17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” 20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. 23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is[e] to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Message Outline:
- What is the treasure that Jesus offers?
- How does this treasure differ from worldly wealth?
- Giving rather than getting
- Relational, rather than material
- Gift, rather than an entitlement
- Calling rather than a Credit
- Eternal, rather than temporary
- How do we receive this timeless treasure?
- How do we keep it?
When the salesman on TV says, “Order now my guide to guaranteed riches for only $99.95,” whose wealth is he probably really thinking about?” Right, his own. But when Jesus says to the rich young man in today’s gospel story, “Give all that you have to the poor and then come follow me,” whose wealth and well-being is he thinking about? That of the poor, yes, but also that of the rich young man.
If it sounds crude or crass to talk about Jesus and wealth, God and treasure, in the same breath, well, isn’t it amazing how often Jesus actually does just that? Wealth was one of the top five subjects in the teaching and preaching of Jesus. But the wealth he talks about most is not always identical to money. We, whose faith is big into service, sacrifice, selflessness and costly discipleship, many of us having just participated in yesterday’s annual Mennonite Central Committee relief sale, rightly reject promoting the gospel as a personal health, wealth and prosperity scheme. But then we may be embarrassed by the times that Jesus appeals to people’s self-interest. Like when he tells the rich young man in today’s Gospel text how to have “treasure in heaven.” After all, if he’s interested in income security, and the highest, longest-lasting dividends and infinitely compounding interest, what would beat banking behind the Pearly Gates? In fact, we simply can’t do otherwise than to think of our own best interests. Even a man jumping off a cliff does so thinking it’s in his best interest, however wrongly.
And who cares more about us and our best eternal interest than Jesus? Who knows better what is for our best eternal interest than does he? In this encounter with the wealthy young man, Jesus is not saying, “Stop thinking about your own best good.” He is saying, in effect, “My friend, the supreme good you are looking for you will not find in your social class nor your worldly wealth, nor in getting more of it. The joy, the dignity, identity, security and liberty that you seek in money, I want for you at least as much as you do. But trust me when I tell you that you are barking up the wrong tree in your pursuit of such things.”
In his defense, this rich young man only has the most common human understanding of what constitutes wealth and true treasure. Still, he’s off track because he aims too low, and settles for too little. Jesus would gift us with ever so much more than what this man cared about. Which brings us to the first question in the message outline: What is the wealth, or treasure that Jesus offers?
Jesus gives a brief inventory of the wealth he offers after Peter panics and cries out, “But what about us, Lord, who have left all in order to follow you?” “No one,” he assures Peter, “who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel [as Peter has done] will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”
So, what is this wealth that Jesus has in mind? Jesus told a story about a merchant who came across a pearl of such great price that he willingly sold every other pearl in his stock in order to buy it. That was like the one he told about the man who found a treasure of such value hidden in a field that he sold everything else he had in order to buy that field, with its treasure. Jesus began each of those stories by saying, “This is what the Kingdom of God is like.” In his parables, and in today’s encounter with this rich young man, the supreme treasure that Jesus offers, the wealth that he guarantees, is the kingdom of God: everything that the prophets promised for all creation, and all that the psalms prayed for. From the list he rattles off to Peter we see that this is treasure for the here-and-now, in the form of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, land and homes. But not even death can stop the dividends; it is also wealth “in the age to come, eternal life.” In summary, the kingdom of God, plus the king, Jesus, is the Pearl of Great Price, the treasure worth the sale of all others, for this life and the next.
Now for the second question: How does Jesus’ vision of wealth differ from that of the rich young man? What does this young man have to learn and to unlearn about true treasure? First of all, Jesus’ idea of wealth and treasure is more about sharing than hoarding, giving than getting. Even the homes and fields that Jesus mentions are not properties his disciples would own, but ones they would share and enjoy with others who would enjoy and share them with them. Just how rich Peter would become in this sense, we see later in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter sleeps in the guest room and eats at the table of a former enemy, a Roman officer, Cornelius, at the officer’s invitation. Cornelius was one of the new brothers Jesus promised to him.
