Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 29, 2004 The First Sunday of Lent
Matthew 19: 16-26
Most of us know this familiar story as the story of the rich young ruler, although Mark is the only one who suggests he is rich, Luke is the only one who calls him a ruler, and Matthew is the only one who says he is young. But the fact that he shows up in all three Gospels would indicate that he really existed and really had an encounter with Jesus. However, I suspect that most of us wish he had never shown up at all, because he provokes a response from Jesus that has to be one of the most difficult sayings in the entire Bible – one that strikes fear in the hearts of Christians and would-be-Christians everywhere, especially Christians who attend churches like ours: “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
“Go – sell – give – come – follow” This is a call story. The man is being called to discipleship. Ah, but what will be the price of such discipleship and is he willing to pay the cost? “Sell your possessions.” How can anyone do what Jesus asks?
A colleague writes, “As a young pastor, I preached a sermon against the evils of materialism and greed. I don’t think that my text was the story of the rich young man, but it might have been. The sermon was quite ‘prophetic’ – which is to say that everyone felt guilty afterward. But on his way out the door, the chair of our administrative board said, ‘Good sermon, preacher. But I bet you’ll still want a good raise this year,’” Says the minister, “That was the last sermon I preached on the evils of materialism. Alas, I am that rich young man.”
And so are we all. Preachers certainly aren’t immune. I’ve heard it said that, in spite of all the profound conflict within the United Presbyterian Church over issues of homosexuality, the church will never split. Why? Because all the ministers in the denomination are bound together by one unbreakable bond….their participation in the Presbyterian Pension Fund. The same could be said of United Church of Christ ministers. As Dorothy Parker once said, “The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘check enclosed.’”
“Go-sell-give-come-follow.” Jesus’ words on divorce and remarriage were hard enough to deal with. But now we have his suggestion – his command – to sell everything and follow. Now he is really getting personal! How can we possibly do that?
Reflecting on this text, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “It seems to me that Christians mangle this story in at least two ways. First, by acting as if it were not about money, and second, by acting as if it were only about money. As far as Jesus is concerned, money is like nuclear power. It may be able to do a lot of good in the world, but only within strongly built and carefully regulated corridors. Most of us do not know how to handle it. We get contaminated by its power and we contaminate others by wielding it carelessly ourselves – by wanting it too desperately or using it too manipulatively or believing in it too fiercely or defending it too cruelly. Every now and then someone manages to use it well, but the odds of that are about as good as they are of pressing a camel through a microchip. The story of the rich young man is a story about money.”
But, Taylor reminds us, it is not only about money. It is also a story about freedom. It was one of the early church fathers, Cyprian, writing centuries ago, who described the affluent citizens of his day with these words: “Their property holds them in chains…chains which shackle their courage and choke their faith and hamper their judgment and throttle their souls…They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned; enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves." I’m not sure things have really changed all that much these many centuries later. Jesus is saying to the young man – and to us – “You have to be free to accept the gift of the kingdom of God. You cannot be otherwise engaged. You cannot be too tied up or too tied down to respond. You cannot accept God’s gift if you have no spare hands to take it with. You cannot make room for it if all your rooms are already full. You cannot follow if you are not free to go.” And I think that is why the young man went away grieving. For in that moment he knew he was not free. In Taylor’s words, “His wealth was supposed to make him free, but kneeling in front of Jesus he understood that it was not so. Invited to follow he went away sorrowful instead, for he had great possessions that he lugged behind him like a ball and chain. He is the only person in the Gospels who walks away from an invitation to follow; he is the only wounded one who declines to be healed. He could not believe that the opposite of rich might not be poor, but free.” Jesus is asking the young man to do nothing less than uproot himself from this age and all that ties him to this age – status, wealth, self-sufficiency - that he might find new life as a free citizen of the kingdom of God.
John Wesley once said, “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” Let’s see…gain, save, give. Well, we are pretty good at the first two! He then went on to say, “Money never stays with me. It would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible, lest it find its way into my heart.” That really gets us to the heart of this story. Jesus is asking the young man – and, yes, each of us – what is in your heart? What’s holding you back? What’s coming between you and God? Rather than adjusting the Gospel to fit your life, you need to adjust your life to fit the Gospel.
Now about this time our Memorial and Endowment committee is getting a bit nervous. Where is he going with this? We wanted a sermon about leaving a legacy of values. But in fact I think our text takes us right to the question of what do we most value in life and how do we want our life to express those values, both today, tomorrow, and into those tomorrows when we are no longer here. I like these words of Harold Kushner: “Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.”
“I am offering you a chance at meaning,” says, Jesus. “I am offering you a life that is more than simply taking up space, a legacy that will be more than simply an empty pew. I am offering you a freedom you never thought possible.” What is finding its way into your heart, and how is that going to make a difference in the life you live today and in the legacy you leave behind tomorrow – to a family, a community, a church? So often, I fear, in the name of love, we in the church help people to adjust, accept, affirm and live with who they already are. But Jesus takes it a step further. He invites us to convert to someone we never thought we could be. Two very different worlds collide in this story. And we are called to decide, which world will it be for us? What values, what life will we affirm – today and tomorrow?
Barbara Brown Taylor summarizes this challenging text with these words: “I know, I know. The children, the mortgage, the aging parents, the doctor’s bills, the economy, the future. I know. It’s the same for me. There are days when threading a camel seems easier than following Jesus. So who can be saved? And who is brave enough to be free? The question has not changed much, but neither has the answer: for us it impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible.” We can change. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound”