Sermon at St. John’s Church, West Grimstead - Trinity 20/Harvest – Sunday 13 October 2024
Mark
10:17-31
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and may these words be yours Lord, and may
you bless all who hear them. Amen.
“Here
comes that man again, running up to Jesus with a question about eternal life.
We can hear those dreaded words on Jesus’ lips even before the man approaches:
“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.” Even before Mark tells us so, we know
that the rich young man will turn away grieving, for he has many possessions.
And some of us grieve with him as we see him leave, knowing his choice could be
ours as well.”
Thus, begins
a sermon by an American pastor, Stacey Simpson.
She then
goes on to recount that she remembers the first time she read the story at the
age of 7 in her childhood bible book. She tells how she was so alarmed when she
reached verse 25 that she slammed the Bible shut, jumped out of bed, and went
running down the hall and shaking her my mother out of a sound sleep. “Mom,”
she whispered urgently, “Jesus says that rich people don’t go to heaven!”
“We are not
rich. Go back to bed,” came her mother’s response.
The little
seven-year old girl knew better. She knew that she and her family had all they
needed plus plenty more. She would later learn of fascinating attempts to
soften the text (the use of the word “camel” for “rope,” or “eye of the needle”
for “a small gate”), but the little girl inside her knew that these words of
Jesus were clear and hard and scary.
Mark
10:17-31 hangs on the question of eternal life. The rich man wants to know how
to get it. The disciples want to know who can have it. And the good news that
Jesus offers is this: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God
all things are possible.”
This story
can be regarded as one of the gospel’s healing stories. The rich man runs up to
Jesus and kneels, just as countless other Jesus-pursuers have done throughout
the Book of Mark. The scene is set for him to request and receive healing, and
his running and kneeling show that his request is both urgent and sincere. But
he is the one and only person in the entire book who rejects the healing
offered him.
We read, in
Mark’s account that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” Matthew and Luke
leave this out. But Mark, who seems always spare with words, takes the space to
note that Jesus loves this man. He offers him healing. “You lack one thing”,
he says; “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (In Mark, the word
“go” is used almost exclusively in the healing stories.)
What is the
healing that this man needs? What he lacks is that he does not lack. This man
is possessed—but only by his possessions. Jesus is offering to free him of his
possession, to cure him of his excess. But the rich man turns his back.
Stacey
Simpson goes on to say that she too grieves because she has accumulated so much
since first reading this text. Likewise, I am constantly being reminded by my
wife that we have “too much stuff” and really need to rid ourselves of so many
possessions we either do not use or do not need. Stacey raises an interesting
question for us. Are we also possessed, but only of possessions? Are we
refusing to be healed by Jesus? What can we do to inherit eternal life? Jesus
tells his disciples - Nothing. For mortals it’s impossible. But not for God. To
say we must give up all our wealth in order to be saved puts the burden on us
to save ourselves. Neither wealth nor divestment of wealth saves us. God does.
Our Harvest
Festival service today reminds us, as we sing in our hymns, that all good gifts
are sent from Heaven above. That whilst we might sow and then nurture that sown
grain, we still rely upon God to send us the rain and the sun to grow and ripen
it. It is a reminder that without God and the nature which he has created, we
can do nothing.
For the
young rich ruler, it was a test. Jesus truly loved him and his sentiments to
want to follow the Christian way but when the crunch came, he simply could not
part with his possessions. He could not change his life-style and be saved.
Even Jesus
realized he could not save himself. Those who think they can will surely lose
their lives. But those who recognize the utter futility of self-reliance, who
realize that their salvation really is not possible, will be saved by the God
who makes all things possible.
Yes, there
is still the problem of having too much stuff. It keeps us from realizing our
need for God because we use it as a buffer against vulnerability. We use it to
fill the emptiness in our souls. We use it to feel less susceptible to the
vagaries of life. It keeps us from seeing how needy we actually are and gives
us a false sense of security.
The rich
man’s secure status in life led him to keep asking the wrong question: What can
I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus’ response was that there was nothing he or
anyone else could do. And Jesus told him to release his wealth and give it to
the poor—to grow closer perhaps to the fragility of life, to take his own place
among the poor.
The poor,
the sick, the demon-possessed and the children of whom Jesus speaks all live
close to the fragility of life. They are thus more likely and more able to
respond to a vulnerable Christ. The disciples freed themselves of what would
stand between them and that fragility and were somehow able to follow the One
whose life would soon be a ransom for many. In many ways we have to be like
children, as Jesus reminded us in our gospel reading from Mark last week, or
like those who know they are really sick or like disciples who have let go of
all the things they once relied on—in order even to see how much we need Jesus.
What must we
do to inherit eternal life? We must let go of all that we have and all that we
do that gets in the way of seeing that there is nothing we can do to save
ourselves. Even then, letting go of it all is beyond our capacity. The hardest
news Jesus has is the best news we could get—our salvation is impossible except
for God.
To conclude,
I can recall an instance of my own when I knew somebody who once said to me “I
don’t need to go to church any more, I don’t need God, I have everything I want
– a successful career, a lovely wife and family, a big house and a secure
financial future”. A few months after
making that statement he suffered a severe stroke which, fortunately, was not
fatal and he did recover, but that one devastating event changed his whole
outlook on life and Faith and he praised God for his eventual although lengthy
return to health.
In saying
that it is difficult for a rich man to get into the kingdom of Heaven, it is
not just by being rich, per se, but by allowing our possessions and the love of
those possessions get in the way of the true richness of loving Christ and
being close to him through the knowledge of our fragility and the need for
perseverance – “to go through the severe times”; for as Paul writes in his
letter to the Romans (5:3-5) “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know
that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character,
hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…”
Jesus himself had to persevere through the Passion and the Cross – an
example to us all and a reminder for us not to take for granted that we do not
need God’s love and grace so that we can really prosper as his children.
Amen MFB/206/09102024
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