Before starting the sermon: since we do have visitors here today, and people who have not met me before, I do want to slap a great big warning label on today’s message. We’re going to have some fun with a Bible story that is most definitely “all business.” I trust that the insurance is up to date so if a lightning bolt does happen to strike the pulpit in the next few minutes it will all be covered, so here goes:
As with many stories in scripture, you have to
admit that the encounter between Jesus and the rich young ruler looks like a
bit of a hyperbole. A person of wealth
is moved to come to Jesus seeking the key to eternal life, and is told to sell
EVERYTHING he has and give it to the poor.
Really?? Everything??? Not just “enough to make him humble?” By
making such a stringent demand, it seems to me that Jesus missed out on a
potential high-ranking supporter and funder of his cause, and the young man
went away unfulfilled but still clinging to his riches.
So I got to thinking: what this story really
needs is some “alternate endings.” They’d likely be relegated to the special
features of the DVD edition, but there are any number of re-writes that Mark
could have employed that would have given a more positive result than a glum
rich kid feeling rebuffed in his response to Jesus.
So, I’m going to present three alternate
endings to the story – each featuring a different response from the Rich Young
Ruler, rather than just going away in sadness - and I’m actually going to get
you to vote on them.
Alternate ending number 1: But Lord, while I have all a man can want, I
know of others far richer than I and they do not understand your mission at
all. Let me use my wealth and position
to influence them, and at that point we can speak again of my potential
divestment. (this is the “there are
bigger fish in the pond” ending).
Alternate ending number 2: O Lord, but that would leave me as poor as
those you intend me to serve! What if I
were, instead, to give one third of my riches to the poor, one third to your
mission, and one third to maintain the salaries of my household servants and a
modest income for myself? OK, if not
that, how about 40-40-20? (this is the “reasonable counter-proposal” ending.)
And finally, alternate ending number 3: Indeed, Master, I have already done so,
keeping only a simple tunic and sandals to keep from being arrested in the
streets. This fine robe of purple I now
hand off to my former slave who is now a free man. I would be honoured to be considered one of
your disciples. (this is the
“grasshopper snatches pebble from the master’s hand” ending.)
There are your three alternatives. We’ll still keep the original ending, of
course, we’re just voting to determine which one might find its way into the
footnotes. In order to maintain
confidentiality, I’d like you to all close your eyes and I’ll ask for a show of
hands. [congregation “voted” on their
most popular alternate ending ]
…………
Starting with the least popular of the three
(9% of voters):
Alternate ending number 1: there are
bigger fish in the pond
One of my volunteer jobs in our east-central Saskatchewan
town was to chair the Donor’s Choice, our local equivalent of the United
Way. We had dozens of canvassers,
everyone in town got canvassed, and several thousand dollars were raised. Then
we moved to Calgary, and were astonished to find out that the annual United Way
target was met without a door-to-door canvass at all, because corporate Calgary
basically met the target without any participation needed by us common folk.
In a place with lots of high-income earners and
big-producing corporations, it’s admirable that philanthropy is such a strong
part of the culture – it’s something that that top-slice of our economy expects
of itself. As someone who has worked in
the non-profit sector my entire life, I appreciate the number of foundations
that have been set up by corporations to do valuable work with high-risk,
poorly-resourced segments of our society.
And I do appreciate the good that can be done when individuals and brands
offer their good name to a cause.
But… and this is a biggie … at
some point we need to challenge the assumption, within ourselves and within our
society, that it’s OK to have a system that allows extreme wealth and extreme
poverty. The vast difference in
financial resources between the rich and the poor is one thing, but even more
troubling is the fact that a full range of life choices, along with a full
measure of prestige and dignity, is always available for to the wealthy; those
who rely on social assistance or fall outside the safety net, by contrast, have
a monitored, limited range of choices, and their dignity is eroded by the need
to rely on the generosity of others. I
know that many members of Ralph Connor are actively involved in international
development work, and those of you who have done this important in other
nations have seen that, taken on a global scale, the gap between rich and poor
individuals, rich and poor nations, is even greater and more demoralizing.
The challenge from Jesus to the Rich Young
Ruler doesn’t come out of the blue.
Jesus speaks repeatedly about God’s special concern for the poor, and
the ability of those who have nothing to really understand the fullness of
God’s profound love and provision. The
prophets of his religious tradition, Judaism, harshly criticize any regime that
fails to provide for the widow and the orphan, the landless and the refugee.
When political or economic systems caused the marginalized to be more
marginalized, Jesus and the prophets challenged them – and so must any Church
that desires to truly find and follow God’s will for its life.
………………….
Next, (with 42% of the vote), Alternate ending
number 3: grasshopper snatches pebble
(surrendering all).
Every one of the original disciples of Jesus
had left everything behind to follow him.
In case Jesus had forgotten this, the disciples make a point of
reminding him! In this context, it would
have been difficult for Jesus to ask the Rich Young Ruler for anything less
than complete renunciation of his wealth, surrounded by those who have given up
everything to be there.
But this extreme demand by Jesus was not just
about “consistency.” It was a straight-up challenge to this young
man’s level of attachment to his riches, compared with his desire to be
eternally with God. Within all religious traditions, there is an understanding
that when we get too attached to our “stuff” we will drift away from a holy
intention for our lives. In the
eight-fold path of Buddhism, and within the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism, for
example, human suffering is seen as emanating from our tendency to get attached to our health, our wealth, our
possessions, our status, our achievements, even our families. The goal of enlightenment within these
traditions includes the learning non-attachment. Within our Christian tradition in recent
years, spiritual leaders like Fr. Thomas Keating have led a movement toward
prayer, meditation and worship that are founded in non-attachment, seeking only
the presence of God, rather than any other agenda.
