As we just heard, in today’s Gospel reading Mark tells us that Jesus is setting out on a journey, a journey that we know will ultimately lead to Jerusalem and to the cross. Suddenly, a man runs up to Jesus and literally stops him in his tracks by flinging himself to his knees in the dust in front of Jesus, begging for an answer that he himself doesn’t have.
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I can’t figure it out.” Obey the commandments, Jesus says; you know them as well as I do. I have, the man says; I’ve done it all, all my life…but it’s not enough; and so Jesus elaborates, calling the man to discipleship in the process.
The particular language that Mark uses tells us that this question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is important to the man. Mark says that Jesus looks at the man and loves him. Jesus knows that his question is sincere and that the man really, really wants Jesus to give him the answer.
Instead, Jesus gives him an answer, “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor; then come, follow me”, but this answer “shocks” the man; and the word Mark uses here is the Greek equivalent of the word we would use to describe the shock of a sudden death. The man is speechless because as it turns out, he has many possessions and he’s completely overwhelmed. He goes away grieving and numb, unable to do as Jesus has directed.
Now, usually when we look at this passage we talk about the potentially destructive power that our material wealth, our possessions, and the prestige we get from them, can have, especially if we hoard them or misuse them. We talk about the dangers of seeing ourselves and others – that is, the danger of valuing ourselves, and others – only in terms of what we or they have. This is the usual avenue of approach here…but it’s not the only one.
There’s another way to look at this reading, another perspective we can take. With this reading as the background, we can take a look at what it means to live life out of a question, versus what it means to live out of an answer.
With all of his possessions, the man who approaches Jesus lives out of a question. Both the word “question” and the word “quest” have as their root a Latin word that means “search”. The rich man’s whole life has been a search, a search for meaning; a search for that knowledge, that experience, that possession, that accomplishment that will make him feel complete; but Mark lets us know that his search has been doomed from the start because it’s been strictly an earthly search.
“Good teacher,” the man says to Jesus; “didaskale agathe”; and maybe he means to show respect, to honor Jesus as a righteous man; but agathe, “good”, this is a word that is generally used only to describe God and God’s inherent goodness; and it’s this use – or misuse – of agathe that Jesus hears, and this is why he corrects the man. “Why do you call me good?” he asks. “No one is agathe but God alone,” and it’s worth noting that even though this is supposedly a conversation about eternal life, this is the only overt reference to God that either of them makes.
Continuing in this same earthly vein, as Jesus goes on to list the commandments, he only mentions the ones that regulate human relationships. There are four others he doesn’t mention, and these are the ones that concern our relationship with God. “Teacher,” the man responds, and he avoids the modifier this time – he’s not about to make the same mistake twice – “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” I’ve followed these commandments all my life, but it’s not enough and I don’t know why….
Now, it’s important for us to realize that in the eyes of first century Judean society, this man really is a “good” man. He obeys the Law, and he’s wealthy; and since the very beginning Jews, as well as other ancient peoples -- not to mention today’s Christian adherents of what’s still called the “Prosperity Gospel” -- all of these folks had regarded, and do regard, material wealth as being a visible, tangible sign of God’s favor and blessing. This is why the disciples are so surprised, and so dismayed, when Jesus says that the wealthy are going to have a tough time getting into the kingdom. Rich people are already God’s favorites – so if they can’t get in, what hope is there for the rest of us?
As long-standing as this belief in prosperity is, however, as others have said before, “The Bible is more complicated than that.”
“I’ve followed all these since my youth…”. Like Peggy Lee, who I realize some of you have never heard of before, but like Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is [to the circus, to love, to life]?” the rich man is still hungry, still hollow, still living with a nagging emptiness that both Augustine of Hippo and Blaise Pascal, among others, will wrestle with in later years and later centuries. To God, the 4th century AD Augustine said, “Thou has created us for thyself, and our hearts are rest-less till we rest in Thee.”
1300 years later, the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and theologian Pascal would write, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” (Pensees, VII, 425)
Having no overt engagement with the God-oriented commandments, not really understanding what he’s looking for, the rich man is rest-less. Jesus is aware of his unrest and his helplessness and tells him that he “lacks one thing.” Just as another time he tells Martha of Bethany that “only one thing is needed” and her sister Mary has chosen that “one thing” in sitting and listening to him teach; just as then, Jesus tells this man now what the “one thing” is that he is lacking: “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
What you lack, he says to the man, what you’re missing is God; and not just God, but a relationship with God; and not just a relationship, but a particular type of relationship: a relationship of dependence and discipleship, like Mary of Bethany; a relationship of love and of trust, of fulfillment and completion, like Augustine of Hippo and Blaise Pascal.
Another twist of language here, and a legal one at that, is that the man asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. This is phrased oddly, because according to the Law, the Torah, which the man obviously knows, one’s only heirs are one’s offspring. Only children can inherit…and what did Jesus say to the disciples in last week’s reading, only two verses before the rich man showed up today? He said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like God’s child, as God’s child, will never inherit it.
You lack one thing, Jesus says to the man: you must allow yourself to become God’s child, to become God’s heir, trusting in God and depending on God alone.
