Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-february-9-2023
Mark 10:17-31
The Rich Young Man
17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 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.”
26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Personally, I think this is one of the more under-appreciated stories from the teachings of Jesus. I think there might be a couple of reasons for that. One is that most of us think we’re not rich, so the problems of the rich don’t apply to us. The other reason the story doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves is that there are some traditional interpretations of the story that aren’t all that helpful.
For one thing, the editors of our NIV Bible say the story is about a rich young man, although Mark doesn’t say anything about his age. Another traditional interpretation says that the man was unable to dispose of his wealth and follow Jesus. Almost every commentary says that. But no version in any of the gospels says that. They all say the man went away sad because he had great wealth. For all we know, he went sadly away and disposed of his great wealth. The point is that the man’s wealth had such a grip on him that he would regret losing it, even to get eternal life.
So is this story supposed to mean to ordinary followers of Jesus?
Let’s start with this: Jesus first responds to the man’s question about gaining eternal life by pointing out the common Hebrew understanding of what it took to be a righteous person in God’s eyes: obedience to the commandments. And Jesus points the man back to the Ten Commandments, not to later traditional customs like circumcision and purification and eating kosher.
The rich man declares that he has been devoted to keeping those commandments since he was a boy. And Mark tells us that Jesus “loved” him, so he must have believed that the man really had been living in obedience to the commandments.
It’s probably important to remind ourselves of what it meant for Jesus to ‘love’ the man. The first thought that strikes us is that Jesus felt a rush of affection for this guy because he was sincere and religious. But the Greek word that’s translated ‘love’ here is the word agape – as it usually is in the New Testament. And as you might remember, the real meaning of agape in the New Testament doesn’t have anything to do with affectionate feelings. It means taking responsibility for the welfare of another.
So in a sense, Jesus was on this guy’s side. He made it his business to do what was best for the man. And what was best for the man was to give him a new way of understanding what God expects of those who hope for eternal life. It’s not just about keeping the commandments – the New Testament teaches us consistently that we just can’t keep those commandments well enough to earn a place in the heavenly kingdom that way.
What the man really needed was to clear away everything that might get in the way of his making a commitment to following Jesus. And that might mean making sacrifices that are hard for us, if that’s what it takes to make Jesus the center of our lives. In this case it meant sacrificing great wealth.
Then Jesus says that it’s hard for the wealthy to get into the kingdom of God. The disciples are stunned. They’re stunned because traditional Hebrew culture assumed that a person who was wealthy was especially favored by God. So their default understanding would be that it was the rich who were most likely to get into heaven. But what Jesus said turned that ‘traditional understanding’ upside down.
It’s those whose hearts are really committed to Jesus who find eternal life – and great wealth can make that commitment harder. Wealth competes with Jesus for first place in a person’s heart.
This story seems to me to ask a really unsettling question of each of us: Are we willing to sacrifice what is most precious to us for the sake of following Jesus?
The honest answer, from just about all of us, is ‘no.’ So we should probably confess the weakness of our faith and pray for the Spirit to open up our hearts more and more to allow Jesus to become the center of our lives.
So even though the story seems to end on a sad note, there’s good news here if you look close. In spite of our sins – in spite of our failure to obey God’s laws – a new life in Jesus is available to us as a gift out of God’s grace. “With man this is impossible,” Jesus says, “but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
So the main lessons here seem to be the futility of trying to earn our way into heaven, and the promise that God offers new life as a gift of his grace if we will stop looking to worldly things to save us.
And there’s one more promise here: that whatever we might sacrifice for the sake of Jesus, that will be replaced by heavenly treasure of vastly greater worth.
Let’s pray. Lord, help us to live in obedience to you, not because we think we can earn our way into heaven, but rather as a way of expressing our thanks for the new life you have given us out of your gracious love. And we ask you to guard our hearts against clinging to the things of this world, trusting that whatever sacrifices we might make for your kingdom will be richly rewarded out of that same gracious love. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 16 and 62; Isaiah 60:1-22; and II Timothy 2:14-26. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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