In security we trust

As I was thinking about this sermon I was reminded of a trip to Scotland with my cousin. It was Sunday; we were in a tiny town, and decided to go to the local kirk—it was the Church of Scotland (what we know as Presbyterian.) There were fewer than 20 people there, and the church looked like it hadn’t been updated in a hundred years or so. And the preacher! He was a cross between someone out of a Dickens novel and the pastor in Footloose. He is the only preacher I have ever heard preach about lust. “The world is full of lust!” he cried out in his brogue. I looked at my cousin and whispered: “No wonder there’s nobody here."  It was not the kind of sermon I wanted to hear. It is certainly not the kind of sermon I ever want to give!!

Billy Sunday, OTOH, clearly was not afraid of the hard sayings...

To be fair, it might have been partly the text. You see, there’s a group of what are called “hard sayings” in the Gospels.  Like:  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters…cannot be my disciple.”  It’s always “fun” to get one of the hard sayings to preach, and in fact, today’s Gospel text happens to be one.

Jesus says, “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” He has given the rich man a test: “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” And when the rich man heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Perhaps he felt like Job. Perhaps he felt aggrieved, misunderstood, unfairly called out. He was a good man, it seems--he had followed the law of God. And yet he had been judged by Jesus as insufficient. Perhaps he went away wailing, like our psalmist, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!”

I felt for that young man. I felt for him because those words are hard for me, too. I remember a gathering once where we were to introduce ourselves and share which Bible lesson seemed to be challenging us most directly and personally. This is the one I picked. 

I picked it because in the years after I became an orphan I walked away from Jesus, and from my church. I began a quest to find my own security, to take care of myself, to accumulate money in order to inoculate myself from further pain or vulnerability.  Years later, after I realized that I needed to return to life in Christ, I first heard this Gospel message, and it went to the heart of me. I heard it saying: “Marianne, you have struggled to know me because you placed your trust in finding your own security. You have built a life that permits you to believe in this security, and you have dedicated your energy to preserving it, and adding to it. But in so doing you have lost a good share of your freedom to follow me in the life of the spirit.” It took a while, but that hard saying caused me to reevaluate my life and start on the path that I am on now. Believe me, however, the parable of the rich man is still my own, personal hard saying.

And I have heard it preached as if Jesus wants us to simplify our lives a little bit, maybe clean out our garages, donate the items to Goodwill, or stop buying Starbucks in the morning. I wish that is what I could hear from it. But I do not believe Jesus was talking about being slightly more respectable versions of ourselves. He didn’t just tell the young man to tweak his lifestyle, after all.  I think this is a more radical call.

I imagine few Christians in America are not challenged by this message. It may even offend some of us. Perhaps that’s because few of us think of ourselves as “rich.” But I went to a website called Global Rich List that tells you either based on income or net worth how you stack up with the rest of the world. I entered in $50,000.  It turns out that a $50,000 income puts you in the top ½ of 1 percent in the world. 

Now, looking around us, at the cost of housing, food, transportation, that number may seem meaningless. But we are in a situation of our own making. We are a people who declared in our founding document that independence is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we have defined happiness largely around prosperity--the acquisition of things and experiences that will make us happy. 

Yet, many—not all—of these things are forms of extrinsic happiness, and they have nothing to do with the pursuit of God.

Jesus was not saying we can’t have eternal life in him. He was suggesting that the way we pursue happiness makes it harder for some of us than others.  There’s a great documentary called “The Happy Movie,” that looks at who is happy around the world. The filmmakers surveyed people worldwide, and the film tells the stories of people and groups who measure as happy.

I vividly remember the story of an Indian man. He lived in Calcutta. He drove a bicycle rickshaw, and he and his family lived in a hut with three walls. He acknowledged that it got wet during the monsoon seasons, but his family had worked their way around that. They did not have to beg. They had a place to live. They were religious. And the man’s little son ran to greet him every day with a joyful smile. This man was not at the top of the happiness scale. But his survey showed that he felt about as happy as the average American reported. It just seems to me if this Indian encountered Jesus, he might have passed the test that the rich man failed.  

Now I don’t think the average American would be happy trading places with that rickshaw driver. But there’s something he knew that Jesus could see the rich young man did not. Jesus might call the Indian man one of the “blessed ones,” the “the poor in spirit.” The root of the word blessed does not mean “righteous” or “special.” It means happy!! We get the word bliss from it. One thing you lack, Jesus tells the rich man, is this blessing. Seeing all that he has, and seeing his goodness, Jesus also sees that the rich man LACKS the peace of having only what he truly needs.  He lacks detachment from his lifestyle. He lacks the understanding that no security or freedom will come from those things. He is dependent on everything he himself has set into place, and on the stock market, on housing prices, on his next bonus. He lacks dependence on God.

Jesus told this parable to explain that discipleship has a cost for everyone, but it is higher for the rich. It is difficult for rich people to get in the kingdom of heaven because having more than we strictly need is all we know.  Yet we are being asked to take on a different world view.

Now, short of entering a monastery, it is difficult to disentangle ourselves from the way of life that is all around us. Sometimes people get these shocks when they lose all they have in a catastrophe of some sort. I am sure there are people in Florida going through this right now. What was at first terrible news forces them to redefine what is important, and they can talk of a great loss, ultimately, as kind of liberating. They realize that their circumstances do not need to define them after all. I don’t wish this on us. And I don’t know what this looks like for you. But I ask you to consider it as more than a modest adjustment in the way you think.   

So this is the difficulty that the Gospel has presented us. For the rich man cannot receive God’s grace merely by being forgiven for being rich. He must change his orientation. Like us, he must confront this truth if he wishes to respond to Jesus’s gracious invitation to enter the real joy, real love, real peace that is living a life in Christ:  An abundant life that money and possessions cannot provide.

And so the good news can come out of hard sayings! For Jesus looked at the young man, and loved him, as he loves us.  And while Jesus asks us to submit ourselves to his call, to take up his yoke, he reminds us that we are not in it alone.  He is with us. Last week our gospel left us with these message:

“Come to me, all you that are caught up in your work, your commitments, your self-improvement plans, and the burdens of your crowded lives, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

            Our burdens are real, at least they feel that way. Discipleship has a cost. And the risks may seem impossibly high. But with God, all things are possible. God is a risk worth taking. For the reward is great--nothing short of eternal life. 

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

Preached October 14, 2018, St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland OR