Going public
Commentary
Each of these texts sends us into a different sector of our lives and asks us to
consider how we apply analogies from our public life to the gospel. Job asks us to
consider what good news is there if we feel God is a judge before whom we must plead
our case as we seek an acquittal. The premise for Job and his friends is that discerning the
sufferings of Job is a matter of showing God, the just judge, the fundamental unfairness
of what has happened to Job. Surely with the appropriate application of reason, logic, and
precedent we can come to a just verdict. Given who Job is and how Job has lived, can
there be any other result than an acquittal forever? It sounds like we have not only a
verdict in criminal court but one in civil court as well. Forever sounds like just
compensation for the physical suffering and emotional trauma that Job has gone through.
Job goes to court with the enthusiasm and certainty of one of those suspects on
television's Law and Order who swears they don't need a lawyer because they
are innocent and there is nothing to hide. If the results for those folks on Law and
Order who take this course of action are any indicator, then Job is headed for tough
sentence with little chance of time off for good behavior.
The letter to the Hebrews calls to mind some poor person applying for a loan and sitting before the bank officer wondering whether this will be a moment before the throne of grace: "... before whom no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render account." If you have been there (and few of us have not been there to buy a car or house or secure a loan for school) it does not feel comfortable to have your life revealed in all its wisdom and foolishness in order to gain the judgment of the loan officer. The office you sit in reeks of responsibility and wise choices and sensible living that leaves you wishing you had chosen a slightly less sporty model of car, or picked a house in a slightly less posh neighborhood, or feeling that it was clearly not sensible to have had that last child go through college. That does not feel like the throne of grace to me -- much more like the hot seat. Can this situation ever be a throne of grace?
Yet, for many that is precisely how they experience God and Jesus -- as loan officers who expect regular monthly payments with an occasional balloon payment. Any deviation in the plan might leave you overdrawn on the good graces of the bank. Any failure to comply with the conditions of the loan may result in the kind of court appearance that Job is considering only without the kind of confidence that Job had.
The Gospel Lesson presents us with a man who has seemingly covered his bets. Given the list of the commandments he responds by saying, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Who are we to challenge such a statement? Most of us see ourselves at least as people who have managed to have stayed between the lines sufficiently to deserve something that looks like eternal life. If we have not kept the commandments completely, we have at least kept them on a bookshelf or as the ideal that we should aspire to. Certainly, such keeping should not be discounted totally.
Yet, Jesus seems to discount not only the intentions but the keeping of the commandments as well, as good as those things may be. He still lacks one thing. He must sell what he has -- not give what he has, but sell. This will require a trip to the public market and entering into its give and take. He reminds me of the folk who must make the great move into a smaller retirement home. "... he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions." This inheriting-of-eternal-life business is going to be more complicated than he had planned. When we inherit, we usually must make room for more. Here he must pare down.
Each of these lessons sends us into the public sphere in one form or another: the court, the bank, and the marketplace. Albeit each of these must be transformed in surprising ways if they are to be places of good news.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Job certainly has grounds that he can expect an acquittal from God and probably compensatory damages for the trauma that came from this celestial theological experiment. Is there any doubt that he should ask for a jury verdict? Who is to condemn here? If Job does not come away clean from this, then how likely will it be that any of the rest of us is going to survive the moment of judgment?
Of course, here is the problem. This is not like any court that we have ever been in before. The verdict is already in. We are guilty with a capital "G." The reality of this led the young Martin Luther, as a newly ordained priest, to pass out as he served Mass. Whatever means and methods the church had provided to mitigate the verdict and the sentence, he knew in his heart of hearts he was guilty. He knew that even as he tried to avail himself of the means of salvation the church offered that he was doing it more out of self-regard and interest rather than a genuine desire to reestablish a right relationship with God. Try as he might he could never eliminate the element of hypocrisy that was always present in his thoughts and deeds -- busted once again and no way out.
Certainly, the case can be made that guilt, and its resolution, is not a major theme of angst for moderns. Potential verdicts and their consequences have been mitigated by a thorough reading of Freud and reading the latest scientific evidence that tells us that so much is encoded in our genes. A modern Job would not go to court with Blake's law dictionary or copies of Talmudic commentaries to make his case. He would come with Freudian volumes, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, or the doctor's pharmacological reference. "There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge."
