1 You Want Me to Give Up What? Mark 10: 17-31 This past week has been interesting. On one hand, it was a precious time of catching up with my sister, of sharing memories, of celebrating our similarities, recognizing and navigating through our differences, and cherishing these days. On the other hand, I rediscovered something in me that is both wonderful and challenging. From the time I was a young child, I was fiercely independent, learning early on to withdraw into myself and living into a self-reliance that often separated me from others and still does. So this time as I wait for my vision to settle into itself, I find myself in an odd position. At least, odd for me I really need other people. And for this independent woman who has made her way in the world that has not always been supportive, that is indeed a puzzle. Certainly, it has taken courage and strength to become who I am now, to move across the country several times, and start over on more than one occasion. It also takes courage to recognize and even embrace how interconnected I am with the world. It is beautiful, humbling, and a bit terrifying. The story of the man approaching Jesus is told in the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In each gospel it is slightly different, but they are united by two factors. In each one the initial question is the same: What must I do to inherit eternal life? 1 It is an inquiry that begins with an action initiated in the self. What must I do? In each one Jesus then responds with an invitation to become grounded in others. From the individual to a holy reliance on God and others. That is the core of being called, of discipleship emptying ourselves in order to become the people God created us to be. There is a cognitive dissonance to that concept that rattles around inside our heads and hearts more than two thousand years later. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. 2 That does not make sense at all! And to a people who take pride in inventing and re-inventing themselves, who value independence and self- 1 From Matthew 16:19, Mark 10:17, and Luke 10:25 NRSV 2 Mark 10:31 NRSV
2 motivation, it s so very difficult. No matter how we try to twist Jesus words, how much we derive self-worth from our abilities and accomplishments, there is no getting around the call. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 3 The man who knelt in reverence before Jesus with a question on that day was the picture of what society would value as both good and successful. He followed the complicated Jewish laws; their rules shaped his life. He had acquired many possessions, a visible reflection of his worth. Two millennia later we would admire him as well, for he had done everything he was supposed to do. His hard work had paid off! Then Jesus shattered the man s self-made image and challenged him to sell everything, to give it all away, and to follow him. The man was heartbroken and perplexed. How could Jesus call him to relinquish everything the world had told him made him a good person? I am no stranger to preaching from this text. It always makes people squirm, especially if those people have a great deal of wealth. It becomes easy to twist the words into an attack on money and stuff. I remember one conversation I had with someone who was fortunate to have money, possessions, homes, and just about everything that showed he was a success in this world. He was clearly struggling with what Jesus told the man in this passage from Mark s gospel. He, too, was confused and grieving. Does Jesus call us to give away everything we have? That is a very good question. The disciples were quick to point out that they had, in fact, done that. Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John had walked away from their fishing business, abandoning boats and all to follow Jesus. In answering them, Jesus acknowledged what they had done but added a caveat, one that shapes our call today. It was never a matter of giving up possessions or even leaving friends and family; it was about the motivation for my sake and for the sake of the 3 Mark 8: 35 NRSV
3 gospel. 4 It is as we hear, really hear, those words a new meaning begins to sink into our souls. A life of following is not about us, what we have accomplished, what we have gained. It s not even about what we have given up and left behind. It s about the soul-deep need within us for relationship with God and others, one in which we are a partner but one that is totally dependent on something outside ourselves. The Lenten journey is an exercise in contrast, an acknowledgement of the tension that defines who we are as the people of God. It pulls at us to delve into our hearts, to examine our motivations, to become fully acquainted with who we are. Then it urges us to drop all that at the foot of a cross for criminals and look beyond to an undefinable tomorrow. Lent, indeed the entire of a life of faith, invites us to lose our lives so that we can live, not just in whatever comes next after this time on earth but in the reality of the here and now. The words sound so very noble and inspirational. But I must confess to being more like the man who knelt before Jesus with a sincere question and walked away saddened and feeling even more lost. How do we do that? Therein lies the issue we don t do a thing except fall into God s arms of grace and surprisingly find ourselves immersed in the lives of others, leaning on one another in ways that the world does not value, trusting that we are here for something so much larger than ourselves. Faith is truly a two-edged response, one in which we acknowledge our utter dependence on God s grace and the other in interwoven commitment to one another, two facets that eternally dance together. We are never the center of the story, except in who we are in relationship to God and others. That goes against the popular idea that we are self-created or as stated in a poem and later used by many others, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. 5 Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a lecturer and ardent abolitionist. His words and actions continue to shape movements towards equality and justice. 4 Mark 10: 29b NRSV 5 Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).
