Christchurch Parish News, November 2015
A reflection on Hebrews 4.12-16 and Mark 10.17-31
‘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.’ Hebrews 4.12
‘As Jesus 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?’ Mark 10.17.
The word of God. What does this phrase mean? Sometimes it is taken to be the written word of God. Another way of thinking about it is that it is the voice of God revealed in the good news of Jesus Christ.
The young man we read about in Mark 10.17-31 had an inkling that this was the case. Jesus had been in the region of Judea for a while. Whilst he had been there the Pharisees had tried to have another pop at him, trying to trap Jesus with clever questions about divorce but to no avail. Whilst at the same time, the disciples had got it wrong (again! that they do is so reassuring), this time over whether Jesus should be bothered with children, shooing them away for fear of him being disturbed from more important matters like duking it out with the Pharisees. But Jesus was having none of this and welcomed the children with outstretched arms and blessed them.
So the two themes that have been running through his short stay in town have been how to interpret the Scriptures, hence the discussion over divorce, and the kingdom of God, and who will enter it (those like a little child). All the while there has been this young man on the edge of Jesus’ verbal sparring with the Pharisees and the disciples, listening in closely but who had not yet been able to summon up the guts to engage with Jesus directly. Why is that? Well sometimes we do not want to hear the answers to the questions we know we have got to ask and so we put the dreaded moment off. And there would have been no greater question doing the rounds – how do I inherit as a child of God, a descendant of Abraham, how do I inherit eternal life, in the coming kingdom of God? So when Jesus was setting off on a journey from the town where he had been, the young man realises that this is it. Jesus is leaving. This is his opportunity. It is now or never. He seizes the moment and runs after him. Runs! Now that is seriously not cool to do when you have got lots of wealth and all the prestige that goes with it. But this young man is desperate. He is desperate to hear the voice of God because he knows that nothing else truly sounds like it. Unable to keep the question inside him any longer, he finally asks ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Now imagine that you are already a disciple of Jesus and you are standing by the road side. You see this young man, who everybody knows is this A-List-er, this Alpha male. Rich, successful. Someone who’s always walking down the red carpet of life. He has got everything. Or so everyone, including you, thought. But then, out of the blue, you see him throw himself at your master’s feet and you hear Jesus answer him, ‘No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments …’ Note that Jesus focuses on what are called the horizontal commandments, the ones to do with community, with our human relations. The young man replies that he has kept them since he was a kid. That is when Jesus looking at the young man, loved him. That is what Mark says and this is the heart of the passage. Jesus looked at this man and loved him. Finally, this dot com billionaire finds himself loved by the One from whose heart all that is good flows.
But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus says, ‘go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven’. We may worry when we hear this that it means that we too must go and sell everything we have got. Not that that would be a worry if you are reading this and you are on the breadline and you have no money. But if we have more than we really need, we hear these words and we wince. But no, that is not what it is about, is it? Think of Joseph of Arimathea, think of Zacchaeus. Jesus did not tell those two to sell everything they had. No, remember that Jesus’ answer to this über-rich young man comes after he has looked at him, and loved him. Imagine that, the word of God judging the thoughts and intentions of our hearts with no place to hide. Not damning us with indifference, but judging us with love.
What we might have missed as our minds go into a spin is this. The answer Jesus gives is ironic. ‘You lack one thing.’ Why ironic? Because outwardly the young man has got everything the world could ask for. But Jesus sees what lies inside. ‘Sell what you own, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ The young man was shocked – his heart has been pierced by the voice of God (this goes back to the passage from Hebrews, 4.12-16). And then what happens? That is the moment that if you were directing the film, you would have a close-up of the young man’s eyes, searching them out. What is he going to do? What is his decision going to be? We would seem him blink maybe a couple of times (is he fighting back the tears?) and as the camera pulls back we realise that he is walking away from Jesus, grieving as he goes. Grieving, Mark says. It is ambiguous. Why is he grieving? Is he grieving for what he is going to have to lose – his possessions, his wealth and the prestige that comes with it, everything that has hitherto given him his identity and self-worth – as he is now called to ground that identity, stripped of all his worldly goods, in God alone? Remember, Jesus says, God alone is good. Or is he grieving because he believes he cannot let go of his possessions. They have got a hold on him and so he will not be able to enter. To take another of Jesus’ metaphors, it would appear the seed, for the moment at least, has fallen on thorny ground. What happens to this young man later on, we simply do not know. He has but a walk-on part in the story. Does he change his mind? We cannot know. But a not-so-distant question hangs in the air. If Jesus said this to us, what would we do?
