Real Love Psalm 22:1-18, Mark 10:17-31 October 11, 2015 Mary Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church, Milford, Connecticut The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt, Pastor Once again the message of Jesus Christ rocks our world: How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. What in heaven s name do we do with this very hard saying? Some of us dismiss it. Most of us don t see ourselves as people of wealth. We look at the Rupert Murdochs or the Donald Trumps or the Warren Buffets of the world and conclude by comparison: I m not wealthy. The unstated implication is: Therefore, Jesus words in this passage don t apply to me. Ah, if it were only so easy. But wealth is not measured only in dollars and only in the context of nation or community. There are now over 7 billion people on planet Earth, almost an impossible number to imagine. But what if that 7 billion people was represented by 100 people about 60% of us here today a number we can easily imagine? Using information from sources like the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank and the United States Government, if the world were 100 people: 5 of 100 would be from North America. 22 of 100 would own or share a computer. 66 men and 63 women would graduate from high school. 7 people would have a college degree. 48 would live on less than $2 US a day. We are the wealthy man in Jesus story. It will be harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for us to enter the Kingdom of God. Ouch!
Yet that is in tension with our sense of reality, isn t it? Our sense of reality is often echoed in the words of John D. Rockefeller, the American financier and co-founder of Standard Oil Company in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. When asked, How much money does it take to make you happy? he is reported to have responded Always a little more. And our sense of reality, despite the statistics previously cited, is usually in relation to our near neighbors in an American context. And not only in our wealth but in our life commitments. Remember: all this talk about money with Jesus began when the man asked Jesus, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus deflects the adjective good, noting that God alone is good, but then goes on to say, in essence, My friend, you already know the answer: observe the commandments and then he cites 5 of the 10 Commandments. The man declared that he had kept all these since his youth. So was the man looking for true enlightenment? Did he really want to know how to inherit eternal life? Or was he just looking for a pat on the back, a confirmation of what he thought he already knew about himself? We don t know. What we do know is that what comes next, according to the Gospel writer, is because Jesus loved the man. Jesus, looking at him, loved him. The word in the Greek is agapao, the love that puts the well-being of another ahead of one s own. It is the same word that appears in that time-worn passage from I Corinthians 13: If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but have not love agapao I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. This love is real love. That is not to say that other kinds of love are false or fake. Romantic love (eros) or affection (philios) are authentic loves. But agape love is real love in the
sense of keeping it real and I d give you the shirt off my back and the old rugged cross real. Jesus keeps it real by not letting the man s adulation of him good teacher distract from the serious and fundamental life-question the man asked: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus keeps it real by rooting his response in a commonly shared value: You know the Commandments. Jesus keeps it real by not letting the man s self-assessment All these I have observed from my youth lead Jesus to a sentimental conclusion: Yes, aren t you a good boy? You certainly have done everything right. We don t know how Jesus knew that the man s stuff possessions was a stumbling block, but he did. And when Jesus told him to get rid of it, the man went away grieving, for he had much stuff, indeed. So if, according to the measure of the world, we are the wealthy man; and if, according to Jesus, the wealthy man needed to give up his stuff to inherit eternal life; then must we give up all our stuff to inherit eternal life? The problem with a yes answer is the same problem we run into with those folks who use Jesus word to Nicodemus as a one-size-fits-all prescription for salvation: You must be born again. But Jesus spoke different words to different people in different contexts as he understood what might be blocking their full commitment to the godly life. While it isn t clear that we all need to become monks and take a vow of poverty to inherit eternal life, what IS clear is this: How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. This challenges our cultural values about money, success and prestige. It challenges the wisdom of our age and of the age of the Bible writers, that wealth was a sign of God s favor. It requires us to reflect on our own wealth in the
larger context of building and seeking God s kingdom. And it does so in the context of real love. In response to the disciples anguished question, Who then can be saved? Jesus expresses love to them as he did to the wealthy man and as he does to us: by saying all things are possible with God. I certainly wrestle with this application in my own life, particularly at this time of year when we invite you to support the church s mission and ministry in 2016 and when the Staff- Parish Relations Committee begins to determine what is fair and appropriate compensation for the staff, including me. As a note, if you have opinions about these matters, please feel free to share them with me or any member of the SPRC. One measure to evaluate my own life is John Wesley s counsel from his sermon, The Use of Money: Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can. Tithing, giving 10% of our family income to the church, is what we do. Yet even following this, I know I could do more. I am the rich man. What to do? There is no simple answer, as far as I can see. Certainly one answer is to claim the promise of Jesus All things are possible with God. But also, I think, to wrestle with this real love that Jesus extends to the rich man and to us: who loves us enough to accept us where we are and loves us too much to let us stay where we are. This real love of Jesus that challenges us to look at our relative wealth and ask Are we doing the best we can for ourselves and God? This real love of Jesus that, paraphrasing J.R. Daniel Kirk, converts church from being the place to which we head off on a Sunday morning to the place that makes it possible to be obedient to the impossible calling of Jesus. This real love that is so real and so authentic that Jesus not only spoke it to the rich man, Nicodemus and many others, but he lived it in giving it all on the cross. Real love: may we receive it as a gift, allow it to reshape our lives, and be given in turn as our witness to others.