University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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Mark 10:17-31

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time       October 11, 2009

            When I first realized that the lectionary had assigned this Gospel text for this Sunday in the church’s life, I was very pleased.  What better way to kick off the church’s annual stewardship visitation period than with a passage about relinquishing riches! That, of course, was when I was reading the story as applying to you, rather than to me. It was also before it dawned on me that Jesus himself had made a direct appeal to the rich man in the story, and he had walked away, unwilling to respond to Jesus’ invitation… so, what chance would I have with you?  

            Still, it is a powerful story…an unnerving story: this man who comes to Jesus, inquiring after the path to eternal life… and Jesus’ response, naming the commandments of God… and the young man countering that he has been faithful in keeping the Torah… and Jesus looking lovingly on the man and wanting him to have what he wanted…and the simple, but imposing prescription Jesus offers him with five verbs: “Go, sell, give, come, follow.”  He could parse one verb without the others, and no action in and of itself would be complete. This was a radical turning Jesus was asking of him. Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.[1] 

            It is the only occasion in Mark’s Gospel, perhaps in any of the gospels, in which Jesus calls someone, and the person responds by walking away. The disciples, to a one, had heard Jesus beckon them to follow and had left much to go with him. Others had joined the parade along the way in response to his teachings or his healings. Now, a man who in some significant ways seemed more genuine and earnest in his piety than they had approached Jesus, asking for instruction and guidance, only to turn away when he discovered the cost of following.  Methodist bishop Will Willimon, who used to be dean of the chapel over at Duke, notes that the fundamental reason the man walked away was his unwillingness to relinquish all his wealth; and he asks that we understand his dilemma.

Can we not sympathize with this man?  We can certainly identify with his … encumbrances.  Like him, all of us have many possessions, more than we need to live.  We know how concern about all of our stuff tends to chain us to the stuff.  Yet more than that, don't we all know how risky a matter it can be to be met by Jesus?  Can we blame this man for walking away rather than following?[2] 

Can you see why this might not be an ideal stewardship text?  It seems almost too demanding. Indeed, rather than providing us an example of faithful relinquishment and stewardship, the man declines Jesus’ invitation. And we may fully identify with his reticence and the losses he fears – the loss of power, the loss of control… in some ways, the loss of his very identity.  Like him we may be tempted to confuse what we own with who we are.  No, it’s not a great stewardship text.  Jesus invited the man to follow him, and he laid out the conditions; and the man walked away.  He was grieved by the decision, Mark remembers, but he walked away. Says Jon Walton:

…. Suddenly this is not a story about money so much as a story about an invitation to discipleship that was rejected.  The rich man said no, and he had his reasons.  But you know something?  His “no” is important not only for him but also for us.  Jesus accepted his “no.”  There comes a moment in some very practical and unexpected way when a choice is before us, and without realizing it something of our soul, our character, our being is at stake – you might even say the kingdom of heaven is at stake – and we have to decide, yes or no. [3]

             A good stewardship story should make us feel good about filling out a pledge card and giving generously for the sake of Christ’s church.  But this story is about more than the stewardship of money, as important as that is; this is a story about the stewardship of the choices we make.   Such choices come to us in different ways almost every day ... choices to be in relationships with one another; choices about whether we will live up to what we believe; choices about the way we will use or ignore our God-given abilities; moral choices in circumstances in which virtue competes with profit or pleasure. 

            I have shared with you before my belief that the fundamental question of Christian stewardship is not how much we give of all that we have, but how much we keep, and why.[4]

This rich man, as I noted earlier, was a man of earnest piety.  He was no doubt a generous person, and willing to give energy and passion to his commitments and to share of his resources.  But Jesus said he lacked one thing; it was what he kept for himself that stood in the way of giving himself fully to God. Jesus invited him to a life of relinquishment, but as Walton says, he felt a deep need to hold onto his security, in his case, his wealth, and it was that that kept him from the freedom and true security he sought.[5]  We never hear from this man again in the gospel, but you have to wonder how the rest of his years went.