Which also tells us that, secondly, Jesus’ idea of wealth is more relational than material. It involves new relationships, like that between Peter, a Jew and Cornelius, a Gentile. It also entails deeper relationships, spiritual, and not just social. Paul, a Jew’s Jew and a rabbi, wrote the Gentile Christians he had come to know and love in Phillippi: “I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Such treasures of loving relationships would not only warm the rich young man’s heart, they would stretch his heart and mind as well. For when Jesus says to him, “Come follow me,” he means, “Follow me as a disciple,” of course. But it also means, “Follow me to my people, on the other side of town, to neighborhoods you never knew existed, to meet people who, up to now, have been invisible to you, the day laborers who work your family’s fields and vineyards and olive groves, living in squalid hovels and shacks, with their wives and children and their aging, ailing parents, plus their sick and disabled siblings and aunties and uncles, all of whom they care for on the daily wage your family pays them. But don’t come as a wealthy do-gooder who does hit-and-run acts of charity with a few spare dollars so that you can feel less guilty and more virtuous about yourself. Come in solidarity with the poor, knowing yourself to be, in God’s eyes, just as poor as they. They can’t give you the rich foods nor the luxurious lodging you are accustomed to, but they can give you much more: lessons in love, life, God and generosity. They may have less than you to give, but you’ll never out-give the poor.”
Many of us know such riches of relationships through ministry partnerships like Bridging Cultures, the Canby Center, Jubilee Food Pantry, and teaching English as a Second Language.
A third difference between Jesus’ sense of wealth and that of the world, is that, with Jesus, one can never escape the fact that his kind of wealth is always a gift. Yet, in the world, wealth is usually seen as an entitlement. Even if we didn’t do anything to earn it, we so easily come to feel entitled to it. If we inherited it, then didn’t the ancestors who earned it have the right to make us their heirs? So, however it came our way, we may feel entitled to it.
Maybe that’s why the man asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Inherit? That’s an odd choice of a verb, especially for Eternal life? Since when was God’s gift of eternal life something we inherit? Like land, money or Grandma’s china? But in his world most wealth was inherited. There was no “Palestinian Dream” comparable to the American dream, in which anyone who works hard enough and smart enough stands a chance at doing well and getting ahead. Today, that ladder up and out of poverty is also disappearing for people born into communities of high unemployment, entrenched poverty, bad schools, addictions and chaotic relationships.
But there was not even the slightest pretense of any ladder of upward mobility for most of Rome’s subjects. And most subjects of Ancient Rome didn’t worry about the justice of that. If ever we accused a rich Roman citizen that “you think your great wealth makes you better than us!” he’d wonder, “Well, what’s it supposed to make me think?” The idea that people might be equal in rights, dignity, humanity and worth, regardless of whatever class they were born into, came later, under the influence of the gospel. That’s partly why the gospel is good news to the poor: it challenges the notion that some humans are born more human than other humans, because of the wealth, power, good fortune and family they have. His question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” makes me wonder if our rich young man sees the grace of God in the same way that he and his family saw wealth: If you don’t have it by birth, you aren’t worth it to begin with. That’s a universal temptation of worldly wealth: the belief that superior wealth makes us superior beings. Or that it proves that we are superior beings.
Which makes Jesus’ response to the man all the more striking. That one of society’s so-called “inferiors,” a Galilean carpenter and a homeless rabbi, would tell one of his supposed “superiors,” an heir of great wealth, that “none is good but God,” took a lot of courage. Good thing he was talking to another Jew. Had he said “God alone is good,” and “Give all you have to the poor,” to a wealthy Roman, he might have gone to the cross even sooner. That Roman might well have seen his wealth as an entitlement to protect, and many do today. But Jesus saw it as a gift of God to share.
A fourth difference between Jesus’ view of wealth and that of the world, is that he sees wealth as something like a charge, while the world sees it as a credit. Here’s what I mean: if God is the source of all substance, so that wealth is not an entitlement but a gift, then even if we worked hard for it, it is still finally God’s wealth, lent to us by God to use for God’s purposes. So every dollar in our bank account is a charge, every cent has a calling, consecrated to God’s kingdom and God’s purposes. Those purposes include our own food, shelter, clothing and health, of course. But not ours alone.
That’s why Jesus does such an interesting, intriguing thing in response to the man’s question, “What must I do to be saved?” Jesus says, “You know the commandments…..” and then he recites a short list of the Ten Commandments, from Exodus chapter 20, the last ones about our relationships with people. But right in the middle of the last five of the Ten Commandments from Exodus, Jesus inserts another Old Testament regulation, from Leviticus 19: “Do not defraud.”
By adding the words, “Do not defraud,” Jesus would make his fellow Jew think of the next words in that very same verse, which are, “and do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.” Like the workers that this rich young man and his family likely hired on their estates.
Is Jesus is saying to him, in effect, “I’m not so concerned about you being wealthy. I want to know, what kind of wealthy person are you? Are you the kind of wealthy person who serves the community, by putting people to an honest day’s work and then pays them an honest day’s wages when those wages are due? Do you see your wealth the same way God does, as a storehouse of resources and security for the community, and not just for yourself?
Or was your wealth a drain on that of others? Instead of being a producer of wealth for others, were you a parasite, feeding off the wealth of others, and leaving them poorer at the end of the day? When the rising tide lifted your boat, did you and yours act like a tugboat drawing others toward dignity and sufficiency along with you? If so, good for you. That’s why God gives anyone resources. Or did you and yours act like a battle ship with a battering ram at the front, to sink other vessels?
“And when the economic tide started to go out, did you open up the doors of your barns and silos to help tide the community over, or did you take advantage of your neighbors’ distress to make them all the more your serfs and debtors and peons?”
But the young man misses the point of the very pointed question. “All these commandments have I kept since my youth,” he replies. Even after hearing Jesus say to him, “There is none good but God,” he’s still clueless, cocky and complacent about his conduct, his character or his class. Could it be because of that other temptation that often comes with wealth, the temptation to believe that wealth is tantamount to virtue, that worldly success is always and only a reward from God for right conduct, right belief? Even the disciples seemed to believe that, for when Jesus tells them that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” they are shocked. If the wealthy cannot be easily saved, then who can be saved?
Jesus does not say these shocking words out of any class hatred, nor any antagonism toward the rich. We’re told that, even after the rich young heir’s clueless words, “All these commandments have I kept since my youth,” Jesus looked upon him with love, the same love that he has for the poor. It is out of that same love that Jesus says, “Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and then come and follow me.” That’s what it would take, and nothing less, to dethrone the false god of wealth, Mammon, from the throne room in his heart, and thereby save his soul.
Jesus did not say that to all people with any means. He was not instituting a one-size-fits-all program of wealth redistribution nor social engineering. Otherwise, the poor and the rich would be forever trading places. But given what we know about wages, wealth and work in First Century Palestine, giving his wealth to the poor might not be so much an act of charity but of restitution. Even if this rich young man had not personally defrauded anyone of a fair wage, or exploited the vulnerability of the poor, with a little investigation, he may find out that he’s in the same boat with the actor Ben Affleck. Affleck recently discovered that his ancestors were slave owners and slave traders. Now what does he do with the wealth and the advantages that he inherited through the injustices of generations past? Our rich young man must see his wealth no longer as a credit that he can splurge on every personal whim and indulgence, but as a calling on behalf of others, for which he is answerable to God.
