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April 9, 2000 (see Proverbs 3:l0-l8 and Mark l0:17-31)
Jesus seems annoyed with the rich young guy who approaches him with such civility. First off, Jesus was tired from a full day's teaching. And Jesus may not have cared for the intruder falling to his knees.
I remember how uncomfortable I was when in India a servant in my friend's employee fell to his knees when introduced to me. Jewish society of the first century unlike Indian society, was anti-aristocratic and gestures like kneeling before another human would have smacked of Roman and genteel society.
Also maybe Jesus did not like being called by the honorific "Good Rabbi." He certainly reacted sharply: why do you call me "Good." Jesus may have thought such honorary titles were overdone, as in fact they are.
And, finally, Jesus may have sensed some presumption behind the seeming modesty of the young man. The presumption that he could ask the most fundamental question about eternal life and assume he was entitled to an immediate reply. It's very difficult for persons who have the highest connections not to have some presumption even when they are innately modest.
A recent news story reported that Chelsea Clinton has been offered a role in a film to be shot in London during her summer break from university. Her Stanford roommate told the reporter that Chelsea was thrilled with the chance to strike out and do something on her own! Chelsea Clinton seems like a nice enough young woman but the idea of striking out on her own, when the only reason a film script would be delivered to her dorm room in the first place, is because she's the daughter of the President of the United States, shows how difficult it is for those born to wealth and fame not to assume entitlement.
One good thing about this young rich fellow is that he's not a Pharisee in the negative sense of that word. Because when Jesus starts to talk about the commandments instead of answering his question about eternal life the young man states he's been doing all that since his youth. I read him as sincere, not presumptuous here, and Jesus must also have sensed his sincerity because the text tells us that then "he loved him."
With this introduction, David Blaisdell will give us the fuller story:
"As he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not bear false witness, You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
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!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God; for God all things are possible."
The rich young man endears himself once Jesus discerns that he senses that the fullness of this life and of the life which is to come turns on being right with God. The fellow seemingly has it all but he is not content. He knows in his heart of heart that a satisfactory relationship with God is evading him. And he has had the good sense to come to one who can help him.
And yet? And yet receiving the answer from Jesus, he is shocked and saddened and goes away. In addition to being young, rich, pious, and sincere, was this fellow also a fool? A wise and sad fool!
Well, are you a fool when you know you're in trouble, seek an answer from an authority, get it, understand it, and yet reject it? Yes, I think he was a fool. He was smart and sensitive but you can be smart and sensitive and still end up a fool. This story really is about money and how foolish we are with money.
Now at this point we should try to be at least as self-honest as this rich young fool. He knew he had great wealth whereas so many modern people who have great wealth both in absolute terms and in relative terms to the majority of truly poor on this earth, fool themselves by denying it. It's becomes quite natural to play games with our wealth when we live in a global economy which says we can never have enough of the good things; and since the good and desirable things keep spiraling upward in cost and in variety we can all be sucked into thinking we don't have quite enough. We will never have enough to be comfortable and content, so how can we possibly call ourselves rich!
And then our age is wholly self-indulgent, brainwashing us all into the notion that our comfort is the supreme goal and virtue of our existence. It's so easy to think, "Well yes, we're relatively comfortable, but we can always be a bit more comfortable. Thus, we can always have a bit more money."
The slopes of capitalism are greased with greed and avarice and those slopes lead to social and personal disaster. We were all shocked to read of the brutal murder of the four members of the the German family of four in their affluent and presumed secure villa in Nanjing by four poor Chinese farmers desperately seeking wealth in the home of the expatriate rich, and botching the burglary horrible.
In the last few years three of the richest men in Hong Kong have been kidnapped with huge ransoms paid and one of them murdered nonetheless.
Just as shocking in another way is to learn that 300,000 children in Hong Kong receive less than $4.00 daily from government welfare to cover their daily expenses of transport and school lunches and pocket expenses.
President Clinton noted at a White House conference on the inequities of the global economy that there are more telephones in use by Manhattan's one million residents than by all of Africa's 600 million
Even with already sufficient and real wealth, we wealth people and societies continue to focus our energies through jealousy and covetouness about the wealth of others instead of doing anything about the poverty of the many.
Christians are told again and again that the poor are blessed. We turn that teaching of Jesus on its head by remaining indifferent to the poor in their presumed blessed poverty, while hurling judgement and condemnation upon the rich. There's any number of Christians who know how to spend the money of others! And who take pious comfort in condemning the rich as lost to God.