            John Killinger tells of a conversation he had a few years ago with a very successful businessman about his life. He admitted he had once felt the call of Christ to be a minister, but didn't want to follow the call because he despised most of the ministers he had known and didn't want to commit himself to what he saw as a life of penury and degradation. He decided he could offset the calling by living a life of great public service. So he made a lot of money and became well known in business circles and used his influence to do good things in his community and well beyond it. But years later, Killinger said, the man was diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and was beginning to experience a tragic loss of power and memory. One of the things he did remember was his failure to respond affirmatively when he had felt Christ’s call. “I wish I had done it,” he said. Recalling that conversation, Killinger asks:

Don't you imagine the man in our text felt the same way for the rest of his life? Imagine being asked by Jesus to follow him and turning down the invitation. It would haunt a person, wouldn’t it? You could never quite drown out the sense of having missed a great opportunity.[6]

            The problem was that at the time it didn’t look like a great opportunity at all; it felt like a harsh demand. All the rich man could hear in Jesus’ words was loss – the loss of stability and security, the loss of influence, the loss of his very identity. Perhaps he wanted to retain a measure of flexibility for his life, a measure of control.  Maybe he just couldn’t give up the possession of all his stuff, even though it was really possessing him.  But the loss he thought would accompany saying “yes” to Jesus was nothing compared to the loss he surely experienced for saying “no.” Perhaps he understood such a truth even at the time, for Mark says, “he went away grieving.”  He was willing to do everything for the sake of eternal security except the one thing that would have given it to him. It just didn’t sound like opportunity to him.

            How do you hear Jesus’ words?  Do you hear Jesus’ “one thing you lack” as a great opportunity, a gracious invitation to a new form of security? Or do you hear it as a harsh demand, as bad news? Will Willimon said he figured most people heard it as the latter until one night when he shared this text with some university students and found himself surprised by the responses he got:

            “Had Jesus ever met this man before?” asked one of the students. 

            “Why do you ask?” I asked.

“Because Jesus seems to have lots of faith in him.  He demands something risky, radical of him.  I wonder if Jesus knew this man had a gift for risky, radical response.  In my experience, a professor only demands the best from students that the professor thinks are the smartest, best students.  I wonder what there was about this man that made Jesus have so much faith he could really be a disciple.”

Another student said thoughtfully, “I wish Jesus would ask something like this of me.  My parents totally control my life just because they are paying all my bills.  And I complain about them calling the shots, but I am so tied to all this stuff I don't think I could ever break free.  But maybe Jesus thinks otherwise.”

Well, I was astounded [said Willimon]. What I had heard as severe, demanding bad news, these students heard as gracious, good news.[7] 

            Which way do you hear Jesus’ words to the rich man? I have to be honest with you; I hear it as both.  This story of the rich man and Jesus challenges me, and I want it to challenge us all. It is a story about wealth and what we will do with all that we have. It is a story about what we will give, and about what we will keep, and why.  It is a challenge to all that we may believe to be essential in life, a challenge to all we believe and all we will teach our children about real security. It is about who we are and whom we will choose to follow…about whether we will choose to follow.  This is a radical invitation Jesus offers, in that it goes to the root of what we have and who we are…and what we will relinquish in order to follow him. It is nonetheless an invitation of grace… not simply an invitation to relinquish all our stuff, but also an invitation to gain a passionate, faithful life, lived in community with Christ and with others who will share the journey with us. A gracious invitation, rooted in the possibilities of God’s grace, for indeed with God all things are possible.

            One day a rich man came to Jesus and sought his counsel. Jesus presented him with a choice.  That same choice comes to us in some form almost every day. Every day

[t]here comes a moment in some very practical and unexpected way when a choice is before us, and without realizing it something of our soul, our character, our being is at stake – you might even say the kingdom of heaven is at stake – and we have to decide, yes or no.[8]

Go, said Jesus. Sell.  Give.  Come.  Follow.  In the short run, it will always be easier to walk away, to hold on to what we have…our own self-constructed securities.  Of course, in the long run, what we may have thought we would gain by doing so will be precisely what we have lost.