And so, when the
rich young ruler comes to Jesus seeking eternal life, the first thing we might
want to change in an alternate ending, is to change the question he asked of
Jesus. In the gospel of Mark, the young
man does not ask, “what can I do that will be most
desirable to God?” No, he asks, “what
can I do to obtain eternal life”, as if eternal life is one more commodity to
be gained. And Jesus, immediately
sensing that the devout young man really has no idea about surrendering himself
and his attachments to God, asks him to
do that which is near-impossible for someone in that position: leave ALL of it,
NOW. Methinks that if the young man was
already practicing non-attachment to the frills of his life, the reply from
Jesus may not have been so swift or unyielding.
In the 1st letter of Timothy (6:10)
we are told that “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Not money itself, but the love thereof. Here, Jesus tells us the same thing. We can choose to give our lives to him – we
can trust the path of Christ that completely – or we can continue to Velcro
ourselves to other stuff that seems more important. The choice is up to us – and the good news,
in this alternate ending, is that it is possible to make the right choice. Unlike some of Jesus’ parables, where an
impossible standard is put in front of us, the ability to really disengage from
deriving our value from the artifacts we have accumulated and the accolades we
have achieved, is something we can do, by the grace of God. It takes a choice, it takes action, but most
of all it takes trust that the path of Christ IS the way of abundant life.
………………..
And finally, the most popular choice (with
49%), Alternate ending number 2: the reasonable
counter-proposal
It actually is a bit odd that, faced with
difficult words from Jesus, the young man walked away without so much as a
peep. Anyone who has travelled in the middle east or, in fact, in virtually any
open-air marketplace in the world, has learned that the first price is NEVER
the final price. Perhaps because of his
wealth, the Rich Young Ruler was accustomed to having servants do the haggling
for him, but it actually does seem odd that there was no counter-offer when
faced with an all-or-nothing demand from Jesus.
I think it’s safe to say that most Christians
do try to approach our finances responsibly.
We want to live within our means.
We want to be generous in our giving, sensible in our plans for the
future, unselfish in our daily living.
Though I have seen similar quotes attributed to everyone from John
Wesley to Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller gets credit for the sage
advice that tells us to “give ten per cent, save ten per cent, and live on the
rest.” Your financial advisor knows
better than I do, but you get the picture: a financial plan which begins with a
generous outpouring to the needs of others, gifts given by us in recognition of
the God who gives us life.
So what is the right amount to give to Church
and charity? Is it 10%? 20%? More than
that? Less than that? Based on gross
income, or net? How do you even calculate it when on a retirement income? The
answer is not really a numeric answer at all, as the key aspect is not the
number, but our perception of giving. If
it’s a duty, something we resent because we mistakenly believe that everything
we have, we deserve to have, then even 3% or 2% or 1% is going to set off the
grumbles. If, however, our lives are
lived in a context of gratitude, then the money may freely flow to all manner
of causes, and someone might need to step in and tell us that we really should
be holding back a little bit more for ourselves. Jesus challenges us to understand all of
life as a gift from God, so asking for us to understand all of our resources
first and foremost in that context is really asking for nothing at all. It asks only for us to change our thinking –
and from there, the actions of generosity will follow.
Last Wednesday night at Evensong, Jan shared a
prayer from Joyce Rupp that contained the wonderful image of autumn as a time
of abundance and surrender. The crop
has developed abundance throughout the growing season, but then it is time to
harvest, to let go of that abundance so that a greater purpose may be served. This formula of abundance and surrender, I
believe, applies to the Rich Young Ruler as well. He had abundance, Jesus asked for surrender
of that abundance, and therein lay the problem.
His abundance was understood as just that – HIS abundance, not God’s
abundance – and so surrender-to-source was not a possibility. For
this young man, no number short of 100% would address the root problem, and
Jesus knew that.
………………..
OK, this re-writing of the Rich Young Ruler’s
response to Jesus is all in good fun, and I trust that we’ve learned some
things along the way. But before we leave it, I need to underline something
that may be self-evident.
It’s not just the rich young ruler who
comes to Jesus, displaying his current level of devotion
and wondering what else is required of him. At some point, each one of us
has to do that. Like the rich young
ruler, we will have to face the priorities and attachments of our lives,
monetary or otherwise, that keep us from making a deep, full commitment to the
ways of Jesus Christ. And if there are
things blocking us from that full commitment, we’re going to need Divine
assistance in getting our house in order.
You don’t need any finger-wagging from the
pulpit telling you what needs to change, because I hunch that each one of us
already knows what needs to change . YOU KNOW - and so does God. That partnership between you and God, and the
support of trusted friends in Christ, is all you need in order to get the
process moving forward. In the name of
our gracious, loving, accepting God, may it be so. Amen.
A collection of background readings on
non-attachment:
http://www.hinduwebsite.com/divinelife/essays/attachment.asp
http://www.morrisinstitute.com/index.php?s=wisdom&c=weekly_bhagavad
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/fr-thomas-keating
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial
United Church, Canmore AB
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