We expect the judge to be amenable to such presentations. Certainly modern forensics has benefited us all. However, Job and our problem might be relying so heavily on the courtroom context to settle anything. How rarely does it? Years ago, the country hung on nearly every word of the O. J. Simpson trial. Just how much did that settle? We often expect the miracle from our courts that would put an end to our pains and sorrows. Many who demand the death penalty are astounded how little closure it provides. The court can settle the civil suit. Our capacity to be civil with each other will come from another place. We look for resolution in court only to find that, at best, it often only sounds the bell for the next round of struggle. One translation of the Lord's Prayer reads in part, "lead us not into the time of trial." The time of trial is when we are not likely to find God. When we are in court mode, we are likely to be bunkered down, full of self-justifying rationales, expecting triumph of our point of view. I can't blame anyone for that. Indeed, if I find myself in court, those are exactly the qualities I want my lawyer to have. However, I do not always expect to find God when I am in court-overdrive mode. This seems to be what happens to Job when he finds himself in the court mode even with all his careful preparation. "If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left, he hides and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him." The language seems to suggest that left or right, in the end we court disaster if we use this public place to solve all our disputes and to chart our course. God gets lost along the way. Something more is required.
Job speaks of God as the one before whom his heart has grown faint and he is terrorized. For those of a courtroom bent, it is terrorizing to know that the verdict might be that God really did mean for it to take all kinds of people and that those of right and left have something to contribute that the other needs to receive. The verdict might be that something will get lost in determining winners and losers. How determined are we that all feel like they are winners in some sense? Are we willing to hear a verdict that says that God's starting place is not our well-crafted arguments but God's unarguable love that embraces all people regardless of our own verdicts on them?
Hebrews 4:12-16
Not too long ago, I had the interesting experience of buying a new car. In our times, such a moment is heavily freighted. One cannot come to such a moment without feeling somewhat of an environmental/energy criminal. One brings a sense that we have overdrawn on the balance of the resources that God has provided us. As I waded through the brochures featuring chrome and color, I wondered just how much sense of betrayal I would feel as I drove off the lot. What made it particularly hard was how easy they made it. I drove off in a new car, having agreed to a time I would come back to pay for it. Granted, I had to sign a promissory note to pay things off with a certified check. I kept looking in the mirror to see if the police would catch up with me at some point. To get the car on our insurance, it was a simple matter of calling our insurance agency and giving the vehicle identification number. Somehow it did not feel comfortable at all; we were covered. In my estimation, money should have changed hands somehow -- before taking the car!
"And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account." I come to such moments before the car dealership believing that my credit score would rob me of any chance to buy a car, shy of leaving my firstborn as collateral. It is quite a shock to discover that you are covered. Isn't that the good news of the gospel? You are covered. You may drive off the lot without fear that they are coming to get you.
You are covered. Your biggest foul up, your most basic blunder can be turned into something that gives glory to God and blessing to you. Before you even open your credit file, God's heart is open to you -- open to the time you might spend wandering in the wilderness trying to find your way and who you are. You are covered with God's love.
In church life, it is easy find yourself coming up short with each other. We are so committed, we get so close; we can rub each other in a way that generates more heat than light. Yet, we are covered by God's love.
We have lived in times when major corporations have engaged in cover-ups of their somewhat shaky financial status. Our identities are so wrapped up in our financial status that some have hidden their layoff from their spouse, pretending to go to work. Credit reports are so crucial to our lives and many have engaged in their own personal cover- ups. But here the letter of Hebrews is saying that we need not cover-up because we are covered by the love of God through Jesus Christ.
Rendering an account of the truth of our lives we will find the grace of God operating in our lives. "Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Having been in banks asking for a loan I know that the merest upturned eyebrow of a loan office can suck all the boldness out of you. When the call comes that you have been approved for a loan it brings relief, joy, and surprise that somebody actually thinks that you are worth investing in -- so much for approaching the financial throne with boldness.
Yet, the letter invites us to approach the throne of grace with boldness. It reminds us that we can do so because we have a loan officer in Jesus who has been where we are and brings sympathetic understanding to the folks on the other side of the desk. Jesus cannot look on those sitting across from him, with more than a few beads of perspiration at the thought of rendering a full accounting of their lives, without being reminded of being in a garden sweating blood at the prospect of a full accounting being rendered of his own life.
Let us be clear also that this loan officer is fully knowledgeable regarding not only our situation but also the one whom he represents. "Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession." To paraphrase Douglass John Hall: Our loan officer is fully authorized to advocate for us before God and fully authorized to advocate for God before us.