Sell all you have; let go of your material security; let go of all those things that you thought would bring you fulfillment, and follow me – because in following me, you follow the One who sent me. This is the answer to the question you have asked.
When the man heard Jesus’ words, he was shocked with the shock of a sudden death, the death of who he thought he was; and he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
This man had based his whole life on the question and on the quest, on the doing and on the having; and he very much wanted Jesus to give him a different answer. If we also live out of a question, whether it’s the rich man’s question or Peggy Lee’s question or a different question altogether; if we also base our lives on a question, we’ll end up as restless and as unfulfilled as the man in today’s Gospel was…so what if we change our perspective, and we live out of an answer instead?
What if we base our lives, and the choices and the decisions we make, on the knowledge and on the assurance that as followers of Jesus striving to be faithful, we already have inherited eternal life?
We haven’t inherited it because we’ve earned it, we haven’t inherited it because our faith or our striving are perfect, we haven’t inherited it because of anything we’re doing. We have inherited eternal life simply because of grace; simply because God, in God’s mercy and of God’s own choosing, has already given each of us eternal life through our baptism – baptism being the sacrament of our adoption as God’s child, and therefore also our adoption as God’s heir.
And why does Paul in his writings emphasize so strongly our adoptive relationship with God? Because according to Roman law, natural born children could be disinherited at the will and the whim of their father. ADOPTED CHILDREN, HOWEVER, BY LAW COULD NEVER BE DISINHERITED.
We are in a covenantal, familial, adoptive relationship with God. We are God’s adopted heirs, and because of that, we are marked as Christ’s own forever. We are quite literally signed, sealed, and delivered – by God, for God, and to God. By God’s own choice, we are bound to God in baptism and God is bound to us – and so, with this salvation as our formative reality, we don’t need to worry about not inheriting it; we don’t need to chase it or clutch at it – and we don’t need to try to keep someone else from having it too. This gift is already ours, and nothing can change this…except our own refusal to acknowledge it and to embrace it.
An Episcopal priest named Heidi Haverkamp writes, “A few years ago, in crisis, I went to a local Christian spiritual center and was assigned a spiritual director who was an elderly Catholic sister. She listened to my story, and she told me two simple things. First, that God is love. Second, pointing her finger at me with firmness and affection, she said: ‘Remember, you are poor.’ She explained: you do not have the resources to save yourself, fix your problems, or change the world – only God does. Perhaps she saw my temptation to believe in my own ability and responsibility for my life, in no small part because of my many possessions: great education, successful work life, health insurance, retirement savings, and a house full of stuff. I am tempted to believe that, based on my own efforts and knowledge, I can achieve – am supposed to achieve – a spiritual life, a godly life, eternal life.”
Haverkamp goes on, “The rich today include many more of us than in Jesus’ time, used to trusting in our own wits, work, and will to get things done and bend our world to our control. It is hard for us to find the kingdom of heaven, to enter into it… – as hard as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle….We cannot save ourselves, but God can. As Jesus makes clear to the young man looking for his extra credit assignment, the way to eternal life is not achievement but want and surrender. It is to claim the words I am poor.” (Christian Century, 9/26/18, p. 20)
If those many, many months of pandemic powerlessness back in 2020 or the more recent devastating hurricanes Helene and Milton in the Southeast, where I used to live and where I still have relatives and friends, have taught us anything, they taught us that WE ARE POOR; that in spite of our material resources or accomplishments in the eyes of the world, none of us has the ability to fix our problems or change the world on our own. Only God can do this; but God does invite us to share in this work.
As John writes in his Gospel, “From his fullness,” from the fullness of God in Christ, “have we already received, grace upon grace.” We are all poor; and because we are poor, we have already received the grace and the promise of the kingdom – and so, as we’ve taught our own children to do, we say “thank you” to the One who has saved us, and we recognize that a life based on the answer is a life that flows out of gratitude, and joy, and love; a life based on the answer is a life that embraces and celebrates the awareness of, and the acceptance of, our own spiritual poverty – which is to say, our complete dependence on God and on God’s grace; our dependence on the God for whom all things are possible.
Reflecting on Jesus’ final words to the rich man, “Then come, follow me”, Haverkamp writes, “What gets in the way of my following Christ? This is the rigor I was longing for – not a spiritual drill sergeant, but a person able to see me and tell me the truth: that whatever possessions I grip most tightly are the junk that is most in my way. That I am poor; that my only wealth and security is Christ. That Jesus, in whom all things are possible, is always saying, ‘Now, come, follow me.’” (Ibid.)
The rich man and Peggy Lee asked the question, “Are these things I’m clinging to all there is?” Along with Augustine and Blaise Pascal and Heidi Haverkamp and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we can stand firm in the answer and say with confidence, “No, they’re not all there is.” The question is not all there is.
Our relationship with God is the answer. Our relationship with each other is the answer. Faithful and strong, completely dependent upon God, we are poor – but in our dependence lies our wealth and our strength, and with them and with God, our ability to make the difference in the world that we can’t make on our own.
This dependence and this faith, our reliance on our relationship with God, this is the answer in which lies eternal life. Amen.