St. Mark 10:17-31
“Getting Back On the Right Track”
Last Thursday I ushered for the memorial service of a titan of Chicago business. His family was huge in publishing and when the need for their product was made obsolete by the internet he turned that fortune into an even bigger fortune in financial services.
Close to three hundred people attended the funeral which became a celebration of him. His brothers talked about his business acumen. His son talked about all the places his father took the family for vacations and his daughter spoke about how he taught her the value of a dollar.
This guy has so much money and was such a big fan of train travel that what he used to do was lease a private car to take his family and friends across the country for their vacations. As a rail fan I must admit I was becoming a little jealous of all the places they visited - the California Coast, the U.S. and Canadien Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest. All viewed from the back of a private car stocked with fine food, top shelf liqueur, and the highest quality cigars. (I would skip the cigars!)
Admittedly he was a larger than life character.
When it came to the homily the preacher was the priest in charge of a large social service agency for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
He took off on the topic of trains and how they were made up. It was a pretty good idea.
The baggage car was where the man placed all his accomplishments. The second car was the business associates. The third was friends while the private car was for family.
Preacher that I am I kept waiting for God to be mentioned and when Father turned his attention towards the engine I thought it had. You know, God pulling you through the tough times and giving you the energy to move forward in life. But no, Jim the deceased was the engine.
Then he talked about the couplings between cars. Once again my mind turned to God. Surely it was God who kept us all bound together. Nope, that was Jim too.
In the homily God was nowhere to be found - not even the caboose.
As we were walking out of the service another one of the ushers said to me: “There were a lot of egos in that room. So many that there wasn’t any room for God.”
The funeral train went off the tracks because there wasn’t any room left for God. Riches, the man’s personality and his lucrative business career didn’t leave much room for God because he was so successful.
I wonder if he ever thought to ask the question another rich, successful, man asked of Jesus. “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”1
Most people don’t give the rich guy kneeling in front of Jesus much credit for coming up with such a really good question. Instead they try to psychoanalyze him. Something must have been missing in his life. Maybe managing all his money was burden too great to handle? Maybe he was rich in things but poor in spirit? Or, maybe he had a great question that he just had to ask about eternal life and how to get it?
Jesus doesn’t care to talk to the man about his psyche, or even his spiritual being, he asks the man about his actions.
His commandment keeping score is outstanding. This man has a lot going for him. If we were Jesus we’d snap him up in a nano-second as a member of our church. He’s pious and he’s rich! What more could you ask for in a member of the congregation.
Instead of signing him up Jesus gives him an assignment with a demand so high that it is impossible to meet. He tells him to “Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”2
This is one of those things, as they say on television, that you should not try at home. Don’t take this sermon so literally that tomorrow when your partner or spouse gets home there no furniture, no appliances, not even am an empty house because even the house has been sold.
I don’t want you telling your loved ones that you took something Pastor Nelson said in a sermon to heart and liquidated everything. You’ll get us both killed!
When the rich man goes away with a frown on his face we may be led to ask the same question the disciples did. With the criterion that high who can make it? Eternity is going to be really empty if the standard to get in is unattainable.
At this point Jesus gives a really crazy analogy. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle that for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Scholars have wasted gallons of ink trying to explain this away.
Some have suggested that is was a mistranslation of the word camel. In the Greek a simple vowel change can make the word for camel into the word for rope. Nope.
Then there was the interpreter [who around 850AD] came up with the brilliant idea that there was a low gate into Jerusalem called “the eye of the needle,” through which camel could squeeze in if unburdened. Get it! If we let go of some of our stuff we can indeed get through the needle’s eye. Sorry, no such gate ever existed.3So what are we left with? I think we are left with Jesus telling us about our God who is so gracious, and so winsome, and so powerful that God could, if God wanted, take a full sized camel (One hump or two, take your choice!) a drop that camel right through the eye of a needle and have that dromedary emerge dazed but unscathed on the other side.
That is the God Jesus tells us to put our trust in.
If we continue to put our trust in what we have accomplished, or what we have, or our 401(k)s (And hasn’t that been a scary ride this past week?) we are going to be on the wrong track.
Trust God more than the laundry list of characters and things Jesus goes on to describe and the train will be back on track.
Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor explained what we receive this way.
It is a dare to [us] to become a new creature, defined in a new way, to trade in all the words that have described [us] up to now – wealthy, committed, cultured, responsible, educated, powerful, obedient – to trade them all in on one radically different word, which is free”4We’ll be free to serve God and our neighbors without any thought of reward. We’ll be free to serve God and our neighbors without any cost/benefit analysis. We’ll be free from trying to save ourselves by parading our good deeds before God.
When we forget about thinking about all we’ve done and think about all that God can do with us and through us we’ll be free to follow Jesus wherever he leads.
Jesus turned the rich man’s question about eternal life into a challenge to follow him.
That’s all Jesus asks of us. All he asks is that we follow him and if we do people will say of us - whether we are rich or poor - at least, they were always on the right track.
Thanks for listening.
____________
1. St. Mark 10:18b. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
2. St. Mark 10:21. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
3. William H. Willimon, ""How Hard to Be a Disciple"," Pulpit Resource, B, 46, no. 4 (October 1, 2018), p. 8.
4. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, (Cowley Publications, Cambridge, Massachusetts), p.121-126.
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