Mark 10:17-31
If ever there was somebody who was making the bold move, it was the man who, approaching Jesus, asked, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus caught it at the beginning of their conversation, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Jesus is approached here by one of those folks who are bold not because they believe they are covered by the love of God but because they can cover their tracks or cover themselves with enough good deeds and works that it will cover all occasions in life when they might come up short.
We need not spend much time and effort challenging the man's statement that he has kept all of the major commandments from his youth. It ought to be a tip-off that Jesus did not go down that line of conversation. I'll just bet that he kept all those commandments and probably made everybody else miserable reminding them what a good person he was. I have the impression that Jesus is being quite savvy with this man. Note the commandments that Jesus lists. They all have to do with ethical conduct and not directly with our relationship to God. At the beginning of the conversation, Jesus reminds the man that none is good but God. At the very outset, Jesus sets forth the truth that the man must face; we all lack and fall short for none is completely good as God is.
Picking up on the arrogant boldness of the man, most of us would be giving him something other than the look of love. The man seems to combine the worst characteristics of both of the sons in the story of the prodigal. He has the moral superiority complex of the stay-at-home son and the brashness of the son who asked for his inheritance. Jesus' capacity to look on him with love astounds.
Jesus again demonstrates his savvy as he says to the man that he lacks one thing. No doubt he has the man's full attention for he seems to believe that he is fully capable of doing anything that Jesus might command. Yet, it all falls apart when the man is told to go and sell what he has. Jesus does not tell him to go and give away what he has. That might appeal to the man's moral assiduousness. Jesus asks him to do more: to go and sell. I do not see a kind of passive yard tag sale here. In this part of the world, buying and selling was done in the marketplace with dickering and give and take over the price. Jesus is moving this man beyond the moral to the relational as pathway to inheriting eternal life. The man will find he is not morally superior but on a level playing field with something to sell to others who might or might not be interested. He just might have to get off his moral high horse before he can inherit anything from God.
Jesus' questioner is thrust into another dimension. The act of selling will force him to assign value to what he has and measure that against other's estimate of his worth. He must consider the value of his way of keeping the commandments all these years. Has his approach brought him to a place where he is also bold in trusting others, open to learning from others? Has it increased his capacity to feel for and with others? Or have his years of keeping the commandments left him with a lack of appreciation for the other's context? It is interesting that his faith understanding did not get in the way of his acquiring many things. Jesus' instructions to his disciples for the journey seemed to involve trimming down and cutting back on what they were carrying through life. What could be the value of these things, however compatible with his religious understanding, if they get in the way of responding to Jesus?
Who could not agree with Jesus' observation that it is hard to enter the kingdom of God, especially for those of us who have great possessions? Only the power of God and that look of love that must be burned into the retinas of this man have a chance of getting us into the kingdom. Only the power of God who calls us into relationship and to consider the value of what we are holding can enable us to receive the inheritance that we long for.
Application
These texts take many clergy to places they are not used to going or at least talking about. Few clergy I know talk about their last court appearance, or reflect on what a joy it was to ask for a loan on a clergy person's salary. Not many clergy are used to the give and take of the marketplace. If anything, many like the notion of being shielded from the rough and tumble of the market. However, these are places where we may need to go if we are to hear some of what God is saying to us. I suspect that if ever we do go to these places, it is with a certain moral superiority. We come to court with a certain sense of superiority that we are not legalists. Or we find the bank a place where we want to proclaim that you cannot serve God and mammon. In the market we wonder what it profits us if we gain the whole world and forfeit our lives. We come to these public places well armed with some preconceived notions.
I wonder if we are sometimes best served by dropping some of our set ideas about these places and just enter them open to what God might teach us even in such places. Getting a feel for what it is like to be in court or facing the loan officer and trying to sell our prized possessions might get us a feel for what God goes through. Our God faces the high court in Jerusalem, is betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, and loves people despite their tendency to sell themselves short all the time.
Alternative Application
Mark 10:17-31. There must have been a lot of feeling behind Peter's words when he said, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." It seems to be an experience that is not a part of the religious life of many that most of us will preach. If anything, church is deemed to be about bringing families together. Perhaps the answer to garnering some meaning here is to focus not on the loss but on the gain. Like a wedding, where one can either focus on the loss of familiar relationships or on the gaining of the new family members, for Christian folks the bridegroom has come. It is high time to consider to what degree we will be a part of this new family. Like a wedding, we suddenly have a new family to get used to that is no more the result of our choice than our family of origin.
