October 11,
2009 Des Moines
TEXT: Mark 10:17-31
Prayers of the People
For all the beauty crackling around us, it’s chillier
around us and we have mixed emotions about all that. The invigorating briskness of “football
weather” is one thing, but it’s hard to give up the leisure of short sleeves
and sandals. The reds and golds of
leaves can be breathtaking, indeed, but it’s likewise breathtaking in an
altogether different way to wake up to snow covering the lawn long before we
were ready for it. Cool nights sleeping
near an open window feel like bliss; we weren’t quite ready for flannels in
front of the fireplace.
And yet we are grateful, O God, for life in all its
seasons; grateful for the gifts that each transition has to offer. So, open armed, we anticipate all you have in
store. We give you thanks for all the
gifts you set in our path. May such
blessings enliven and nourish us during those times more leaden and difficult,
when those we love pressed by illness or challenges or grief.
In all our seasons – both joyful and pained – we are your
people, utterly dependant on your grace.
May such a comprehension both caution us against arrogance and sustain
us in trial, for we pray in the name of Jesus who revealed to us such good news. Amen.
Inventorying
Deficits
In the late 1960's, the Swiss-born
psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified what she described as the five
stages of grief – five discrete expressions of the way people process and deal
with grief:
1.
Denial —
2.
Anger —
3.
Bargaining —
4.
Depression —
5. Acceptance —
At first
Kubler-Ross was thinking only of people suffering from terminal illness, but
ultimately realized that grief is, finally, grief, whether caused by the death
of a loved one, divorce, infertility, loss of a job or the foreclosure of a home. And while the stages don’t always occur in
the same order or only once – or necessarily even all five – each, nonetheless
is common.
Another therapist reduced the number to three:
Numbness, Disorganization,
followed eventually by Reorganization
[1]
I rather like that trio, which perhaps is more descriptive
of the types of shifts that occur in the process of grieving than the
particular faces that each of those shifts might wear. Numbness – that kind of spiritual anesthetic
during which it seems all of life has frozen to a standstill. Disorganization – when everything we have
known, everything we have understood, the entire framework of reality as we had
heretofore built it, comes crashing down into utter confusion. And reorganization – that emotional,
psychological sunrise when some brand new shape of reality begins to emerge.
Can you remember, for example, when
you suddenly realized that your parents were neither infallible nor
omnipotent? That they didn’t know the
answer to every question and that there were certain bullies in life from which
they could not protect you? That
comprehension, at least for me, made of my whole way of making sense out of
life a kind of shattered Humpty Dumpty that none of the king’s horses
and none of the king’s men could ever put back together again. I grieved.
But beyond that initial disorganization waited an altogether healthier
reorganization far better equipped to organize and process reality.
Or parents, how would you describe
the feeling that first time you drove away from your 18-year-old’s college
dormitory and glanced in the rearview mirror?
Pride, no doubt, and almost certainly fatigue after all the work of
unloading the car and lugging them up the staircase to that tiny room that
would now be called home. But wasn’t
there also the resounding numbness of grief at the realization that one huge
and whole defining and organizing phase of life was now over, and that whatever
life might look like moving forward would require a whole new reorientation?
Which is to say that grief is ultimately about more than
simple sadness. Sadness, to be sure, but
eventually about the loss-induced reinvention of life on very different
terms. That, I think, is what’s going on
in this morning’s story about the man in search of eternal life who, according
to Mark, walks away from Jesus in grief – numbing, disorganizing “grief”
precisely because he has lost, as a result of his conversation with Jesus,
something precious.
The visitor in this story is no stranger to us. By one name or another, we have known this
guy since our earliest Sunday School teachers began to tell us stories from
scripture. Matthew describes him as
“young”; Mark simply labels him “rich”, while Luke elevates him to “ruler”;
which is why we routinely scrunch all that together and call him the “Rich,
Young Ruler. The “rich” part, of course,
we only learn about later – after Jesus' second response to the man's query
about inheriting eternal life. Jesus
initially had simply referred the man back to the 10 Commandments – or at least
four of them, plus an extra one that Jesus managed to slip in unnoticed.
‘You
shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall
not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’”
But when his questioner replied that
he had been doing those things forever, Jesus paused for a deeper look. According to Eugene Peterson's translation in
The Message, Jesus “looked him hard in the eye – and loved him.” And then he observed that the man was yet
lacking one thing. Unfortunately, Jesus
didn’t go on to spell out the definition of that “one thing” lacking, except to
observe that in this case the absence had something to do with a presence. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to
the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
I am guessing that as long as this
story has been told, listeners have been trying to figure out some way of getting
around it. “Surely he didn’t mean that
literally,” people have inevitably responded.
