10+1
Sermon on Mark 10:17-31
Jesus is like: “It will be super hard for anyone rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
And his friends are like “What??”
And Jesus is like: “Children, it’s extraordinarily hard to enter the Kingdom of God, like soooo hard. Like for wealthy people, it is harder to enter the kingdom of God than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank. Do you understand me? It’s harder than for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle. Like impossible, basically.”
And his friends are like “Seriously? You don’t mean that, right? Wait? You do? Oh my!!! Uuuh, that’s going to make a lot of people really mad!”
But then, Peter, the A+ student sighs in relief and figures: “Ha, we are good. We have left behind what we had, home, family and fields, and followed you, Jesus. Phew! But, oh, for many people that’s probably not going to sound like good news.”
How about us? Who are we in this story? As far as I can tell, none of us have left everything and everyone behind to follow Jesus. None of us chose a life in relative poverty, depending on the grace of others. But then, we aren’t rich either, right? My guess is that we all consider ourselves to be middle-class. Like 89% of Americans do when surveyed. [1] Compared to the 52% of Americans who actually fall into the middle-class category. Why the discrepancy? First, no one wants to consider themselves poor. Totally understandable. So, many actually poor people think of themselves as “lower middle class”. That gives the impression and hope that they are close to being actual middle class. On the other end of the spectrum, most rich people also declare to be “middle class”, adding “upper middle class” in acknowledgment of the beautiful home, the vacations they are able to take, the debt-free college education for their kids, and the Tesla parked in their garage.
It’s interesting with wealth. Everyone dreams of it, but nobody wants to be seen as actually rich. “Middle class” sounds like “I am doing well, but I am not hurting anyone, I am not oppressing anyone, I am just making a good living. Nothing wrong with that.”
Unfortunately, in today’s Gospel, there is no middle-class. There are just 2 groups of people. The poor, either by choice like Jesus’ friends, who left everything and everyone behind to follow Jesus. Or by birth or accident. And then, there is the rich guy. Who so wants to be with Jesus. But just can’t. In the entire Gospel of Mark this man is the only one to seek Jesus and not follow him. He is the only one who gets his discipleship denied. Why? Not because he is rich. But because he is not willing to give up his wealth. He is not willing to redistribute his wealth. To eradicate the oppression of have-nots from the have-it-all.
But, if he gives away everything, he will end up poor himself, one might cleverly object. And then, what good is that? If everyone acted like this, everyone was poor, right? NO! Actually, if everyone thought and acted like this, everyone had enough to live a decent life. It’s the big dream of the great shift, the great redistribution of the abundance to all. Which really is the best news to the vast majority of people in the world. To the poor. It sounds like 3 meals a day and a roof over one’s head and public schools for all the kids. It sounds like affordable health care and like dignity and freedom to follow one’s dream. It sounds like a dream. The kingdom of God on earth. The Good News.
It just might not sound like Good News to us necessarily. Because we are the ones who have in this world. And for us, the great redistribution would mean to give of our abundance. Not just a little bit that doesn’t hurt us. Not just a donation here and there. But to give everything we have trusting that people will follow our example. And that there will be enough for everyone, in the end. The question is: Who will be the first to share their wealth? Who will be brave enough to do that? And who will be the second? And the third? How many years will it take for this to become a global movement. Jesus’ answer is: You, who want to follow me, you have to be the first to give all you have.
This Gospel is much more radical than just some good stewardship or a great donation to a good cause. Today’s Gospel states that we have to redistribute our wealth to the poor in order to get into the kingdom of God and have eternal life. Again and again, Mark reminds us: It’s a community thing. And, the community is made of individuals. And our actions and decisions matter. What we do with money, matters.
Let’s take a closer look at the initial story. About the man in need of healing.
Yes, healing. The man runs up to Jesus and kneels. That’s what only people in desperate need of healing do in the Gospels. The first treatment Jesus offers is the medicine of humbleness. Only God is good, Jesus insists. Don’t call me good. The Son of God doesn’t want the flattery and the titles. He came to point to God by freeing people from all that competition and blarney. Salvation is the freedom to be who God made us to be. It’s freedom from pretending that we are better than others. Freedom from justifying all that isn’t justifiable. All the injustices in this world we have grown accustomed to. So accustomed that we often lack the vision how to change them at all.
Jesus reminds the man of the 10 commandments. By making up an 11th one. “You shall not defraud.” He adds it nonchalantly to the list, as if it belonged there. So, I guess, it does?
