antics. Jesus has been through the same things we have, and he did much better. How can we approach that?
The gospels are loaded with stories of how Jesus was tried by Satan after forty days in the wilderness, his family when they thought he was nuts, the Presbytery—er, Pharisees, and finally by his own. Yes, saying “by his own” I’m talking about Judas, but Mark’s gospel has shown us that many of the disciples who were named were named because they were making a mistake. Peter, even after he is declared to be the Rock of the Church, told Jesus how to be the Messiah.
So we should approach boldly, with confidence? With our sins and his sinlessness we how can we approach Jesus at all? If we approach with confidence had better make sure we don’t approach in arrogance. Otherwise we could end up like the Nazi’s at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” after picking the wrong Grail cup.
Our Call to Worship this morning taken from the 22nd Psalm begins with the greatest lament in Christian Literature! “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I know my share of sorrow, grief, and shame—but these words take the cake. “Oh my God, I cry in the daytime and you do not answer; by night I find no rest.” Abandoned by God, the psalmist cries out.
You can expect fair-weather friends and bad-weather enemies to betray you, but when the times get hardest can you imagine being abandoned by your best friends? It happens to Jesus at his moment of greatest despair. It didn’t just happen, he prophesied it would happen.
Of course our Old Testament reading was from Job. Last week’s reading from Job set up the scene for a man’s great downfall. His wife cries out “curse God and die!” Job refuses to curse God. He asks “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” So Job did not sin with his lips.
By this time in the story, Job is not a happy camper. His three “friends,” Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, each try to tell Job why he is bad, wrong, evil, sinful, or whatever. Job is done. He wants justice. He’s so upset that he wants God to come and hear his complaint. He figures no great power would ever press charges against him. Job riles because God is absent, he is abandoned. He is lost, but he is not silenced by this darkness.
So with all of these stories, we see despair. People looking for what’s good. People looking for what’s just. People looking for peace in a world that looks like God is looking the other direction.
To this, we bring you the story of the rich man. The rich man asks the question of the hour, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Let’s be honest, in one way or another, everyone has asked that question. We may scoff because we know how Jesus will respond, but honestly, everyone wants to know what we have to do to inherit eternal life.
At least the rich man doesn’t ask what he has to do to earn eternal life. To earn eternal life implies that there is something we can do, something that has to be done so that we can earn eternal life. At least he got that part of his question right. We can’t earn eternal life, we can only inherit it.
So Jesus gives him the quiz. Using the last six of the Ten Commandments, Jesus asks the rich man how he has treated the people around him, how he has lived in the community. He has kept the commandments of God since he was a boy.
So Jesus told him what comes next. Jesus used five verbs: Go, Sell, Give, Come, and Follow. He tells him to trade his treasures on Earth for treasures in Heaven. Then he can come and follow. He asks the man to do as the other disciples had done, leave it all behind and follow. This is the fate of the apostolic disciples. They gave all they had to God, in exchange God was all they had.
The Dutch missionary Andrew van der Bijl is more commonly known as Brother Andrew. The first of the many books he wrote was the memoir “God’s Smuggler.”[1] It tells the story of his early childhood, conversion to Christianity, and adventures as a Bible-smuggler behind the Iron Curtain. It has now sold over 10 million copies in thirty-five languages and is a model for the modern conversion and missionary story.
One of the major themes in the story is Andrew’s utter dependence upon God. When in Seminary in Scotland , one of the lessons that was impressed upon the students was that they all faced obligations, they all faced challenges, and these could only be met by complete and utter faith in God.
The seminarians who tried to rely on “keeping a little back in case of a rainy day” soon found that every day was rainy. When they began to depend upon themselves and their own money management skills two things happened:
The first was that the demands seemed to increase.
The second was that the miracles seemed to dry up.
The theme of God providing everything was first and foremost in the book. Miraculous acts and gifts provided what Andrew needed, from safety and provision traveling in Eastern Europe to toothpaste.
Nothing was too small or too big for God’s concern. I think we can safely say that this rich man’s story is the antithesis to “God’s Smuggler.” He wanted to follow the Lord, but the rich man didn’t want to leave his safety net behind.
