Pentecost 19B
Mark 10.17-31
October 10, 2009
Every once in a while I have the privilege of hearing a sermon by a good preacher who expresses the meaning and intent of the text better than I ever could. Today, with the help of generous helpings of Barbara Brown Taylor, we tackle the text of the rich young man:
After careful consideration of Jesus’ harder sayings, I have to conclude that he would not have made a good parish pastor. So much of our job depends on making it easy for people to come to church and rewarding for them to stay. Talk to any of the church growth experts and they will tell you how important it is to create a safe, caring environment where people believe their concerns will be heard and their needs will be met. The basic idea of the church growth movement is to find out what people are looking for and to give it to them, so that they decide to stay put instead of continuing to shop for a church down the street.
This effort to please does not stop once people decide to join the church. A good parish pastor will work hard to make sure that worship is satisfying, that Christian education is appealing, that plenty of opportunities for fellowship and service exist. A well-run church is like a well-run home, where members can count to regular meals in pleasant surroundings, with people who generally mind their manners. It matches the American ideal of Christians as upstanding and good-hearted citizens. When I hear people talk about Christian virtues and values, it is hard to imagine anyone but Norman Rockwell doing the illustrations: a third grade classroom full of little girls with pigtails and little boys with slingshots in their back pockets, all of them bowing their heads in prayer; families gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner table, with carving knife in father’s hand and a slotted spoon in mother’s, while all the children wait eagerly to be served; a bench at the general store, where the milkman, the mailman and the paper boy all stop to share a dozen doughnuts before getting on with the day’s work.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these pictures, but according to Jesus we cannot be his disciples unless we hate our families, carry our crosses, and give up all our possessions. So why don’t we all—preachers and believers alike—just turn in our resignations right now? Because clearly, we are all lacking something; none of us has what it takes. If Jesus were in charge of an average congregation I figure there would be about four people left there for any given worship service and chances are those four would be fooling themselves. Jesus would greet newcomers by saying, “Are you absolutely sure you want to follow this way of life? It will take everything you have. It has to come before everything else that matters to you. Plenty of people have launched out on it without counting the cost, and as you can see they are not here anymore. The other thing is, if you succeed—if you really do follow me—it will probably get you killed. Why don’t you go home and think it over? I would hate for you to get in over your head.”
Jesus is the complete opposite of the good parish pastor. Far from trying to make it easier for people to follow him, he points out how hard it is. Look at the tenth chapter of Mark, where a crowd has been trailing Jesus from town to town and house to house. They are not people whom he has called to follow him. They have simply shown up, with at least one man bubbling with enthusiasm and sincerity, but Jesus is less than welcoming. He tells the man not to get his hopes up, that more than likely he cannot afford what he wants. I expect that man is puzzled by Jesus’ response.
He wants to be able to do something, anything to obtain eternal life. He wants to get as close as he can to the energy that radiates from Jesus like heat from a coal. The man has no clue what it will cost. Jesus wants to tell him, because the worst thing he can do is to mislead him. Why does Jesus say all these disturbing things about cutting off hands, and having hard hearts and selling every single thing we own in order to follow?
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and he knows what a hard road he has ahead of him. Mark knows even more. When he wrote his gospel, Christians were already being persecuted for following Jesus. Once you make following Jesus your first priority, everything else fell by the wayside—not because God took it away from you but because that is how the world works. As long as the world opposes those who set out to transform it, the transformers will pay a high price. Just as Oscar Romero or Nelson Mandela.
I think that’s what Jesus wants us to know. He is not threatening us. He is loving us, as usual—refusing to lie to us, refusing to make his way sound easier than it is. He wants us to know very clearly what it costs so that no one follows him under false pretenses. He does not want us to get halfway through building a tower and have to abandon it, or to go charging into battle without the troops we need to prevail. If all that sounds overly dramatic, then maybe we have lost track of what following him is all about.
Is it about being good, stable citizens or is it about changing the world? Is it about creating a safe, caring environment where people’s needs will be met or is it about living such a different way of life that those in authority get mad enough to kill us? Ernie Campbell, one of the great old-time preachers, once said, “If I’m following Jesus, why am I such a good insurance risk?”
Discipleship costs all that we have, all that we love, all that we are. That is less God’s doing than our own. If the world were kinder to its reformers, discipleship might be a piece of cake, but it is not, and Jesus does not want anyone to be fooled.
He may not have made a good parish pastor, but he made a very good savior, and I do not think he is through saving us yet. His best tool has always been the very thing that killed him—that cross he ended up on—the one he was carrying long before he got to Golgotha. He is always offering to share it with us, to let us get underneath it with him. Not, I think, because he wants us to suffer but because he wants us to know how alive you can feel even underneath something that heavy and how it can take your breath away to get hold of your one true necessity. Even suffering itself pales next to what God is doing through it, through you, because you are willing to put yourself in the way.
It is not for everyone. That is clearly what he is telling us. There are not a lot of people who have what it takes to shoulder the cross, but I do not think that means the rest of us are lost. It is for the rest of us—the weak ones—that he took its weight upon himself. If we cannot help him carry it, he will carry us too. I think he just wants us not to take it for granted. I think he just wants us to know what it costs. Amen
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