I kept thinking of a random quote while I was reading our text for this morning. And since it always feels like a successful Sunday when I get to work an obscure pop reference into a sermon, I’m going to share that quote with you. When I read this text, I kept thinking about a line from comedian George Carlin about religion. First though, a bit of a disclaimer. This quote I’m going to share with you is G rated. If you Google it, the rest of the sketch is not. We’re all adults here, Google at your own risk. Anyway, George Carlin defines religion as “an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke… where he will send you to live and suffer…forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, [and] somehow just can't handle money!”
And I wonder if this isn’t a little bit how the rich man in our Gospel text for this morning was feeling. Here was a guy who had done everything right for his whole life. Kept the commandments well. Didn’t lie, didn’t murder, was faithful to his spouse, didn’t steal, honored his parents. Every nuance of every law he strove to keep faithfully. And to those around him, it seemed he had been rewarded for his faithfulness. Wealth was at that time believed to be a sign of God’s blessing, and this guy was rich! But something still was missing. Even with all his possessions and all his faithfulness to the law, he knew, deep down inside that there was still an ache longing to be filled. Which is how he found himself traveling to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan to fall at the feet of an itinerant preacher and beg him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And though Jesus looked at him, and loved him, what disappointment must have filled the man’s heart when the words were delivered, “‘Go, sell what you have, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ And when he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
And then there’s Peter—it always seems to be poor, hapless Peter in these stories, doesn’t it—Peter who turns to Jesus after Jesus has followed up the rich man’s departure with a teaching about how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, who points out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” Only to have Jesus respond, “yes, and you who have left everything, houses, families, fields, will receive one-hundredfold in this age of persecutions.” George Carlin’s God sounds like less of a joke at the end of this reading.
This text seemed easier when I was twenty-two and self-righteous. When I left all my possessions in my parents garage and moved to DC with a duffle bag strapped to a skateboard to begin a life as a volunteer coordinator at a homeless shelter working forty hours plus hours a week for one-hundred dollars a month. I knew even then what I was doing was not poverty. I had little money, but I had none of the insecurity that comes with true poverty. I had a job, I had a home, I had health insurance. But there was still an edge of pride to this lifestyle. I get where Peter was coming from when he pointed out to Jesus, “Look, we left everything and followed you.” I get his disappointment when instead of praising him, Jesus told him that such sacrifice offered not glory but persecution, for many who are last will be first, and the first will be last. I, like Peter, thought I’d done a pretty noble thing with this sacrifice I had made to serve the homeless. Until the first really cold fall rain came. As I pushed my bike past the front of the building, I passed the hooded figure of one of the day shelter clients hunched under an awning smoking a cigarette. The awning was too narrow to offer full protection, so she was wrapped and hooded in a thick grey blanket, her belongings carefully tied in grocery bags against the downpour. She looked up as I passed by. “Good night,” she said. “Be safe riding home, it’s nasty out tonight.” That night, as I sat in my warm home, wrapped in dry blankets, full of the food my roommates had cooked for dinner, I thought of the woman sitting on the stoop, wishing me safety as I biked through the rain, and I thought, I have given up nothing.
Now it is true that the woman had choices. She could have sought shelter in our night shelter or any of the other shelters throughout the city, and maybe she did after I left, I don’t know. And even if she didn’t, that was her choice and part of following Jesus command to love your neighbor as yourself is allowing your neighbor to make their own choices with their life. I don’t know her story, I don’t know what very valid reasons she may have had to have wanted to spend that night outdoors rather than in. But I knew that everything I had given up still left me vastly wealthy compared to her. Even if I gave up everything and moved to the streets, I was born into privilege that would always put me ahead. That’s the thing about trying to earn God’s favor; everything you do is never enough. There’s always something missing.
What Peter and the rich man had in common is this sense that there was something they could do to earn God’s favor. That they could be good enough or poor enough or faithful enough or generous enough to make God love them. But what Jesus pointed out in this text is no matter how faithfully the rich man kept the law and no matter how much Peter gave, they were always going to fall short. They were always going to lack one thing. The rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Peter, well, the disciples are just consummate screw-ups in Mark’s Gospel. Read ahead for next week to see just how far James and John can get off the mark. Even the disciples can’t get this whole living like Jesus thing perfectly. How hard it is, brothers and sisters, to enter the kingdom of God. Left to our own devices, we will never make it. And that, believe it or not, is the good news in this text. That is the freeing news in this text. We can never earn our way into the kingdom of God. We can’t, and we don’t have to. The rich man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life. An inheritance isn’t something you earn, right? It’s something that’s given to you. Something you get by virtue of being part of the family. But what happens in order to get an inheritance? Someone has to die. Beloved, Jesus died. We confess every Sunday that Jesus suffered death and was buried. And so, we have an inheritance. Our inheritance is based not on our ability to earn it, but in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God is not some invisible man in the clouds with a checklist of rules we must measure up to in order to earn some vague promise of salvation someday. Jesus looked at the rich man, right then, as he was, and loved him. Jesus looked at Peter and all of his wayward, pushy, and confused disciples, and loved them. Jesus looks at us, with our questions, our fears, our failures, and shortcomings, and loves us. That love is based not own our ability to earn it, but on God’s ability to give it, because that’s the way love works. Think about love in our human relationships. It isn’t something you earn by checking off some list of accomplishments. It’s something that’s given to you, or that you give, freely, because you can’t help but love or be loved by the person. The love we experience between each other is just a dim reflection of the limitless love of God.
And because we don’t have to earn God’s love, because our freedom is a product of the inheritance we received through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can give up trying to be perfect and just be loved. And that love will change us. The disciples don’t get it through the entirety of Mark’s Gospel. You might remember from Easter that even at the resurrection, Mark’s account has the disciples not telling anyone because they were afraid. But we know from the book of Acts and from the fact that we are here this morning witnessing to Christ’s presence, that the disciples got it right eventually. They went out and told the story of God’s love for the world, and we are benefactors of the fact that their story didn’t end every time they failed. But instead every time they failed, because of the inheritance they had through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were able to try again, to go at it again, to be disciples again. The fancy theological term for this is sanctification, it’s the way we are changed for the better out of response for the love we’ve experienced through God. Not because we’re trying to earn God’s favor, but the way a flower opens toward the sun, because God’s love has filled us and there simply is no other way to respond. And I have to imagine this is the rich man’s story too. That a God who would not be defeated by death was certainly not defeated by a rich man’s sadness. We don’t know what became of the rich man when he walked away that day, but I can only imagine that encounter with Jesus was just the first part of his story, just the first glimmerings of change that would blossom into something extraordinary.
This change too is our stories. It is in our words of forgiveness, our working toward justice, our struggles to see the world through our neighbors eyes, all these are signs of the way God is at work within us, changing us, loving us, reorienting our lives to God’s kingdom. And so, brothers and sisters, be loved. Know that you are loved. In failures and struggles, in greed and pride, our great God of love keeps coming back to us, turning our hearts, changing our lives, reorienting our souls to receive it. The inheritance is ours, brothers and sisters. For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible. Amen.
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