You Lack One Thing
Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-27
Facebook Marketplace. The virtual version of a garage sale. No more making neon-posters and putting them up around the neighborhood to announce your date, time, and location! No more dragging everything out into your driveway before dawn on a Saturday morning so the early-bird garage-sale go-getters can have first dibs. No more having cash on hand to make change. No more gathering items for weeks and having them organized to go all at once. Instead, you can sell anything anytime, whenever you’re ready! You simply take a few nice photos or video of the thing, post them to Facebook marketplace which prompts you to answer a few questions eager buyers will want to know. Share some details about your “used, but in good condition” sofa or lamp, or leather jacket or roller skates. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Someone will express interest in an online message.
“Is this still available?”
“Yes, it is still available. Are you interested?
Then some back n forth about how soon the item can be picked up and where it is located. Is it worth driving across town for a used, $20 chair? And then the inevitable happens… “I see you have this listed for $20, will you take $15?” It’s a little money game. I’m the kind of person who has already over-thought what I should ask for it, so I just want them to pay what I said and come pick it up! And I don’t want to negotiate over $5 more or less. Money, money, money. It is the subject of today’s Gospel lesson right alongside a call story. That’s what this is.
Mark’s gospel is relentless.[1] That is, the call to discipleship is not an easy one. It asks everything of us. Mark wants readers to know the road they’re on if they are following this Jesus. See how Mark begins (again), “As Jesus was going down the road.” Mark doesn’t mean just any road. He means the road that is leading Jesus to Jerusalem. The road that will ask everything of him.
This story of the rich man is told in three gospels. In the gospel of Matthew, the man is young. In Luke, he is a ruler, but in all three, he is rich! In Mark, this is the only description. Let’s, first, look at how he approaches Jesus. The man ran up to Jesus and knelt before him as one who comes in reverence. It’s the posture of others in Mark who came seeking healing for themselves or for someone they loved. Is Mark inviting us to see this man as one in need of healing (Perhaps as one who needs to be made whole)? He calls Jesus, Good Teacher - a form of flattery perhaps. And then he asks a question that only a person of means would ask. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Someone not in his tax bracket wouldn’t use the word inherit at all.
Jesus doesn’t care for the man’s flattery. “Why do you call me good?” he asks. Only God is good. I think Jesus is suggesting that something is wrong with the man’s question. Because once you imagine that eternal life is something you inherit by being good, maybe you’ve already lost. No one is good ‘enough’ to inherit eternal life and entering the kingdom is not about ‘being good’ in the first place.[2] Nevertheless Jesus played along for a minute reminding him of the laws he should have kept. He assures Jesus that he has done ALL these.
There is something about the man that endeared him to Jesus. He took a hard look at him and loved him. Out of this love comes a challenge. “You lack one thing” he says to the man who lacks for nothing as far as wealth is concerned. Jesus’ statement is not meant to mock him, though. Jesus doesn’t treat him as insincere or self-righteous. In fact, he receives him as very sincere. Just like one of the little children he encircled with a hug while telling the disciples who the Kingdom of God was for just a few weeks ago – that is how he loved the man standing in front of him. This is the only place in Mark where loving someone is attributed to Jesus. Seeing him for who he really was, Jesus knew the one thing that most strongly stood in his way.
Notice how Jesus gives him five imperatives: Go, Sell, Give, Come, Follow![3]
Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me. (10:21, The Message)
The man is stunned as most of us would be! Those in earshot are also stunned. Not only is it a high demand, but it counters the cultural understanding that wealth was a sign of righteousness. [It’s all about the] Money (ch-ching ch-ching) was a sign that God looked favorably upon you. It (b-bling, b-bling)[4] must mean that you are living piously, following the Law of Moses – just as this man said he was in keeping all the commands. Conversely, if one was poor or sickly, it was assumed that this was because of some sin they had committed. So, Jesus, telling the man to dispose of his wealth was confusing.
