Proper 23B sermon

The Reverend Melanie Dickson Lemburg
19th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 23B
October 11, 2009
“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions…”
It just goes to show that the old adage holds true, especially when it comes to God: Be careful what you ask for…The man comes to Jesus, looking for the key to inheriting eternal life, and it seems that he gets much more than he bargained for. Interestingly enough, this is the only instance in the gospel of Mark that someone walks away from the call to follow Jesus, and it is one of the few times in all the gospels when Jesus looks at someone and loves them. Many scholars suggest that this story, in Mark’s gospel, should be read as a healing story. The man comes to Jesus and kneels before him petitioning him, just like those who come to Jesus in Mark’s gospel and ask for healing. And when Jesus offers the man his challenge, the word that he uses for “go” is only used in Mark when Jesus tells people he has just healed to go and lives their lives and be free from their affliction. So what does that mean for how we read and relate to this story?
The man comes to Jesus, and he is obviously searching for something. He thinks that he is searching for the key to salvation, but he could really be searching for many other things: attention
from Jesus, justification for the way he has lived his life, answers on how to continue to live…Maybe, like so many of us, he doesn’t really know what he is searching for, but just feels the need to ask
the question and to enter into dialogue with Jesus. Mark tells us that, after a little bit of instruction, Jesus looks at the man and loves him. And then he puts his finger on the very heart of the man’s
infirmity, on the very heart of his weakness, and he challenges him to see these things about himself very clearly. By issuing his prescription for the man-- to go, sell all his possessions, give the
money to the poor and then come and follow him—Jesus offers a diagnosis and holds a mirror up in front of the face of this man, and the man (who thought that he was a pretty righteous individual
because, after all, he does follow all the commandments as the Torah teaches) realizes that Jesus has asked him to do what seems impossible and that he will never be able to earn his salvation or his
assurance of eternal life. It is only when Jesus asks the man to give up all his possessions and come and follow him that the man realizes that his possessions serve as an impediment to his quest for
salvation. And when he sees this picture of himself looking back out of the mirror that Jesus is holding up, he is shocked and goes away grieving.
Now some people hear this story and see this as an end for the man. They see that Jesus is pointing the man away from himself and back toward God, and that the man can’t handle this, so he goes away grieving, and that is it. But I’m more of an optimist, and I read this story and hear that this is just the beginning for the man. In the encounter, Jesus has held the mirror up in front of the man and has shown him a truth about himself that he did not recognize before. In doing this, Jesus opens before him the path or the way to healing and wholeness and eternal life. He asks of the man what seemed to be the impossible for him and he allows him to fail, for the moment. But it is that failure that opens the way for the man. Hopefully, he begins to understand, like the disciples, that salvation is not something that we humans can ever earn, but for God nothing is impossible. It is only upon realizing that he cannot earn his own salvation that the man can move beyond himself and focus on what he can do, and he can move toward what God is doing in his life, who God is calling him to be, and how to live more fully into that reality.
This past Thursday, I went to a retreat in Jackson for a program that I’m in discernment about entering. It’s called Journey Partners and it’s a two year training program in how to be a spiritual director, how to be engaged in holy listening. This retreat came upon the heels of a very busy week, when I had worked a great deal and seen my family very little, and I still had so much work that was waiting for me to come home to. As I sat in my seat and learned about the program, I began to be more and more excited, imagining how life-giving and energizing this work could be to me and my own spiritual life. And then they told me the requirements: three week-long retreats a year for two years and at least 4 written reports and five books to be read before each retreat. In my heart, I laughed (but not really in a good way) because I saw that Jesus was calling me to something good and life-giving, but in it, he was also asking me to take on more of the very thing that had been so overwhelming for me this past week—more work and less time with my family. I sat there stunned, uncertain how I would respond to this call.
“How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.” “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
In our Christian formation class this past Wednesday night, we discussed the spiritual practices of counting our blessings and naming our anxieties. Each person had a piece of paper and was invited to count their blessings on one and name their anxieties on another. The most surprising part of this exercise was when we all discovered that we had the same things on the two different lists. On our blessings lists were things such as family, health, etc, and on our anxieties list were something happening to our family, health, etc. How are we able to heed God’s call to give up or take on, how are we able to hear Jesus’s call to follow when our blessings and our anxieties are so closely intertwined? What of these blessings or anxieties might Jesus be calling you to give up in order to be more healthy, more whole?
We, like the young man, come to Jesus in search of something. And when he offers us a prescription for healing and eternal life, a true picture of who we are and what ails us, we often turn away in grief, thinking he asks of us the one thing we cannot give up or take on. The good news is that it often takes our failure to help us recognize that nothing we can do can earn us eternal life. “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” God wants eternal life for each and every one of us and offers it to us despite of, and in and through our failure. May we be able to witness the sight of Jesus looking at us and loving us, offering us freedom and eternal life, no matter who we are or what we think we can do.