Our Savior’s
Lutheran Church, East Grand Forks, MN
October 11, 2015
Mark 10:17-31
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Two things strike me about this story. First, it says that Jesus, “looking at [the rich man], loved him.”
Second, it says that the rich man “was shocked and
went away grieving, for he had many possessions,”--and Jesus apparently just let him go.
Jesus did not run after this disturbed man. Jesus didn’t try to get through to him. He didn’t cajole him into conversing a bit
longer.
No, Jesus just let him go….perhaps because some truths are simply too big to swallow in one
bite, all in one moment.
We have no idea how the rich man’s life unfolded--but
we do know that Jesus’ closest friends were all worked up about this whole unsettling
episode.
The disciples, it says, “were perplexed at these
words” of Jesus, because everything they’d been taught up to this point probably
suggested that wealth was a mark of
God’s blessing, surely not a curse God inflicted upon those with wealth.
But Jesus didn’t show up to repeat old wisdom. Jesus was, instead, always cracking open fresh
truth—unexpected truth that Jesus came to embody and live out.
“Children,
how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 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." (v. 25)
The great British apologist for Christianity, C.S.
Lewis once said that “it is possible for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle—but it sure is hard on the camel!”
Lewis thereby urges us not to write off this aphorism
about the camel and the eye of a needle.
It’s not simply a memorable metaphor.
It is more than that.
Jesus is teaching us something here about how small, how reduced, how empty
we need to become to gain entrance into that wide, full, free place called the
kingdom of God.
God’s kingdom, God’s strong but gentle way of ruling
over all things is so earnestly to be desired that we should seek to enter into
it no matter the cost—even if it means shucking off everything we thought we
needed to live.
The very thought of doing that would drive us all to
despair were it not for Jesus’ promise here (the promise that the rich man didn’t
stick around long enough to hear!) that "for
mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are
possible."
This being emptied, this becoming small, this process
of being reduced—we are not capable of that under our own power….but it can be
and it is what God does in us, for us.
And that’s the truth we dare not miss here. When Jesus says that “for God all things
are possible,” he’s not snapping his fingers and saying “Abracadabra!” Jesus isn’t just making all the stuff in our
life that holds us back just go poof, like magic!
No, Jesus is uttering a promise that he intends to
keep for us, with us and in us.
Jesus leads the way into this narrow, small path that
leads to God’s kingdom.
Jesus first becomes small for us—small enough to
descend from heaven and be implanted in Mary’s womb. Jesus allows himself to be reduced to the
form of a servant for us. Jesus stoops
over, walking the way of the Cross for us—continuing to the destination he is already
pursuing here in this gospel story (v. 17)
Jesus allows himself to be edged out of our world, forced up onto a
Cross, for us and our salvation.
It’s hard on
Jesus to do that—like it’s hard on a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It’s hard on Jesus—indeed it is the death of
him!
But Jesus’ overwhelming passion for us leaves him no
choice.
Jesus accomplishes this impossible thing to rescue us
from ourselves—to open us to the wideness of his kingdom. Jesus who was rich beyond measure, “for [our]
sakes…became poor, so that by his poverty [we] might become rich.” (II Cor.
8:9)
This good work that Jesus initiated at the Cross—God continues
this good work in us. And we are
promised that God “will bring it to
completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)
Jesus who became small for us, Jesus the crucified and
living one, works in us, to open us up to his kingdom…
….which is to say, Jesus is always among us, fitting
us for his reign over all things by making us small enough, poor enough,
reduced enough, bereft enough to come to him with hands that are completely empty.
So Jesus is at work in us, reducing us to proper size,
whenever we confess our sins. Repenting is one of the chief ways God gets
us small enough to enter the Kingdom.
Saying we are sorry for the wrong we have done—saying sorry: don’t we often say it makes us feel “about
this big?”
Jesus is at work in us, emptying us of all the baggage
that could hold us back, whenever we
stoop to serve one another.
Bending over, as Jesus bent over his disciples dirty feet at the Last
Supper—bending over to serve our neighbor Jesus gets us where we need to be—on
our knees—serving the other.
Jesus is at work in us when we pray—because prayer, too, reduces us to proper size. When we pray we say that we are not
self-made people, we don’t have everything under our control, we’re always
throwing ourselves into God’s gracious hands, seeking from God all good
things. “We are beggars, this is true,”
said Martin Luther on his deathbed.
Jesus is at work in us when we give away our wealth, practice generosity toward the poor,
give to charities, and bring our tithes and offerings to the altar here in
God’s house. When God leads us to
reduce our bank balance, God is getting us empty-handed enough to fit through
the “eye of the needle” gateway to God’s kingdom.
And perhaps most of all, most often in our days, God is at work in us in our daily lives,
smack dab in the middle of our homes and families and other intimate circles of
caring.
It is not, finally, in the splashy, headline-grabbing,
heroic episodes of our lives that Jesus works best in us to make us small
enough for the Kingdom….but it’s in the daily-ness of life: in the homely ways
we live with one another in households, Jesus goes to work on us to make us fit
for the narrow passageway that leads to the wideness of God’s mercy.
Luther, who had a penchant for shockingly earthy
speech, declared that in household chores as menial as changing diapers, God is
reducing us to Kingdom-sized people:
… “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its
diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of
it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my
wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of
that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of
bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a
prisoner of myself?...
“O
God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my
body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy
perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little
babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its
mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of
being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? 0 how
gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and
despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or
dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”
These words of Luther from his treatise on the Estate of Marriage in 1522 give voice to
the surprising turn that meets us whenever and however God reduces us to the
right size for God’s kingdom. This
“reducing” is actually a “right-sizing” and a “right-wising” of ourselves!
So it is that when God strips us of everything that’s
holding us back from entering God’s strong and gentle Reign over all things—lo
and behold we wind up richer than we ever imagined we could be, richer in the
things that last, that cannot be taken from us….in this life or in the life of
the world to come!
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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