After a bit more of this, noting how difficult it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God
This is where folks often begin to feel a little smug. After all, none of us are rich. We certainly don’t have the riches that the rich man has. We don’t have the world at our disposal. The world is not our oyster. The only oysters we have are found in a Po ’ Boy; and we say “po’” because we don’t have enough for the whole word “Poor.” We try to distance ourselves from this narrative because we’re nothing like this rich man, nothing like him at all.
This is how we perceive ourselves, our point of view. When our point of view begins to exclude us from specific scriptures, we fall into one of scripture’s traps. When we begin to think that lessons of scripture don’t apply to us because we’re nothing like that, we begin to pare not only the breadth of God’s sovereignty and authority, but the reach of God’s love.
When we think we are poor, it is because we don’t look around. No, I don’t live in that gated community on South Washington , neither do any of us. But when we look around, and see the poverty that surrounds us we learn that there are some who see us as the rich man who won’t give up what he has to help the poor and follow Jesus.
Also our reading talks about financial wealth. This is surely the most accessible form of wealth. But this is also when I wonder if this point of view isn’t overly restrictive. Our wealth extends beyond our treasure. It includes our time and our talent as well.
Some of us have made sacrifices. Some of us have taken jobs in places where our talents are needed to help those who don’t have the same resources we do. Some of us have taken jobs in places where our talents are sorely needed to help those in crisis and in danger. Some of us have served our country to help preserve the freedom of the rich and the poor. Some of us have taken our lives and shared them with the sick and the widowed and the orphaned. All who do this forsake worldly wealth in exchange for Christian service, but is there more?
Even more than all of this, we are called to set aside our egos. We are called to set aside what we think is best so that we can find and follow what God thinks is best. Setting aside our selves, our notions, and our identities is even tougher than emptying the bank account. From our point of view what we have is limited, and it’s ours! From God’s point of view, what we have been given, given, is everything!
In “Call to Conversion,” Jim Wallis reminds us “Evangelism can no longer mean simply taking people out of the world, running them through some process of conversion and then placing them back in the same world and somehow expecting them to survive. If conversion is the translation of persons from one world to another, from one community to another, then conversion to Christ requires a new environment in which it is more possible to live a Christian life.”[2]
We are called to accept the gift of eternal life and everything that comes with it, the good and the bad. We are then called to share those blessings with others creating a new community that is only possible through God.
So, there is nothing we can do to earn eternal life. There is nothing we can do to purchase our inheritance. For us it is impossible. We can’t buy our way into the family, yet there is a great cost, whether economic or not, to following Jesus like the first apostles and disciples. Our point of view may even keep us from seeing the price we are being called to pay. So then what, what can we do to inherit eternal life?
Gloriously, our earlier readings not only ask big questions, they give us big answers.
Hebrews says that Jesus has been tempted and tested just like we are yet is without sin. So let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence. This still sounds pretty heady and then we finish reading the verse. We approach the throne of grace “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Grace and mercy are things we cannot hope to earn or purchase. Offering anything for grace or mercy would not make them grace or mercy at all! The cautious point of view I mentioned earlier is not what God wants from us. Jesus didn’t show us a way we could imitate, he showed us Himself. We can’t be sinless, but we can follow Jesus. This is why we are called to ask. This is why we are called to be bold.
As for the psalmist, too well we know the cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But regardless of how David feels about his earthly situation, he still knows God is God. He cries, “Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel , our ancestors put their trust in you; they trusted, and you delivered them.
As for Job, well, he’s seeking an audience with the Lord trusting the Lord is just.
So here’s my point, and it gets back to verse 18 from our Mark reading. Jesus asks the young man “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except for God alone.” This repeats what Hebrews and Psalms teach us. God is good and no one is good except for God alone. It also reminds us that Jesus did not come to eliminate the law. Jesus loves the man because he follows the law! But to follow Jesus, there is more.
We don’t really know the fate of this rich man. He may have gone home and died a rich man who told stories about the day Jesus told him to give it all up. He might have told that story as a grand joke or as a sad lament. Then again, he may have repented. He may have done as Jesus asked, not immediately, but he might have.
Scripture doesn’t say he did, and scripture doesn’t say he didn’t.
What I say is Jesus is in the business of reconciliation. Our take on the shape of reconciliation isn’t always to our liking. It wasn’t to the liking of a lot of people. That’s our point of view, but it is God bringing us together in the name of Christ. And that’s who can be saved, everyone through Christ; because only in God are all things possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment