The passages to do with wealth are often tricky ones in scripture, but this one is downright difficult. I read a commentary on the Gospel passage this week that named that with texts like this one—stories that challenge us, perhaps cause us wonder how the heck we are actually supposed to follow Jesus, stories that don’t give clear answers, or perhaps just not answers that we want to hear— the best thing we can do is “manage it”. We manage the text and our response to it. We go so far as to make excuses for the text—Jesus didn’t mean for me to give up all of my wealth, or I’m probably not wealthy enough for this to apply to me, or I can give up enough of my wealth to remain comfortable and that’s probably good enough—because on the surface, it’s a passage that requires some digging to figure out how we live this out faithfully. The word of Jesus doesn’t seem to move the man who comes to him at all, Jesus openly admits to how hard it is for those who have wealth to follow Jesus, he even admits for those who have given up everything to follow him that the road will still be hard. This doesn’t seem comforting, and these don’t feel like the answers we may want to receive.
There is a prayer by Thomas Merton that I often turn to when I’m feeling unsure of how or if I am following Jesus well. The highlight of it for me, goes like this:
My Lord God,I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
So, in the spirit of Merton’s prayer—of not having an idea of where we might be going, being unsure if our actions are really causing us to follow Jesus or not, having many questions without answers—Let us look to a few insights, likely not answers from the text. Let us lean into the idea that the desire to please God—to take to heart what it is that Jesus is calling us to, to pay attention to what he is calling us away from—does actually please God, even if our actions of living it out are often imperfect…
We first receive this story of a man coming to Jesus, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Already, we become aware that this man sees the kingdom of heaven as something to gain or accomplish through his actions, through what he does. Jesus then mentions to him a few of the Ten Commandments…interestingly, those that deal not with this man’s relationship to God, but with his relationship or interaction with other humans. The man claims to have kept these commandments from his youth—he has done all that his faith has instructed him to do, and yet, he feels perhaps unfufilled, hungry for more, a desire for something that would cause him to seek Jesus out.
Jesus calls this man out, or calls him in, depending on how you might perceive it: He tells the man that he is lacking in one thing; to go and sell all he owns and give the money to the poor, and then come and follow Jesus. It isn’t until after Jesus has given this directive, these instructions, that we hear that this man is actually wealthy, he has many possessions.
There are many emotions that we hear about, particularly at the end of this wealthy man’s brief story. After being told by Jesus to sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor, the man is shocked. This is likely because Jesus is upending the Jewish understanding of wealth a bit—that wealth was a blessing from God, a sign of divine favor, while poverty was thought to be a curse. Jesus is pointing out that by having all of this wealth, and presumably a desire to not share or use it responsibly, this man is lacking something. His possessions posses him. This information that the things that he may have seen as gifts from God may be what is keeping him from God is shocking…
We also hear that this man goes away grieving. This response is so intriguing to me. What might he be grieving? Receiving something that felt like a bit of tough love from Jesus? A realization that he wasn’t as interested or invested as he thought in this pursuit of eternal life? Was he mourning his inability to separate himself from the comforts in which he was able to live? Was he bummed it wasn’t easier? That he wasn’t praised for what he was already doing? That he wants to admire Jesus from afar, but grieves not having the desire to actually follow him? Because we don’t ever hear of this character again, we don’t know for sure…
Perhaps the more important emotion that shows up here is that of love: Jesus’ love for this man. Just before Jesus gives the man his guidance, comments on what he lacks, encourages the selling of his possessions in order to follow Jesus, we hear: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” This is the only time in all of the Gospel of Mark, Luke or Matthew, that we hear directly of Jesus loving someone. This is the love of a God who sees his beloved trying. But this love isn’t an easy love, or as one writer puts it: “Jesus’s love isn’t “nice.” It doesn’t prioritize the young man’s comfort over his salvation. Jesus’s love is provocative. It’s incisive. It’s sharp. Even as it offers unconditional welcome, it also offers mind-boggling challenge.”
Jesus doesn’t sugar coat it for this man; he doesn’t ease into his expectations and say “why don’t you slowly, over time, give away some of your stuff so you just have a little less?” Jesus attempts to redirect this man with his love, pointing him toward a way that was entirely new, entirely countercultural, and entirely challenging.
AND—surprisingly, and a bit of a heart wrenching way, that same love allows the man to walk away. Jesus doesn’t cajole, or plead, or manipulate him to stay. “He honors the man’s freedom…and allows him to walk away.”
This interaction with the man seems to impact Jesus, so much so that he turns to his followers and tries to help them see that the wealth that ANY of them experience will make it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. This also becomes one of the places in the text where we can try to “manage” the narrative—oh sure, it’s hard for anybody to be saved when wealth is a factor, but don’t worry, with GOD it is possible. Oh, okay, than if it’s on God, it must not be on me, and I can just keep that whole “sell your possessions” lesson for this one particular guy in this particular contextual location.
Not so. “Sharing all that we have does at some level seem to be what Jesus invites us to do. If we do not see that there is any problem at all about there being wealthy Christians, then we are not reading the New Testament seriously enough.” And, to the disciples credit, they name that many of them have given up much of their lives to follow Jesus. Jesus reminds them that they will receive the gifts that accompany such an act—the shared community of Christ, a community of brothers, sisters, mothers, siblings and no father among them except God, an anti-hierarchal chosen family of sorts—but that doesn’t mean that the struggles of following Jesus will cease. Following Jesus will be hard.
And perhaps this is where we land with the text today. Recognizing that following Jesus can be hard. That the invitation to give up everything to follow him is not something we often feel we can fully commit to. Wondering about the times we have been the man who Jesus loves—the one who walks away from Jesus—even for a short period of time—shocked and grieving when we aren’t sure we can live up to what Jesus asks of us. I encourage us in those moments that even here in this challenging passage, Jesus points us towards the refuge of community, draws us away from worldly things that become obstacles, not for God, but for us to get to God, and loves us deeply, when we turn away, when we stumble, when we only give a part of ourselves, even as we can’t fully understand where this road of faith is headed. I close with offering the full Merton prayer that acknowledges our humanity alongside God’s divinity:
My Lord God,I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
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