Mark 10.17-31 This is one of those profoundly disturbing passages. Jesus challenges all our ideas about goodness and about wealth, and we find ourselves stripped naked before him He challenges our ideas about goodness The man calls Jesus ‘Good Teacher’. Jesus cuts him down, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone’. (v18) That is radical. Jesus is in fact saying, ‘There is no such thing as a good person’. There is goodness, but nobody can really be described as ‘good’ That is quite hard to take. Especially for this man who was counting on his goodness to get into heaven. He claims to have kept all the law: ‘All these I have kept since my youth’. And there is no reason to doubt that claim. Look at what Jesus lists: murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, defrauding others, honouring your father and mother. He could say, ‘I haven’t murdered anybody, committed adultery, born false witness (in court), defrauded anyone (in a signi
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