So on the one hand, it is right to say this is not about money. But on the other, it is right to say that it is. Jesus knows, as does Mark, which will be one of the reasons why he includes this story in his account of the gospel, that for many of us, money, wealth, possessions do have a pernicious habit of getting in the way. They get in the way of our hearing the word of God, and thereby our relationship with God. And they can get in the way of our relationships with our family, neighbours, work colleagues etc.. Of course, everything that Jesus was saying would have been turning upside down the dominant understanding at the time. If you were rich, this would have been understood this to be because you were blessed in the eyes of God. Of course you would be part of the kingdom of God! You’re rich because the God of Israel has blessed you! But Israel had this habit of losing sight of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable (and Israel’s story is our story in so many ways).
Hence the prophet Amos’ insistent tones: you are off track, again! Sort it out! God is calling you to live lives that are full of justice (and remember that that meant economic justice, too – with all the wealth not being in the hands of just a few in society) and so on. Elsewhere Jesus takes it even further: “Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk 6.20). The disciples are bewildered. If it works like this, who on earth can get in? Who can be saved? If the rich cannot, is there a shred of hope for any of us? Jesus replies, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ Meaning, from start to finish it is all God’s gift. Who is in, who is out, who is saved, who is not. We cannot earn our way in. Nor can we work our way in. No, it is always gift from start to finish. Pure gift. And God’s gift to give alone.
And, boy, do we kick against that. That part of us which is in rebellion against God would have it almost any other way so that we get to be in control – or least so we can think we are in control and kid ourselves and get some fretful sleep. But all we have to do is receive the gift. Is that all? It sounds like child’s play, no?
But it is not. For we all know that it is easier said than done. So how might we think of it? Try this. Imagine it is your birthday when you were young and you have had lots of presents. Your arms are full. And just as you take them up to your bedroom, your mum and dad ask you to hang on. And you turn and look, and they are smiling the biggest of smiles. ‘We’ve got one more present for you,’ they say. And out from behind the curtain, they bring a present that you never in your wildest dreams thought they would ever give you. It is really the best present of all. What do you have to do? You have to put down all the presents you already had in your arms in order to be able to receive this one last, magnificent gift.
That is what we have to do. We have to put down whatever it is that is stopping us from receiving God’s good gift to us. For many of us it will indeed be money, wealth and so on. But not for all. For others of us it may simply be something that we are trying to get to play that number one role in our lives that it just cannot fulfil – for example, our careers and being seen to be a success, to matter in the eyes of others, or it may be our families and being thought of as a great parent. All good things in and of themselves, but they can never bear the weight when we make them number one in our lives. When we do, we are unwittingly building on sand and not rock. But that is another story …
So in case I have not made it clear, this why it is good news and not an well-intended instruction just to ‘try harder.’ Simply put, this gig is not down to us and what we do. Our relationship with God is not down to how good we are, how moral, how successful, how devout, whatever it may be that we so often find ourselves thinking that it should be down to and that we can measure and gauge. We cannot and could never earn this gift. Our relationship with God is the gift that has been secured for us by Jesus, our great high priest. He has done the business that we could never do, that is what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is reminding his readers of, and because of that our life with God to this day rests secure in Christ alone. So let’s put down what’s weighing us down, open our arms wide and together receive this wonderful gift from God, who looks at us and loves us.