Such a sweeping judgement is a misreading of the Bible which tells us that God is a providential God who gives all good things to his children. God is the lender of money to us all. Some get loaned more, some less. But does it seem likely that God would condemn that which he chooses to give, wealth, and those to whom he chooses to give it, the rich!
This narrow and overly pious condemnation of wealth is also an erroneous spin on today's Gospel text in which Jesus no where says that God's mercy is denied the rich because they are rich. Rather he states that it's hard to be rich and right with God but that with God all things are possible and entrance into the Kingdom on earth and into heaven is not closed to anyone because of the size of their current account.
Rather, Jesus is stating, quite realistically, that it's difficult for the rich to abandon their self-absorption and overcome their immaturity to arrive at an insightful understanding of who they are in God's eyes.
Part of our confused condemnation of wealth as such comes from not quite understanding the parabolic reference which Jesus makes when to dramatize the burdens of wealth he reached for an exaggerated metaphor, the camel passing through the eye. The story stops with "eye of the needle" but Jesus' listeners would have understand a double meaning to the parable.
As well as the eye of the needle, the eye of this story referred to a small side door built into city gates. You can still see these tiny doors, called the eye to the great door, in each of the great gates around the ancient cities of Jerusalem and Damascus and Aleppo and elsewhere.
The small gate or "eye" was used when the main gate was closed. Now the camel is a rather large beast of burden which can carry a big load of goods high on its back. Fully loaded the camel could trot through the large, main gates of Jerusalem. But if the great gates were closed, the only entrance into the city, say after hours, was through the small gate or the "eye". People and beasts alike would need to bend down to enter the eye gate, and camels would, of course, have to be totally unburdened of their load.
So unburdened, and walking on its knees and contrary to its arrogant nature, the camel could enter the city through the eye of the gate. And so I believe that we may expect to find quite a few of the rich in heaven, who have been able to unburden themselves. However, the rich will be in heaven, just like anyone else, not by virtue of their wealth. It is our service to God which determines the rank and placement of believers in heaven.
Now how typical is the rich young guy of the first century to modern people. As we know we are all getting richer every day. There are well over a million millionaires in the U.S. alone. There is a truly impressive number of folks who now have more money than they know what to do with. Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, last week lost a cool US twelve billion dollars in one day of down trading in his company's stock with hardly a blink of his steely eyes.
However, no matter how rich you are, you can only enjoy so many homes, cars, private planes, and chock up so much on your open ended expense account unless like Prince Jeffry you are eccentic in your spending habits and can't make do on the 2.7 million dollars which he ran through daily over the last ten years.
The really rich know that their wealth is both a symbol of the good life they can enjoy and of something more - prestige, power, influence which, of course, are part of the good life for the Microsoft CEO and many others. But again and again we ask: Are they truly happy? Are the multimillionaires who have more money than they know what to do with deep down happy?
My answer is: "You can bet your last dollar, they sure are!"
What could be nicer than never having to worry about money again. Of course the rich are happy, or else they are fools.
And yet wealth does not equate with complete happiness; one's personal comfort does not mean the same as contentment. James Riady, deputy chairman of the Lippo Group, has announced he plans soon to quit the family business to go back to school or enter a Christian ministry.
In an interview from Singapore (you can read the entire interview on our prayer wall towards Easter) he reports a "growing inner emptiness during his years of financial success and the stress and sleepless night that came with running a conglomerate of 38 firms. …It accumulated until l990 when I just broke down…I was plagued by the ghost that always is disturbing you, whispering to you that you're not going to make it. I went to my room by myself and started crying out to God. All of a sudden something came upon me in my dreams. God allowed me to reflect on my life."
It seems that having wealth increases the cares of this world to an almost unbearable weight. Wealth requires management of it and the rich turn out on average to be just as gullible in their money matters as the not so rich. You may have read of the arrest in Los Angeles of Dana Giachetto who has bilked millions from Hollywood stars like Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon and Courtney Cox. My guess is that these wealthy actors, having been duped, will now be even more suspicious of others and discontented regarding their assets.
James Riady's personal experience, and that of the rich young guy in Mark l0, illustrate those who no matter where they may turn for counsel and protection, are still confronted with issues of their ultimate values, their genuine contentment, or what today's text calls "eternal life."