“You shall not defraud!” The 11th commandment none of us have had to learn for confirmation class, I bet. To be honest, I wasn’t even aware of it until this week. But here it is, in black and white. In the biblical context, defraud always points to someone economically exploiting others. Either by keeping back their wages or by refusing to return goods or money that were deposited for safekeeping in the first place.
Now, the man is still confident. He responds proudly: “I have kept all these (laws) since my youth”. In other words, he claims to be as blameless as Abraham, Moses and Aaron, a rather exalted company. My guess is that he also didn’t catch the 11th commandment.
Jesus tells him to “get up”. In other words, walk, you are healed. You are perfect, you have passed the exam. There is just one last little thing you need to do, really not worth mentioning: Sell everything you got and give it to the poor. And then, you can follow Jesus. It won’t be hard. I mean, you have never wronged anyone less fortunate than yourself. Why would you be afraid of being poor? At living at the mercy of others? Why would you be afraid of living like most other people in the world?
“When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
Does he grieve that he could be liberated from his possessions if he took that step? Or does he grieve because he believes that he cannot ever be liberated from that many possessions? All we know is that this is the only man who came to Jesus and was turned away as a follower. The rich man everyone would call blessed because of how much he has.
What Jesus asks of his disciples is nothing less than turn their back onto everything that would grant them any kind of security. Their families. The people who will catch us and give us a roof over our head when there is nowhere else to turn. The people who will feed us and help us pay our bills. Our parents whom we will take care of when they are old. The smallest and often the only unit of a safety net in our lives. Especially in places like Palestine in Jesus’ time or in the US today. Where, if you get seriously sick, you are likely to lose your job and with it your health insurance, your savings, eventually your home. Unless you have either paid heavily into insurances. Or, if you have a family that has the ability to care for you. Which means, a family of at least some means, some savings, and a permanent place to live. A middle-class family, basically. 52% of people living in this country have that kind of safety net. The rest, well, they just shouldn’t be unfortunate in life, I guess. Otherwise, they might be screwed.
Jesus doesn’t only ask his disciples to turn their back on their families. But, also on their land. The one possession that hardly ever loses its value. Something that can be handed down from generation to generation. Land means home, means stability, a place to be for generations. It’s the second layer of a family’s safety net. Without land and homeownership, one will not profit from the skyrocketing prices and the climbing home values. Homeownership in the US is the one biggest factor that determines the future of a family’s wealth like no other. We read a lot about that during our Racial Justice Circle last year. Think about it in your own family’s context.
So, Jesus asks his disciples to leave the security 52% of Americans might be able to build for the small circle of people around us behind. For the greater good. For the redistribution of wealth among all instead of participating in a system of inherited wealth where some get richer, and many get poorer. Where some will have it all and most will have the bare minimum or not even that. The kingdom of God is a dream for all, not just for some more fortunate people born at the right time in the right place.
This is a truly radical story. Not just in its claim. But, also in its consequence. It’s the only discipleship-rejection story in our Gospels. The man who is possessed by his possessions cannot join the Jesus movement. Not because he is a bad person or he doesn’t love God or he doesn’t recognize Jesus as his Savior. It’s because he cannot trust God to take care of him and everyone else by transforming a family welfare system into a system where everyone is being taken care of and where everyone helps take care of everyone.
The question of whether that is Good News to us or not is really up to us. Whether we turn away in grief, knowing that this is too hard of an ask. That we are happy to share some of what we have to spare. But not all of what we have. Or whether we can hear this Gospel as the Good News it is to the poor, to the forgotten, the left behind in our world and country and city. To work towards equality for all might feel like losing it all or even oppression for people like us. Who have what we need for a living.
And I wonder what difference it would make, if we started considering ourselves to be rich. Not necessarily in comparison with the even richer. But in comparison with most people in this world. If we started acknowledging that we are rich even though we cannot buy anything we want either. How would that shift our thinking from scarcity to abundance? How would it affect our generosity, even our wish to share the plentiful?
May Jesus won’t let us walk away in grief. May we see Jesus’ love when he tells us what to do and how to do it. May we follow his way of love and leave the way of fear for a dream of abundance. There is more than enough to share. Amen.
[1] Wenger, Jeffrey B. and Melanie A. Zaber. “Most Americans Consider Themselves Middle-Class. But Are They?” The RAND Blog. 14 May 2021.
