All Things Are Possible

10-11-18 (Proper 23 / Ordinary 28 B, Semi-Continuous)

Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

With God, All Things Are Possible

It was Sunday morning; Johnny and his family were busily getting ready to go to church.  After his dad helped him get his tie on, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter and gave it to Johnny.  He said, “I want you to hold onto this to put into the offering plate in church today - don’t lose it!”  And so, as Johnny’s mother and father finished getting ready for church, Johnny played contentedly in the living room with his toys and watched cartoons on TV.  And as Johnny played, he’d reach into his pocket every once in a while, pull out the shiny quarter, and make sure that he still had it.  Johnny’s mom finished putting on her makeup as Johnny’s dad wiped the last of the shaving cream from behind his ears.  When they came back into the living room, they heard Johnny sobbing, trying desperately to keep his parents from hearing him.  His hand was caught inside the baseboards and he was trying to pull it free, but all his efforts were in vain; he was good and stuck.  Father rushed to the rescue, trying as gently as he could to free Johnny’s hand, but without hurting Johnny, it seemed an impossible task.  Then his father noticed Johnny’s hand, clutched in a tiny fist, and realized the problem.  “Johnny, I need you to open your hand up, then we can get you out,” Father said.  “But Daddy,” said the boy, with glistening tears in his eyes. “If I do, then I’ll lose the quarter.”

I have to wonder: how much differently does this rich man in Mark’s gospel appear to us if we think of him as the little boy with quarter in hand?  I realized something in reading this all too familiar passage again this week: this rich man isn’t the bad person we so often make him out to be!  He’s coming to Jesus looking for answers, looking for help; he’s just asking the wrong questions.  He asks Jesus - “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  He wants to get in on the movement.  Jesus’ message has him sold.  So what does he have to do now?  Jesus tells him, “You know the commandments.”  In the Hebrew tradition, this was the key: if you kept covenant with God, then you were counted among God’s chosen.  Stay in good relations with God and you had nothing to worry about.  But this man sees himself as already good - he tells Jesus that he has kept all these commandments since his youth.  And he’s still worried about eternal life.  There’s got to be something more, right?  Isn’t that what Jesus has been preaching all this time?  That people have been putting too much stock in “following the rules,” that there’s more to the kingdom of God than just that?  So what is it that he has to do?

Here’s another place that we tend to miss in this reading from Mark:  Jesus, looking at this man, loved him, and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  The rich man wanted something he could do to earn his inheritance, so Jesus gives him something to do.  Jesus tells the rich man to open his hand and let go of the quarter.  Jesus tells him to sell everything that he owns and give that money to the poor so that he can have treasure in heaven, then to come and follow Christ.  And the man was shocked at Jesus’ answer.  He walks away - “If I let go, I’ll lose the quarter!”

We can look at this man’s situation in several ways: In the Hebrew tradition, having many possessions was actually considered to be a sign of God’s favor upon a person!  In the covenant God made with Israel, God plainly tells the people that if they will obey God, God will make them prosperous in the land and give them long lives.  So in one way, for Jesus to tell this man to take all his possessions and sell them to the poor, we might understand Jesus as telling this man to forsake all the blessings that God has given him and to give them to those whom God may not have blessed.  Fortunately, I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as that.  Because the story throughout the Hebrew Bible isn’t just one of God expecting people to obey him so that they can get everything on their wish lists; it’s a story of God blessing God’s people in order that they might be a blessing to others.  The gifts we receive from God are given to us so that we can use them - not store them up in glass display cases as a testament to how good we are.  

So as this man walks away grieving, it’s not just because he thinks Jesus is trying to get him to give up the blessings God has given him.  Jesus is asking him to make sacrifices of himself, to share his wealth with those who do not have any, and to become part of the crowd.  And that’s apparently not the answer that this man was looking for - it wasn’t another rule, another simple thing that he could accomplish and get what he wanted, but an entire change of life, of situation, of status.  It was just too much.

Now at this point, we’re once more tempted to shake our heads at the rich man, to sit and wonder why it was so hard for him to simply let go of his wealth and follow Christ.  But Christ’s words should make us pause, too - Jesus starts by saying how hard it is for people with wealth to enter the Kingdom of God, but his words don’t stop at the wealthy.  His words cause his disciples great disdain - if camels have a better chance of fitting through the eye of a needle than rich people, those who have supposedly been blessed by God for their obedience of the law, have of entering into heaven, then what chance does anyone else have?  Who can be saved?  We find ourselves in the same position as Johnny: How do we keep the quarter that our father gave us, but still get our hand out of the radiator?

Johnnys father told him what he needed to do to get his hand unstuck - “open up your hand and we can pull it out.”  But Johnny didn’t want to let go of the quarter that his father had told him not to lose.  Fortunately, Johnny’s father understood.  “Johnny, you know I love you,” said his father.  “And you are more important to me than a quarter.  Open your hand and we’ll get another quarter for the offering plate.”

Jesus said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”  We have a loving father who is willing to give us “a hundred fold now in this age - houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields,” but we need to remember the last two words in that verse: with persecutions.”  We have to be willing to let go of the quarter we have now.  We have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to let go, and to trust that our heavenly Father knows best.  Because while we may not be able to let go on our own, while there is nothing that we ourselves can do to be saved and to enter into the kingdom on our own steam, all things are possible for God.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.