The fifth difference between Jesus’ view of wealth and treasure and that of the world has to do with our understanding of time. In the world, a quick nickel is more appealing than a slow dollar. And we usually come to regret it. But people in farming, or who have started and run their own small businesses, or who serve the community as educators, social workers, ministers or health professionals, learn that they succeed by thinking, planning and working for longer time frames, like years, a decade or even generations. With that we’re getting closer to Jesus’ time frame for investment in kingdom treasure. The Iroquois Indian Confederacy of New York has a tradition that says all major tribal decisions must show benefits going forward for at least seven generations. Which gets us even closer to God’s kingdom thinking.
In exchange for “giving it all to the poor and following him,” Jesus offered the rich young man eternally and infinitely compounding interest of eternal life in the world to come. So we must think of true treasure in terms of time longer than our own lifetimes, as long as eternity. That makes every offering of love, and every worldly advantage lost for following Jesus, not a sacrifice but an investment.
Yesterday we celebrated that very winning exchange of the temporary for the eternal at the memorial service for our brother and friend, Delbert Kropf. In addition to the love that he lavished on family and friends, with his quick wit and sense of humor, Delbert was a regular supporter of Gideon’s International, the Bible distribution ministry. For such saints and their labors, John’s Revelation, chapter 14, says, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “they shall rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” Now I have only the vaguest idea of what eternal life in the age to come is like. But I wonder if, for Delbert, it includes celebrating and worshiping with people who are there because of Delbert’s support of a ministry that permitted them to hear the word of grace and to receive it. That’s one way our sacrifices and offerings in this life yield eternal results in the age to come. So the Jesus way of understanding true treasure always involves a longer time frame than what we can conceive, even, an eternal, infinite time frame.
As for the third question, “How do we receive Jesus’ timeless treasures?” Again, if that sounds crass or selfish, remember that Jesus always wants to share his true and eternal treasures with us even more than we usually ever want them. But I ask “How do we receive them?” rather than “How do we get them?” Because “getting” sounds closer to the idea of “earning.”
“With mortals, this is impossible,” Jesus said. These timeless treasures of relationships are gifts of God, achieved by God. “For with God all things are possible.” We receive them the same way Jesus told the rich young man to receive them: “Follow me,” by following Jesus in trust, and obedience. Trust and follow him even as he turns your world upside-down, making the first people—his people– last and the last people—the poor who know they need God– first. Follow him even if it means that the first people—his people—think of him and treat him as a traitor to them and their class.
Then the question becomes “How do we keep these treasures?” the fourth question. Though Jesus’ kind of treasure is wealth beyond calculation, secure from inflation or devaluation, it’s not secure from theft or swindle. Not if the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy, the father of lies, convinces us to trade in Christ’s eternal and heavenly treasures of faith, hope and love for tawdry, temporary trinkets of popularity, pleasure, possessions or power. That, sadly enough, happened to the rich young man who saw and spoke with the Pearl of Great Price, the One who is the hidden treasure worth the sale of everything else, and walked away.
Oddly enough, in the bounteous economy of God, we keep and accumulate most the very treasures we share. This was the point of the rabbi who asked his disciples, “If I have two hundred talents of gold and give away one hundred to the poor, how many talents of gold do I have left?” His disciples, knowing this was a trick question, said nothing.
“I have at least one hundred,” the rabbi said.
“That makes sense,” said one of his disciples. “Two hundred take away one hundred leaves one hundred.”
“No,” the rabbi said. “I was counting the one hundred that I gave away, for whatever I give to others I give to God. That money alone is secure.”
Doesn’t it make you wonder what the final accounting for yesterday’s MCC Relief Sale is, in heaven’s math, in the age to come?
This, I believe is Jesus’ prayer for us, according to today’s Gospel passage: “That my friends, such as this rich young man whom I love, might freely and fully share true and eternal wealth with me. For that to happen, may they know what my true treasures are, may they want them above all other treasures, at least half as much as I want them to enjoy them, may they seek them above all other treasures, and then may they give them away. Like I did.”