[Note to congregation on why I hand out the text. Please feel free to take it home with you. It would be wonderful if you chose to reread it, to think it through for yourself. Possibly to learn a verse. To live with it. And the purpose of this talk is not to give you a correct interpretation of the passage (I could not do that: and almost certainly I will have missed what you might think is the most important part of the passage), but to give you a fascination for the passage – and a desire to look at it again. And if you do, then I will have done my job].
A man comes to Jesus. He seems to have everything
He is young (Luke): life is
ahead of him
He is a ruler (Matthew) and has
influence and power
He is morally upright: he has
kept the commandments (there is no reason to doubt him)
He has wealth, and all that
it offers: openings, security, comfort and status
But he is not satisfied.
He knows that something is
missing, there is something more.
It is bugging him. He runs to
Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life”
[the passage uses several
words to describe what he is longing for: eternal life, the kingdom of heaven,
heaven, salvation]
And Jesus replies to him: “You have everything, but you lack one thing – treasure in heaven”. And then comes the bombshell. “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, then come follow me”.
And Luke’s version of this story makes it clear that Jesus is telling this young man to “Sell everything that you have”.
I have heard many talks, and I have given those talks, which spend most of the time explaining why what Jesus said to this rich man does not apply to me or you!
But I am not sure that that is right.
Of course, the word to this man to sell everything he has is not a command that everyone who is a Christian, a follower of Jesus, should sell everything they have and give to the poor.
Clearly in the New Testament people became Christians and held on to private property.
So, for example, in Acts 5,
Ananias and Sapphira are condemned not because they sold a field and kept back
some of the proceeds for themselves. Peter says, “While it remained unsold, did
it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your
disposal? “ They are condemned for lying to the Church, for saying that they
had given everything, when in fact they had kept back a portion for themselves.
Or take Lydia (Acts 16), who
is described as a trader in purple cloth – in luxury goods. When she becomes a
Christian, she is not told to sell everything.
Even those who became
Christians who had slaves are not told that they must set their slaves free –
although as the word of God grows in their hearts so they will change and will
begin to see that they cannot treat another person as property but as a brother
or sister.
And Paul writes that
Christian believers have a responsibility to look after the members of their
own family, especially when those members are in need. You can only do that if
you have means.
So, no. If you want to get to heaven, you do not have to first sell everything that you have. This is not a general universal command.
But that does not mean that it does not apply to you or me.
Many have heard Jesus words as words which have spoken to them.
There are those who are well-known.
Anthony of Egypt who left a
privileged background to go to live as a hermit in the Egyptian desert. He is
often considered to be the first of the desert fathers and mothers.
Or St Augustine. He wrote in
a letter: “I who write this have greatly loved the total devotion of which the
Lord spoke when he once said to the rich young man: “Go, sell what you have and
give to the poor, and come, follow me.” I have so loved it that I have indeed
acted upon it myself, not by my own strength but by his assisting grace. The
apostles were the first to follow in the practice of this complete self-giving.
One who gives up both what one owns and what one desires to own, gives up the whole
world” (Letter 157, To Hilarius)
Or St Francis of Assisi,
Hudson Taylor, CT Studd, Mother Theresa (she died in the same week as Princess
Diana. Diana left £30m. Theresa left a bucket and two saris.)
Or there is someone like John
Laing, the owner of the construction company. He was a committed Christian, a
member of the Plymouth Brethren. He introduced paid holiday, a minimum working
week of 24 hours for workers on zero hour contract (or the equivalent) and some
pension, all ground breaking initiatives at the time. In 1922 he sold 40% of
his stock to set up a charitable trust, and he gave away over £500m. And when
he died in 1978 his personal wealth was less than £400.
But there are also the many unknown women and men who have heard this word of Jesus, given away everything and followed him.
Countless numbers who have joined some kind of monastic community, and taken vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
Or others who have responded
in different ways.
Henri Nouwen, who gave up a
role as a professor at Harvard to work at L’Arche as the companion of Adam
Arnett, a man who had profound developmental disabilities.
Or I think of one couple who
became Christians, heard this word, sold their house, gave up their jobs, and
went on the proceeds to Nepal as missionaries. That didn’t work out, so they
went to Ukriane where they set up a home caring for teenage girl orphans. They
came to work with us in Moscow and Josh is now a vicar.
For the rich young ruler, however, this word is too radical, too shocking. It shakes his whole world.