4 One of his most famous speeches was Self-Made Men, in which he promoted the ability of people to rise beyond their circumstances, to improve one s own life through hard work and education, to re-create a new identity. Yet imbedded within that speech was a humble acknowledgment of the intertwining of our lives and of our deep need for one another in order to become self-made. He compared the relationships in which we are all joined with that of ocean and waves. 6 As someone who grew up on the Gulf of Mexico, who observed waves in all their complex differences, I resonated with his explanation. From my earliest years I learned to recognize the moods of water. In my surfing years, I could study a wave for its curl and how it would break, whether a wave would be a good ride or a dud. Waves are multi-colored, varied in temperament and personality. Some waves break and dissolve quickly; others keep reaching toward shore in protracted arcs. But waves do not exist on their own. They are part of a vast body of water, which is shaped by forces outside itself - by the pull of gravity, by the moving of the earth s depths, by meteorological phenomena, by the actions of humans. All of it together is crafted by something so far beyond our comprehension. We can explain the parts and pieces; the whole leaves us in humble awe. Isn t that the living of our faith as God s creation? When we read this passage from Mark s gospel and its companions in Matthew and Luke, we could easily turn it into a diatribe of the evil of riches and wealth. That was never the stopping point for Jesus, though. He took the man who questioned him and those who listened for his answer on a journey beyond possessions of the world, beyond individual status and identity, and placed us all in a context even more wondrous than the astounding complexities of the ocean. Jesus reminded us of the source of all life God, not us, not our possessions, not our accomplishments, but God at the center, at the beginning, at the end, and everywhere in between. His challenge to the man who knelt before him with a question was not so much one of how he loved what he had 6 As found in Douglass, Frederick (1992): "Self-Made Men". In Blassinghame, John and John McKivigan (ed.): The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One, vol. 4. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 545-75.
5 accumulated but an exploration into what stood between him and God. As a community of faith and individuals within it, that is our question as well. What keeps us from loving God, from trusting in God s grace, from being who we were created to be? In Luke s version of the encounter, the man answered Jesus with ancient words that are the core of Judaism, the heart of the gospel, the fulcrum on which faith balances. They combine the Shema with another law to create the eternal dance of God, others, and us. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. 7 And there is absolutely nothing that is supposed to stand in the way of that. Not what we have, not even who we are. Not the laws of people, not even religion as we have crafted it to be. Nothing. I know how to say this; but even as I wrote this sermon, I realized that I cannot do this alone. Just as I had to, and will continue to have to, rely on others to help me in this season of visual change, we all need to lean on one another, to look and reach beyond ourselves to the very real needs of others, to recognize that we are as much a part of one another as the waves of the ocean. Even as we begin to glimpse the magnitude of our interrelatedness and our responsibility in nurturing the best of that sacred connection, we also lean back into the beauty of grace that will hold us, walk alongside us, lead us into a world beyond what we could build or envision. Unlike the young man who felt crushed because he could not do as Jesus asked, we lean back into God s grace, trusting the One who is with us all. Wendell Berry is a poet and environmentalist who writes of the duality of despair of the state of the world around us and the infusion of God s grace as our hope, the very tension that is soaked into the life of the gospel. In one of his poems he wrote: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake 7 Luke 10: 27 NRSV
6 rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 8 Let us pray. God of grace, may we have the courage to look within and around us, recognizing what has become a wall between you and us, between us and others. Come, let us rest in the grace of the world, in your grace, and discover who we are to be. Amen. Rev. Melodie Long First Presbyterian Church Oshkosh, Wisconsin March 31, 2019 8 Wendell Berry. The Peace of Wild Things. https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/peace-wild-things-0/