For the most part, people are packrats. We have a propensity to accumulate
stuff. We buy things we think we
need. Then they wind up in the basement,
the garage, or the attic or the barn. We
will tuck stuff away in any available space imaginable. But, judgement day comes - either we run out
of space or have to move and we realize we have to get rid of the junk. We have to downsize. It’s a difficult thing to face because for
some reason we tend to self-identify with our junk. “I am the sum total of my junk.” To get rid of any of our junk is to get rid
of a cherished part of our self even if we did buy it off of the Home Shopping
Network for $5.99 back in the ‘80’s.
Sometimes downsizing comes as a result of a moral crisis. We begin to feel that having a lot of useless
stuff that we never really needed in the first place is just wrong when we
consider the number of people in the world who do not have the food they need
on a daily basis. And so, we downsize
and give to a charitable organization to meet people’s immediate needs.
In this morning’s reading from Mark Jesus presents us
with an even more challenging reason for downsizing. Downsizing is the way of life for those who
follow him. Let me set the stage.
A young man came to Jesus and asked him, “What must I
do to inherit eternal life?” But wait a
minute. Before going any further we must
be clear about what this young man is asking. He is not asking “What do I have to do get to
Heaven when I die?” Jesus did not walk
all over Israel calling people to come and follow him so that the can go to
heaven when they die. The Gospel Jesus
proclaimed was, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Turn away from what you’re doing and follow in faith.” The Gospel Jesus proclaimed had to do with
things here on earth.
The people of Israel in Jesus’ day anxiously expected
the coming of the Messiah, God’s Holy Spirit anointed king, who would establish
the Kingdom of God and put things to right.
Jesus came and announced the coming of the Kingdom of God and enacted it
in everything he said and did. The
people of Israel just had to accept Jesus as their Messiah.
Eternal life defined in that context is life as it
would be in the Kingdom of God when the Messiah they were expecting had come
and established it. The eternal life the
young man sought may be better understood as the life of the Age to Come when
God will be present with his people and known by his people and righteousness
and justice would rule the day rather than the corruption and oppression the
people of God had been experiencing under the Romans, the Jewish monarchy, and
the Jerusalem priesthood.
The prophet Isaiah hits at the nature of the life of
the coming Age when he said, “The Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as
the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9). The
“life” Isaiah describes concerns knowing God and it is an “on earth” not an “in
heaven” matter. Jesus himself in John’s
Gospel defines eternal life as he prays for his followers at 17:3: “And this is
eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom
you have sent.” With what Jesus and
Isaiah have said in mind, the eternal life this young man wanted a share in was
the life of the promised coming age when knowing God will be unhindered. He sincerely and simply wants to know his God
and so he asks Jesus what he has to do for this to happen.
The short answer to that question is that the young man must
fully associate himself with Jesus – fully associate himself – and thus commit
to being part of the surrogate family that Jesus had built around himself of
those who had left everything to follow him.
If he wants to have eternal life and know God, he must go all in with
Jesus and his followers.
To do that the young man is going to have to sort out
who he believes Jesus is. The man addressed
Jesus as “Good Teacher.” Jesus calls his
hand on that asking “Why do you call me good?
Only God is good.” Lingering
behind what Jesus asks is the implied question of whether or not this young man
believes that Jesus is God?
This is question hits home with us is well. We confess a belief that Jesus is God the Son
become human. Yet, do we truly live
according to what we confess? If we
truly believe that Jesus is God, then why don’t we take him more seriously than
we do? You’ll notice a few verses down
that the next time the man addressed Jesus he simply called him “Teacher”. It is quite possible that for most of us, we
in practice show that we simply regard Jesus as a great teacher of religion and
morality rather than accept him as God.
The man does not answer Jesus and so Jesus begins to
play the role of a teacher. He starts
listing the commandments. Any faithful
Israelite of that day would have believed God’s promise to those who kept the
commandments to bless them in this life here on earth with peace, health,
prosperity – the blessed life. But, the
young man seems to cut Jesus off saying, “Teacher (notice he doesn’t say
‘Good’), I’ve kept those since my youth.”
It’s at this point we’re supposed to hear the rock band U2 come on the radio
and their lead singer Bono belting out, “But I still…haven’t found…what I’m
looking for.” Keeping the commandments
might get him the inheritance of God’s promised blessing, but they couldn’t
give him God. This young man sincerely just wants to know God.
So, Jesus did that thing that Jesus apparently did
well. He looked at the young man; looked
intently at the man. Then Mark says that Jesus loved him and said
to him, “You lack one thing; go, and sell all that you own, and give the money
to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Go, downsize, give it all to the poor, follow
Jesus. Jesus looked at the man through
eyes of love – agape (uh-gah-pay) love; self-emptying, self-sacrificing,
self-giving, wasteful, indiscriminate love – and told the man to divest himself
of everything – wealth, status, family…everything – and he would come to know
God, Jesus, as part of Jesus’ surrogate family.
In essence Jesus told this sincere and faithful young
man to give up the blessing of material comfort that he had received for
keeping the commandments and exchange it for the blessing of knowing the nature
of God as self-emptying love and add the bonus of getting to walk daily with
Jesus who is God. This is downsizing
with an immeasurable gain. This was
shocking to the young man and made him very sad because he was quite wealthy…and
he walked away.
Jesus confronts us with two kinds of downsizing that
we must do if we want to know him, to know God, and have eternal life. The first is that we must downsize our
inflated sense of self and become as children.
We must let ourselves be filled with wonder, joy, vulnerability, and
complete trust with respect to Jesus. Just prior to this man coming to him, Jesus was
blessing children but his disciples were keeping the children away so that Jesus
became indignant with the Twelve and told them, “Truly I tell you, whoever does
not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The only way to receive God’s Kingdom is to simply
come to Jesus with the innocence of a child, with no strings attached, simply
to be blessed. This requires we downsize
our inflated egos.
The second is a downsizing of life-style. I brought up downsizing at the beginning of
this sermon and don’t need to say much more other than Jesus calls us, his
followers, to mirror him in the way we live our lives. Thus, we should abstain from a way of life
that encourages us to be upwardly mobile so that we accumulate wealth to
ourselves. In this day and age we, the
followers of Jesus, are challenged to live according to different values such
as “live simply that others may simply live” and “live to give”. Certainly we are invited to remember that as
followers of Jesus all that we have is not our own but it belongs to him as his
resource for building his kingdom. Everything
we have is at his disposal. We are only
stewards of his wealth. Ponder these
things. Amen.