“Surely poverty isn’t to be the norm!”
So, what about it: does
discipleship really require a wholesale liquidation and subsequent donation in
order to be consummated?
Well, as the pastor of a congregation in the
midst of its stewardship concentration, it is awfully tempting to answer,
“yes! That's exactly what Jesus
means.” But, then, locating this
institution in the receiving position of that largesse would require casting it
as “needy” or “poor,” and let’s face it: that would be a pretty long stretch of the
truth. Sure, we would love to have more
resources – both human and financial ones – to bring to bear on the ministry to
which God is calling us. Yes, it forever
seems like we are squeezing one thing or cutting another; but if anyone
is going to be honest and truthful it ought to be the church. And the truth is that we have lots of
resources at our disposal. Though almost
everyone who reads this story is absolutely certain that, “if Jesus really
means what he is saying, he must be saying it to someone else,” the reality is
that, compared with the rest of the world, congregationally and individually we
are solidly among the wealthy.
One thing is for sure:
Jesus was, at the very least, talking to this inquisitive young man who
was by now likely regretting that he had asked the question in the first place. According to Mark, “when the man heard [what
Jesus had said], he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many
possessions.”
Shock, then – “sticker shock,” we might call it, at the
exorbitantly high price that Jesus seems to set, and we no doubt feel it
ourselves.
Whatever else Jesus may have had in mind, it is almost
impossible to argue that money had no part in it – money and the powerful
role it plays in our lives. Our global
economic experience this past year has once again called attention to how
linked we are to this chain that can so wildly and forcefully yank us
around. How many people have lost their
jobs in the past 12 months? How many businesses
have closed or dissolved into the receivership of another one only slighter
better off? How many homes have been
foreclosed upon? How many have torn up
plans to retire, forced into working a few years longer? Money, we know, is a powerful force in our
lives – with the capacity to accomplish great good and inflict great pain – and
we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus would speak truth so bluntly to such a
force.
But neither should we conclude that we have all our
spiritual ducks in row should we ever get our money in proper perspective,
because I am convinced that money isn’t finally the main point of this
story. Jesus, after all, wasn’t calling
attention to what the man had, but rather what he was missing. Shock,
as we mentioned before, wasn’t the man’s only reaction. Shock, to be sure – and for obvious reasons;
shock as that kind of numbing initial reaction – but also, according to Mark, grief. Why grief?
What is the life-altering, disorganizing loss this rich young man
incurs?
I suggest that the shattering truth with which Jesus
confronts him is that despite all the power that money has, it isn’t finally
powerful enough to get him what he ultimately wants – money, or for that matter
anything else a person can arrange or amass or perfect.
We are not defined by our financial
capacity; neither are we talent nor family name. We cannot hone, rehearse, perform or invest
our way into the Kingdom of God.
You noticed, perhaps, that the young man’s request had to do
with “inheritance” – a legal construct which, when it comes down to it, refers not
to an accomplishment but a right. All one typically has to do to inherit is be the
next in line and outlive the one ahead of you.
Inheriting is merely getting what is coming to you, and presumably eternal
life was merely one more of those commodities to which this young man felt he
was entitled.
But the fundamentally devastating reality, according to
Jesus, is that’s not the way it works. Eternal
life is neither an entitlement nor an accomplishment, and the loss of such a
world view would have been grievously disorienting, indeed. What the man had was a clear and
enterprising mind. But what he lacked –
the one thing he lacked, Jesus observed – was the awe-inspired humility to
gratefully receive the gift to which he was not entitled.
Not altogether unlike this wealthy young man, we might be
feeling a little grief over all this – preferring, as we do, to make our own
way in this world – and perhaps beyond.
While we aren’t averse to a little good luck along the way, we don’t
like to be beholden to others or embarrassed by their charity. The same, I suppose, holds true when it comes
to God. We’d rather do it on our own –
the commandments, and all that, that we have worked at since childhood.
Which is to say that, whatever else we may have in our
favor, we too may have this one thing lacking – a deficit we’d do well to
inventory. It is God’s delight to give
us eternal life, and there is nothing we can do to inherit it.
Thanks be to God.