Seeking Something More Mark 10: 17-31 Rev. Megan Cochran Lake View Presbyterian Church October 11, 2015 There are always a few in class. They often sit in the very front row. They sometimes have their supplies all laid out...notebook here, pencils there in a very straight line at the top of the desk, erasers just in case. Everything is just so. They have done the homework, obviously, and maybe even read ahead a bit...perfectionists, we call them. They re usually pretty easy to spot. Although, sometimes they aren t. Sometimes the desk is chaotic, papers everywhere, no eraser in sight, pencils forgotten but they still struggle with that nagging internal monologue that there is a right way and a wrong way. How do I get the best grades and what does it take to get the teacher to praise me and how can I do everything exactly right and, and, and... the list is never ending. I am probably somewhere in-between these two examples...i usually had paper and my pencils just so, but sometimes I forgot them. I really wanted to be a free spirit and not care, but I really, really cared...i cared what my teachers thought, my parents, my friends. I wanted to be one of those kids who could skip school to go have fun, drive around in my beat up car and listen to Carole King... but let s be honest I never would have forgiven myself. What if I missed something? What if someone saw me? What if someone found out that I wasn t as good as the image that I was always trying to project? Now, I think the perfectionists here today have a bit of a kindred spirit in this man who asks Jesus some questions. First of all, he is enthusiastic. He doesn t just walk up slowly and
casually get into a discussion with Jesus. This man RUNS up to Jesus, KNEELS before him and then even calls Jesus GOOD TEACHER. This guy is a go-getter. And his go getting doesn t end with how he approaches Jesus...when Jesus rattles off some of the commandments this guy already knows them by heart. He has done them his entire life, since his youth. He has done everything right, everything everybody always told him he had to do...and yet he still has questions; he is still seeking something more. Now, there are a couple important things to point out about the context of this story. We find out eventually that this enthusiastic question asker is rich. In the ancient world, two assumptions were often made: 1) the wealthy were closer to God...look at all of those blessings that were given to them (a lot of land, good crops, plenty of kids) these had to be signs that God was on their side, right? And 2) those who kept the commandments were closer to God, too. 1 This guy has both. He s rich and follows the commandments. So, in addition to this guy thinking he had done everything right, according to societal norms he had it made. Everyone else would have thought that he was doing everything right, too. He was a star student. The signs were all there. But then Jesus has to go and burst his poor perfectionist bubble. Jesus looks at him with love. This is the only place in the gospel where Jesus is said to actually love another person. Jesus loves him. He has a soft spot for him. This guy isn t trying to give Jesus a hard time. He isn t like the Pharisees just asking hard questions of Jesus hoping that he will screw up so they can get him in trouble. This guy has realized that something is missing in his life. He has done everything right. Checked all the right boxes. Done his homework. Kept the commandments. So, why does it feel like something is missing? What else can he do to ensure that there is some kind of reward 1 http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark10x17.htm
for all of the hard work he has done? He isn t a bad guy. He wants to know what the point of all of this is. What s the deeper meaning? What s the big picture, Jesus? We can relate to that, can t we? So, Jesus loves this guy. And then tells him something hard to hear. There s more you could do. Ugh. A perfectionist s nightmare. More? I ve been working so hard already, and now you want me to do more, Jesus? Yep. Three more things actually: 1) sell his possession 2) give the money to the poor and 3) follow Jesus. This is just too much for this perfectionist guy and he walks away grieving. Of course he does. Jesus just punched holes in the two biggest societal understandings of who is good and who isn t. It s not enough to just follow the commandments and being rich isn t a sign that God is on your side...there s more to do, people to help, a different way... a new way to begin living. Now, this might seem daunting for some of us here, right? I think a lot of us understand working hard and trying to do everything right. Sure, we have some privileges, it isn t just Bill Gates types that are rich, we live in the richest society in the world, whether we like it or not, whether we feel like we are rich or not. We have luxuries, we do, but we re also the people who come to church on Sunday and give back to our communities and spend our lives teaching children. We might work at nonprofits even though we know we could make more at corporations or maybe we work at wealthy corporations but make sure that we give money to good causes... we re trying, we re trying really hard, right? This message from Jesus isn t what we want to hear. It s a tough pill to swallow. But, here s where it gets interesting...after the man walks away grieving the lesson doesn t end. Jesus begins teaching the disciples: Look guys, I get it, it s hard. This is a tough
journey we re on. It s not just hard for rich people. It s hard for all of us. And the disciples, who just can t seem to get anything right in this gospel, they start asking some questions. Well, ugh, if it s hard for everyone, then who can be saved? And Peter, who I love here because he s so bold and I can just totally see someone doing this, Peter says, Look, we left everything and followed you. You can almost hear him let out an angry sigh or stomp his foot a bit. Whoa Jesus, we left everything and followed you and now you are saying that it s still hard for everyone...even us...who are trying to do everything right...come on. Jesus gets it. This is a hard lesson. So, he says two things: 1) What seems impossible for humans is possible for God and 2) Alright, there are some rewards for what you are doing, but let s also keep in mind that the first will be last and the last will be first. So, where is this all going? What s the point here? Well, there s some biblical interpretation work that I think might help us out a bit. The phrase the kingdom of God gets used a lot in this passage and really all throughout the gospel of Mark. It s one of the trademarks of this gospel. When we hear kingdom of God what do we think of? Heaven, eternal life...something that will come after this life has gone, right? Here s where knowing a little bit about Greek and biblical interpretation can help us to decipher what s going on. This concept of the kingdom of God is actually taken from the Old Testament and it s all throughout the New Testament. Paul uses it, the other gospels use it, but the gospel of Mark is the one that really defines it for us. Many of our English translations use the phrase the kingdom of God, which is a fine interpretation in some ways. For example, it helps to connect us to the Lord s Prayer (thy kingdom come thy will be done...), but it doesn t quite give us a full understanding of the Greek phrase used here.
The Greek word that is often translated as kingdom, basilea, is a noun that is taken from a word that can also be used as a verb. We can t do that with kingdom. You can t use it as a verb. You can t kingdom. So, what if instead we put in a word that can be used as a noun or a verb, like the word reign or the word rule...living into the reign of God... ah, this is the key here. 2 What if this passage isn t about trying to get into some beautiful afterlife we call heaven? What if instead this passage is about God ruling our lives in this place here and now? What if this passage is about what truly matters in our lives? That s what is so hard for the rich guy in this story. He has a lot of stuff. And that stuff, those things, when you have a lot of them, they can lead you into thinking that you are on your own, you are self sufficient, this is all about you and what you do and how good you have been. But Jesus is telling this perfectionist question asker, the disciples and even all of us here that we are missing the point. We aren t quite grasping the deeper meaning. When we understand that all we have and who we are is a gift from God then we start living in a way that God becomes the center of our lives. We start living in a way that creates the kingdom of God here and now...not in some far off distant land. And it s not just our literal baggage, our things, that can cloud this understanding, is it? It s also our emotional baggage, our stuff, our expectations of ourselves, our need for approval from others, our grass is greener inklings...this stuff can get in the way of us realizing that God is what this is all about. Because here s the thing, we will never have enough things, we will never have enough money, we will never do enough, we will probably never feel good enough. And guess what. That s fine because that s not the point. The point is what God is doing and how we can be a part of that. 2 Mark Allen Powell, The Gospels, p. 50-51.
How do we make God the center of our lives? How do we live into the kingdom of God here and now? These are the questions that this story asks of us. We are given a gift that is more than stuff, more than things, more than possessions. It is a reminder of who we are, whose we are and what truly matters. The kingdom of God isn t a place. The kingdom of God is receiving the unconditional love that is offered to us again and again no matter what: no matter how good we are or how right, how rich or how poor, how free spirited or how perfectionist, how lonely or how social, how self aware or how jaded. That unconditional love is given to us, each of us, over and over again. So, whether your pencils were always lined up on your desk ready to go or you forgot them at home again and again is not the point. The point is that we are seekers, on a journey together, trying to figure out how to make God the center of our lives... and that s what this is all about. Thanks be to God. Amen.