Jesus Loved Him

Proper 23, Year B

October 11, 2009

Questions, questions. Today’s lessons are full of questions, full of hard questions. In Job, we have heard part of Job’s response to his suffering. As I said last week, Job’s response to his plight was not patience, or humble acceptance. He responded angrily, and today we have heard how deep and powerful that response was. Job insisted that his suffering was not punishment for some sin he had committed, and he persisted in that conviction even when his three friends challenged him to admit his wrongdoing, confess his sin, and do penance. Instead of looking within to find the reason for his plight, Job looked elsewhere.

As he tried to make sense of his situation, Job appealed to God to help him understand. But as he pondered his situation, he went further. Job began to wonder where God was for God seemed to have abandoned him.

“If I go forward, he is not there;

or backward, I cannot perceive him;

on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;

I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

Probably many of us have had times in our lives when we were in the same place as Job, profoundly aware, not of God’s presence, but of God’s absence. Sometimes that experience is a result of suffering, but sometimes it is also the product of profound questioning and reflection on our life and the life of the world. “Where is God” is a question that drives to the heart of our faith, and to the very heart of the human experience.

But even if we don’t most of us, most of the time, ask profound questions like the ones raised by the book of Job, still there are questions. The Christian life is full of questions, large and small, difficult and easy. Today’s gospel confronts us with two questions. The first question is asked by a rich man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ disciples ask the second question after hearing Jesus’ words: “Then who can be saved?”

Committed Christians reside in the interstices between these two questions, seeking salvation but profoundly challenged by Jesus’ words. Because Jesus’ words are so unsettling, because they amaze us, even as they amazed Jesus’ disciples, as Mark reports. Over the centuries Christians have done any number of things to soften the edge of his words: “It is easier for a camel to go pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those words are so difficult for us to hear, because, like the disciples, we wonder. These are hard words that Jesus says, words that put is in a hard place. If it is the case, if it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, then salvation is impossible. So we try to weasel out of the hardness of the place. We tell ourselves, we aren’t rich, not like the really rich, not like Bill Gates. So Jesus wasn’t talking to us.

Then we look for another escape route. There’s always the possibility that Jesus didn’t mean what he said or didn’t say what Mark has him say. Maybe Jesus said rope, not camel; the two words are almost identical in Greek. Or my favorite interpretation, that there was a gate in Jerusalem, called the “eye of the needle” through which a camel could squeeze with difficulty. In other words, these difficult words aren’t meant for us, we’re middle class, not wealthy; and camels can get through the eye of the needle after all. So let’s all breathe a sigh of relief and go about our business.

But, next Sunday is the deadline we’ve set ourselves, the day we return our pledges for 2009 to the church. We are in the middle of our stewardship campaign and I’m sorely tempted to turn this into a stewardship sermon. It’s that time of the year, after all, and what better hook for our stewardship drive than to connect Jesus’ reply to the rich man to our own pledging. That would make for a remarkably successful campaign. If all of us gave all of our possessions, Grace Church could do some pretty impressive things.

But as much as I would like to, I can’t do it. For one simple reason—Jesus is not speaking to our situation at Grace. The man has not come to Jesus to offer financial support. He has come for help, for advice. He approaches Jesus because he wants to know how to attain eternal life, how to enter the kingdom of God, of which Jesus preaches. He addresses Jesus with humility, bowing down before him, calling him “Good teacher.”

Jesus’ response is challenging—not simply because he challenges the rich man, but because he challenges us as well. His response to the man is to remind him of his obligations under Jewish law. In a nutshell, Jesus is saying, keep the commandments. The man asserts that he maintains his obligations to the Jewish law.

From a traditional, twenty-first century Christian perspective, the whole of this interchange between Jesus and the man is jarring. Things don’t seem to make sense. Jesus’ response to the man ought to be, “accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior;” or “have faith in me,” or even “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Instead Jesus tells him, keep the law. Furthermore, when the man insists that he does keep the commandments, that, in essence, he is a good Jew, Jesus doesn’t respond with words to the effect that keeping the law is impossible, righteousness under the law doesn’t work. Instead, he gives him another command: “Go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and come, follow me.” Doing that will give the man treasures in heaven, it will bring him into the kingdom of God.

But of course, the man finds those commands much harder to follow than the 10 commandments. Now we learn something new about him. Mark tells us for the first time, that he has great possessions and he can’t give them up. So he leaves Jesus. His desire to share in the kingdom of God, his desire to walk with Jesus, to be a disciple was not as intense as his desire to continue living the life he had, to enjoy his possessions.

But in the course of the story, Mark tells us something else. “Jesus loved him.” At first hearing, we may find such a statement completely unremarkable, but in fact, it is almost unique. Only one other time in the gospel of Mark, does the writer use the word “love”—that is when Jesus recites the two great commandments, to love God and to love neighbor. In other words, Mark never says elsewhere in the gospel, that Jesus loves someone.

Jesus loved him. These simple words challenge us, and challenge every interpretation of this encounter that we might have. In the first place, Jesus doesn’t simply tell the man, follow me. No, he adds conditions. In Mark’s version of Jesus’ calling of the disciples, Jesus words are simply, follow me. But here, Jesus adds conditions, demands. Go, sell, give, come and follow me. For this man, it seems, it’s not enough to follow Jesus, he must also turn his back on all that he has, publicly renounce it.

But then, even though he turns away from Jesus, we are told that Jesus loves him. Does it mean simply that Jesus feels sorry for him, that he has compassion on him? But no, it isn’t because the man turned away in shock after Jesus’ words. Jesus loved him and then said to him, Go, sell what you own.” Jesus commands were in response to his love of the man.

The man stood on the edge of a great opportunity. Having asked Jesus a question of eternal significance, he received an answer of equal significance. But it wasn’t simply a matter of the man’s eternal fate. It was also about a relationship. To have given up his possessions would have meant to accept, in radical and complete openness, the love of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has invited the rich man to follow him, to become his disciple, and the rich man turned away, he turned back from the possibility of that life. But this encounter challenges us to the core of our being, to the core of what matters most to us. In these weeks, we have been learning a great deal about what Mark, and Jesus, understand by discipleship. And each week, we hear the same message. Following Jesus changes everything.

So we are back to stewardship and we are back to discipleship. We, like the rich man, are facing a choice, a life-changing moment. We confess our faith in Christ, we claim to have personal relationships with Christ, we call ourselves his disciples. But Jesus stands in front of us. Jesus loves us, and asks us to give up what matters most, to live in radical openness and complete commitment to him. How will we respond? Will we try to weasel out? Will we, like the rich man, turn away in grief and shock? Or will we accept Jesus’ challenge?