20th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 23B sermon

20th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 23B October 14, 2012 I want to invite you into this gospel story this morning, for the young man who encounters Jesus could easily be any one of us. (If closing your eyes helps you, then you are welcome to do so; hopefully, your neighbor will give you a gentle nudge if they start to hear snoring…) Imagine that you have just heard that Jesus is in your town. You have been following news of his works, his teachings, and his travels, and you are eager to meet him. You are a good, faithful person who follows the teachings of the law. You run up to Jesus and you kneel before him and you ask, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says to you, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: '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.” You say to Jesus, “Of course, Jesus; I have done all this since I was a child. I go to church (almost every Sunday); I do what is right; I try to be a good person.” And then Jesus looks at you and you see his love for you shining out of his eyes. You know before he even speaks that he cherishes you, and he sees you as you really and truly are. And then he says to you, “You lack one thing. You are too attached. And he names that which, in your deepest heart of hearts you are so attached that it keeps you from really and truly belonging to God; and he tells you to give up that one attachment that keeps you from following him. (silence) Maybe it is money; maybe it is your possessions; maybe it’s your status; maybe it is your family; maybe it is your vision for how your life should be; maybe it is your dreams for a better future. Jesus loves you, and he wants your whole heart. And so he is asking you to give up that which keeps you from giving your whole heart to him. And you walk away in sorrow, not because you think you can’t give it up, whatever it is, but because you know you must, and you mourn the loss of this that you have cherished for so long. Notice that from the very beginning of this encounter, the young man thinks that eternal life, God’s love, life in the heart of God, is something that he can earn. He asks, “Teacher, what must I DO to inherit eternal life.” And we get that, don’t we? We think that we can be good enough to earn God’s love and our place in God’s kingdom. But all his good works and faithfulness are irrelevant to Jesus’s love for him. Jesus knows that the young man’s possessions and his status that comes with his wealth and possessions have become a central part of his identity. And so he invites the young man to give up those things, to give up that identity, and to rediscover his primary identity as a beloved child of God and one who is cherished by Jesus, not for anything he has ever done, but just because… Jesus perceives that the young man is so attached to the riches, the status, the privileges, and as long as he is clinging to those, he isn’t free to respond to God. The young man believes that all of this is his core identity, and it blocks his gratitude to God, who loves him and calls him. I had a realization this week in a conversation with one of my colleagues about this gospel. It is that the opposite of gratefulness isn’t un-gratefulness; the opposite of gratefulness is entitlement. We are not really grateful for that which we think we can earn or that which we think we deserve.i True gratefulness is the response to the awareness that we have been given a gift. A gift is not something that we have earned through our own merits, but it is a good thing freely given. All that we have is a gift from God. Our lives, our talents, our initiative, our ability to make money, our ability to create, our families, our friends, our vocations—all that we have and all that we are is a gift from God. Gratitude often steals up on us as a surprise, but it can also be cultivated as an awareness of our many gifts, and this cultivation of gratitude for God’s love for us and for all of God’s good gifts to us is one of the ways that we can have and experience eternal life, here and now. Gratitude recognizes that a gift has been given, and gratitude recognizes the giver behind the gift.ii The late Terry Parsons, longtime stewardship officer for the Episcopal Church, had just written a sermon on this gospel lesson before her death recently. In this sermon, she reminds us that wealth, possessions, and the other things to which we have attachment, in themselves, are not bad. In fact, they are gifts from God. She writes, “Too often, we fail to recognize that every Godly gift carries with it God’s hope for how it might be used. Joy for us is when we align our use of the gifts God gives with what we discern to be God’s hope.”iii Parsons also tells a story about how our attachments get in the way of following Jesus. She writes, “Consider this lesson on how to trap a monkey. The story goes that African hunters wanting to capture monkeys unharmed would use as a trap a bottle with a long narrow neck, just large enough so a monkey could put its hand in it. In the evening the bottle would be tied to a tree, and in the bottom of the bottle they would place several good-smelling nuts. In the morning they would find a monkey with its hand clutching the nuts, held securely in the bottle. At any time, the monkey could have released itself simply by opening its hand and letting go of the nuts.”iii In this stewardship season, consider four questions. (write these down, because I want you to consider them throughout this week). What are the gifts God has given you? What is God’s hope for their use? How are you blessed to be a blessing to others? Are you willing to let go of whatever it is that keeps you from following Jesus? (repeat questions) i. These ideas came from a conversation with my friend, the Rev. Chris Colby. ii.These thoughts were cultivated by a presentations from Brother David Vryhof, SSJE, and Brother Kevin Hackett, SSJE, at the Diocese of Mississippi’s clergy conference. iii.From the series Sermons that Work. Sermon by the Rev. Terry Parsons. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2012/09/18/20-pentecost-proper-23-b-october-14-2012/