The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost - October 11

In This Family, We Share
Proper 23
Mark 10:17-31

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"

End of sermon?

Jesus said, “How had it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

For folks who take the Bible literally word for word… What do literalists do with this passage? Many seem able to overlook it. One of the problems with strict literalism is that it really is all or nothing. Either the Bible is word for word literally true, or it’s not. You can’t claim literal truth just for the passages you like.

But those of us who aren’t literalists shouldn’t feel too smug. We do the same thing. We pick and choose. Cherishing the passages we agree with and dismissing those we don’t. And we do it quite casually.

It’s very hard, I think, for any of us to take the Bible seriously enough to let it challenge us… It’s hard to take the Bible seriously enough to let it challenge or confront our personal opinions.

How hard it will be, Jesus says, for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

As a non-literalist, what to do with today’s Gospel?

Jesus and his disciples lived in a time when there was a prevalent understanding among Jews that wealth was a sign of God’s favor. They believed that God rewarded righteousness or faithfulness with prosperity, material wealth. (I don’t know if some of you subscribe to that belief. As you may know there is a whole strand of contemporary Christianity, known as the prosperity Gospel, which directly teaches that God rewards faith with prosperity.)

The disciples, then, are quite sincere when they ask: if the rich can’t get into the kingdom of God, then who can? If the people who are demonstrably favored by God can’t get into the kingdom of heaven, then who in the world can??

Part of what Jesus is doing in this passage is debunking that understanding. That’s not how God works, he says. Riches don’t equate to God’s favor. So if we don’t share that view, then Jesus isn’t really talking to us… Whew… We’re off the hook.

But still Jesus says, “How hard will it be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

There’s another line of exploration of today’s passage that I found interesting this week.

It comes from the beginning of today’s reading: As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

The word is “inherit.” What must I do to inherit eternal life? How have I missed that all these decades?

He does not say: What must I do to receive eternal life. Or gain. Or acquire. Or earn. Or find.

He says inherit. I’m not a Greek scholar, but I know enough to be able to sort of track things down. And the Greek word (klēronoméo) means inherit. With its very specific meaning of something that is bequeathed. And there isn’t really anything someone can “do” to “inherit;” it depends upon the person making the bequest.

Apparently, in Jewish law of the day children were always heirs of their parents. A parent didn’t have the choice to disinherit a child. When the young man uses the word “inherit,” he places his question within the context of the family. And all children of God were inheritors of God’s promise. All children of God were bequeathed eternal life in God’s kingdom.

All the young man had to do was join the family. Become a child of God.

But Jesus said one thing to him: In this family, we share.

In the family of God, we share. We share joy. We share pain. We share responsibility for one another.

Go and sell what you have and give everything to the poor. Was it really just poverty that the young man lacked before he could enter God’s kingdom and inherit eternal life? Or was it maybe compassion? A sense of connection and mutual responsibility for others?

Jesus didn’t tell him just to sell his possessions. Jesus said, sell what you have and then give the money to people in need. He was grieved, the Gospel says, at the idea of losing his possessions. I imagine he was also grieved because up until this point his life had been all about him. Thinking of others’ needs was not a happy exercise.

All he had to do was join the family of God. A family that shares. Being a child of God means being blessed with lots and lots of brothers and sisters in Christ. It also means treating them that way.