Actually, I used the wrong word there. He didn’t tell him to dispose of it, did he? He told him to give it to the poor. This is the first time Mark mentions “the poor” by the way. What is believed about this rich man is that he was a prominent landowner, which meant that his wealth was attained on the backs of the peasant farmers, or perhaps even tenant farmers, who led a marginal existence or became totally destitute living on and working someone else’s land. David Garland says, When Jesus asks the man to sell all he has and give it to the poor, he is not asking him to impoverish himself but to redistribute his wealth among those who were deprived of what was rightfully theirs and who lacked (much more than one thing!) the basic necessities of life.[5] Jesus doesn’t ever overlook or ignore economic injustice. The redistribution of goods among the less fortunate is a sign of one’s wholehearted commitment to following Jesus.[6] If the rich man chose to do what Jesus said, he would simply be returning to the farmer, the day-laborer, “their fair share of the pie and fulfilling the command to love his neighbor.” That’s how the Kin’dom of God is to be fulfilled on earth.
Go. Sell. Give. Come. Follow. The man didn’t do any of those things. It says he went away sad because he had so much wealth. Some might say that wealth itself is not the problem, but the overwhelming desire to hold onto it! The largest animal in Palestine was a camel. So, Jesus had them picture the largest living creature they knew trying to pass through the tiniest hole they could imagine. And then he said that’s what it was like for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. Is it really that difficult?
Is it that the rich are tempted to believe they’re self-sufficient and don’t require help from God or others? They have everything they need. Is it that they are desensitized to the needs of others; insulated from normal needs of those around them? Can it be that wealth in some way distances them from the experience of being human – that is recognizing that everyone is connected and dependent on one another. Is a preoccupation with having all the best things a bit soul stealing?
This story means exactly what it says. Scholars this week said, don’t try to make this easier for listeners to hear. Don’t undercut Jesus’ imperatives to the man. They weren’t only intended for him. Jesus meant what he said. Go. Sell. Give. Come. Follow.
This is a call story. Above anything else. Jesus feels love for the man who loves his possessions. In love, Jesus calls. And in calling, Jesus makes a high demand. [7]
I stumbled upon this modern proverb this week: Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
No matter how you might think of yourself, there is always someone richer than you and someone else poorer than you. The truth is, we are all more attached to our possessions than we need be. We are people who subsidize our identities with things. We are guilty of seeking wholeness in places that will never satisfy us. We manage our feelings, fears, and frustrations with retail therapy – a trip to the mall, or scrolling through Amazon, or Instagram ads, or Facebook marketplace. Therefore, we will always “lack one [more] thing” to satisfy us or bring meaning to our days.
The question for us How do we hear this familiar story today and NOT walk away like the rich man did - unchanged and unmotivated to do any differently? To love our money and possessions any less, so that we pursue every opportunity to redistribute our wealth so that more people have enough?
In looking upon the man and loving him, Jesus seemed to know the one obstacle that stood in his way of answering Jesus’ call. We should all give that some thought for ourselves. What would Jesus tell us to sell? Give away? So that we could follow him more freely.
We should also give that some thought as a church. What would it look like for Weatherly to Go? Sell? Give? Come? Follow?
We have no idea what became of the rich young man. He simply vanished from the scene. Maybe he got more tight-fisted. Maybe he was in the crowd at the foot of the cross, or a hearer on the day of Pentecost. The unresolved ending of the rich young man may invite us all to obedience yet unknown. Amen.
[1] Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-28-2/commentary-on-mark-1017-31-11
[2] Lose, David Working Preacher Commentary 2018
[3] Williamson, Jr. Lamar Interpretation Mark
[4] Price Tag by Jessie J, feat. BoB 2011
[5] Garland, David Matthew Commentary Matthew 19:16-30
[6] Powery, Emerson B., True to Our Native Land, African American New Testament Commentary
[7] Williamson