He had a desire for that other
world, but he could not let go of his passion for the things of this world.
He was like the monkey who
had put his fist into a jar of peanuts and grabbed them and couldn’t draw his
fist out (that, I am told is one way to catch a monkey!) and so was trapped.
His only way to freedom was to let go of the peanuts.
He had been blinded by his
desire for peanuts
He was like Gollum and his
precious, the ring of power, in the Lord of the Rings
The rich young man could not see further than his wealth and what it bought him. He could not see that:
a)
His wealth had
become his God. It was what he lived for. He thought that he possessed his
wealth, but his wealth possessed him
b)
If he was really
serious about God and the things of God, he was to live not for this world, and
the things of this world, but for the things of that world. He was not to build
up treasure here, but treasure there.
c)
He was loved by
Jesus. I’m sure you noticed that verse. It is very striking. “Jesus, looking at
him, loved him”. That really is all we need. That we are seen by Jesus, known
by Jesus and loved by Jesus.
d)
He was in danger
of missing out on so much. Jesus is inviting him to begin a new life, a life not
as a wandering beggar, but a life in community. Jesus says to him, ‘Then come
follow me’. He was inviting him to become one of his disciples.
It was not an easy life. It would lead to the cross. It
was to be a life lived in dependence on God, like the ‘little children’ of the
previous verses. But it was also a life which – when lived to the full – is so
rich and liberating and fulfilling, constantly asking new things of us, enabling
us to change and become the man or woman who God made us to be, and that leads
through the cross to the resurrection and heaven.
The reason Jesus tells this man to sell all he has and give to the poor is because it is not his morality, or lack of morality, but his love of wealth which is preventing him from following Jesus.
Jesus speaks about the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field – which the person who found them realised was so valuable that they sold everything that they had to get it. Jesus is so precious that it is worth giving up everything else for him.
And Jesus is saying to him:
your money is stopping you from following me, so get rid of it and then you
will be able to come and follow me.
Most of us are sadly like this young ruler.
We cannot let our wealth go.
We may not be like Gollum, but we are like Frodo. Frodo, in the end, as he stands over the furnace of mount Doom about to drop in the ring and destroy it, could not let it go.
We have been blinded by our material wealth to God, to the love of Jesus, to the call of Jesus.
We are the rich who are like camels trying to pass through the eye of the needle.
But what is impossible for men
is possible for God.
Grace comes in. Frodo had had pity on Gollum and had not killed him when he had the opportunity. And now it is Gollum who bites off Frodo’s finger with the ring on it, and falls with the ring into the fire.
And perhaps if our wealth and our desire for the things of this world has blinded us to the love of Jesus, or to the life that he offers us – then maybe we need to not walk away shocked and grieving – but cry out to God, asking him, in his mercy, to set us free from the love of money.
Giving, by the way, is one of those ways that we are set free, and one of the ways that we express our freedom. Give till it hurts and then give more. That is when you know that God is doing his work! Perhaps some of us are called to give away all that we have and join some Christian community.
But God will use other things to shake us from our love of money: an investment that crashes (we know about that), a collapse in the housing market, a scam, theft or redundancy, a business that disintegrates, a pension fund that goes belly up, or maybe someone in the family has a completely unexpected need or opportunity.
[Story of the non-possessors,
followers of St Nilus of Sor, whose monasteries were taken from them]
And that which we held on to,
like the peanuts which our monkey with its hand in the jar was holding on to,
is lost.
But after the pain and the angst, if we bring it to God, we may discover that we are free. We can see more clearly. We are thrown back in dependence on God; we receive the love that Jesus has for us, the power of Jesus to do what is impossible, and we look for a future world.
I wonder what became of this man. He runs to Jesus but goes away grieving
I wonder if, in later life, as
he grows richer, and as his riches get an even stronger grip on him, he grows
cynical and hard and forgets all about Jesus and about that other world. He
does indeed gain the whole world, but he loses his soul.
Or maybe, by the grace of
God, his dissatisfaction with the things of this world and the longing for the things
of that world grow.
Maybe his money is taken from
him by his Gollum! And he had no option but to turn to Jesus.
Or maybe he comes to realise that everything that he had comes from God and belongs to God, and he does start to seriously give – to let it go. Maybe he does leave it all to join the community of Jesus.
And he discovers for himself
the truth of Jesus’ words. That giving away really is the best of all possible
investments: He does receive “a
hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children,
and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life”. (Mark 10:30)
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