The answer Jesus gives comes as a shock to his questioner, who leaves him abruptly. It equally shocked Jesus' followers who assumed that the rich would have it made in heaven as on earth. But Jesus' counsel is anticipated two chapters earlier in Mark 8 at verse 34: IF ANY MAN WOULD COME AFTER ME LET HIM DENY HIMSELF AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS AND FOLLOW ME."
Wasn't Jesus wise and realistic about the shallowness which overtakes anyone who lives only to himself and finds contentment merely in guarding his assets?
Wealth, if grasped and clung to, is a burden leading to unhappiness and disaster; wisdom teaches the need for perspective regarding our personal and collective wealth. Jesus discerned that the rich fellow, though modest and polite in manner, and good and righteous in moral conduct, clung to his riches and wanted to define eternal life in a way which would be wholly compatible with keeping his wealth safely in his own hands. Don't we all!
For him taking up the cross of discipleship would have meant divesting himself of his one and consuming idolatry &endash; his wealth. Each man and woman has his and her own idol and it is often, and increasingly so, our wealth. We are enthralled with the secular notion that our worth is contained in our wealth.
We can only be shocked, as were his first disciples, by Jesus' conviction that nothing is gained by someone who wants to own the whole world and loses his soul in that mad process. A related saying opens wisdom to us: He who loses money, loses some thing; he who loses a friend, loses much more; he who loses faith, loses all. But we stand it on its head in our practice of sacrificing friends, and even family and even faith, if we can but keep our wealth.
We need to look again at our confusion about comfort and contentment.
This story may clarify this confusion: A rich businessman vacationing at a small, coastal village in Indonesia when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The tourist complimented the local man on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Indonesian replied only a little while.
The businessman then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.
The stranger then asked, "but what do you do with the rest of your time?" The local said, "I sleep late; fish a little; play with my children; take an afternoon nap with my wife; stroll into the village each evening where I sip rice wine and play cards with my friends. I have a full and busy life, sir."
The visitor scoffed: "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat; with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats; eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small fishing village and move to Hong Kong and maybe eventually to Tokyo or NYC.
The fisherman replied, "But, sir, how long would all that take?"
The visitor replied, "fifteen to 20 years."
"But what then, sir?"
The businessman laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich and you would make millions."
"Millions, sir? Then what?"
The visitor said , "Well, that's obvious because then you would retire. Move to small, lovely fishing village, where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your grandchildren, take a nap with your wife every afternoon, stroll to the village in the evenings, sip wine and play cards with your friends."
Getting a business plan is not quite the same as getting a life. Comfort is not identical to contentment.
Those who make the search for ever more riches their central goal will grow suspicious of others and their motives toward them, become estranged from the poor and ever more remote in compassion toward them, and be inclined toward self-centeredness rather than self-awareness and reverence for God. When wealth is our god, we will come to regard our current account and our savings as our earnings rather than our blessings from God.
It's for good reason that the letter to the Hebrews encourages Christians to keep our "lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have. (Hebrew l3:5)
Christian stewardship is radically at odds with capitalist economics. Stewardship is our way or organizing our lives so that they show how thankful we are for what we have received; it is not manipulating God, as if he were the economy, in order to get more.
In asking the rich fellow to take up his cross and follow him, Jesus was calling him to be more than a good steward of his wealth…he challenged him to be himself a good offering to God. We are created to offer our whole lives to God. We are, as Paul says, the first fruits of God's Spirit and as first fruits we give ourselves and not from coerced duty but as a thanksgiving blessing to God.
And Paul says: "You will be enriched in every way for your generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry (of stewardship) not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God." (2 Cor 9:ll-l2)
In our affluent age it is not very hard to guarantee our comfort and our contentment so long as we rest in the minimal expectations of possessing a fat bank account and a retirement which will allow us to vegetate near a golf course in a warm climate. But that's not Christian discipleship which liberates us so we can pour out ourselves in the love and service of others. We find our lives in giving our lives away.
Christian stewardship is subsumed under Christian discipleship and following Jesus is a pro-active life in which we take pleasure not only in giving away our wealth but in giving away our lives. And it is in the giving away in service toward others, love of others, and stewardship of our possessions, that we find full life and receive the answer about eternal life which Jesus offered to the rich young guy.
We can end of being fools about our money; or we can begin to be followers of Jesus and the gracious and living God.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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