Women whom we might have looked on in less than a holy fashion will become sisters. Competitors might become brothers and collaborators. We might find that we are being mothered in ways that we do not expect. Children on the streets of the world might become ours. Special-needs children driving up the local school budget are suddenly ours. And persecution, too. Yes, but a small price to pay for eternal life in the age to come -- smaller price to pay than we pay for the infernal life of the age that is.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 22:1-15
In each person's life, there comes a moment of defeat and desperation. It is a part of the cycle of our humanness that brings us ultimately to such a time. Sometimes, of course, suffering is self-inflicted. Unwise choices, arrogance, and ignorance certainly add to our seasons of desolation. At other times, travail is brought on by circumstances beyond our control. No matter where the cause is found, that gut-wrenching moment when it feels as though even God has abandoned us is strangely universal.
It is not productive to compare peoples' pain and oppression. However, there is some comfort to be had in the words of this psalm because as we read through these verses we find ourselves on familiar terrain. We have traveled this road ourselves, and it appears that someone has gone before us. It is what one preacher called the "desperation location." Many things can take us to this place. The searing grief of loss through death or a shattered relationship are experiences we all share. We can be transported by conflict, poverty, illness, and of course, war. Many arrive at this point as we stare into the jaws of our own death. It is not for nothing that Jesus chooses this psalm to quote as he hovers in agony, moments from his own death.
Still, though, from the depths of our depravity and suffering, we reach to God for deliverance. Whether it is our psalmist pleading to a God who seems oddly absent, or Jesus gasping what everyone believes is his last breath, we reach for God. And it is in the reaching that we find both deliverance and clarity. Indeed, it may be that without reaching we will find neither.
Through the smog of our own confusion-limited vision one thing becomes clear. It is God who rescues. We may depend upon many other things and people for our security and our salvation, but it is God who delivers. Sure. We all want our Social Security checks when we get old, though this may be less available than we hoped. We all like to depend upon some semblance of civil order and freedom, though the times can erode these as well. We all like to feel safe from that which we fear, though fear can be manipulated with frightening ease. All of this is part of our daily reality, and it is a good thing to acknowledge. Still, it is God who saves. None of our machinations or preparations, in the end, will help. When we awaken to find ourselves in that "desperation location," let us "commit our cause to the Lord, and let him deliver...."
The letter to the Hebrews calls to mind some poor person applying for a loan and sitting before the bank officer wondering whether this will be a moment before the throne of grace: "... before whom no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render account." If you have been there (and few of us have not been there to buy a car or house or secure a loan for school) it does not feel comfortable to have your life revealed in all its wisdom and foolishness in order to gain the judgment of the loan officer. The office you sit in reeks of responsibility and wise choices and sensible living that leaves you wishing you had chosen a slightly less sporty model of car, or picked a house in a slightly less posh neighborhood, or feeling that it was clearly not sensible to have had that last child go through college. That does not feel like the throne of grace to me -- much more like the hot seat. Can this situation ever be a throne of grace?
Yet, for many that is precisely how they experience God and Jesus -- as loan officers who expect regular monthly payments with an occasional balloon payment. Any deviation in the plan might leave you overdrawn on the good graces of the bank. Any failure to comply with the conditions of the loan may result in the kind of court appearance that Job is considering only without the kind of confidence that Job had.
The Gospel Lesson presents us with a man who has seemingly covered his bets. Given the list of the commandments he responds by saying, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Who are we to challenge such a statement? Most of us see ourselves at least as people who have managed to have stayed between the lines sufficiently to deserve something that looks like eternal life. If we have not kept the commandments completely, we have at least kept them on a bookshelf or as the ideal that we should aspire to. Certainly, such keeping should not be discounted totally.
Yet, Jesus seems to discount not only the intentions but the keeping of the commandments as well, as good as those things may be. He still lacks one thing. He must sell what he has -- not give what he has, but sell. This will require a trip to the public market and entering into its give and take. He reminds me of the folk who must make the great move into a smaller retirement home. "... he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions." This inheriting-of-eternal-life business is going to be more complicated than he had planned. When we inherit, we usually must make room for more. Here he must pare down.
Each of these lessons sends us into the public sphere in one form or another: the court, the bank, and the marketplace. Albeit each of these must be transformed in surprising ways if they are to be places of good news.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Job certainly has grounds that he can expect an acquittal from God and probably compensatory damages for the trauma that came from this celestial theological experiment. Is there any doubt that he should ask for a jury verdict? Who is to condemn here? If Job does not come away clean from this, then how likely will it be that any of the rest of us is going to survive the moment of judgment?
Of course, here is the problem. This is not like any court that we have ever been in before. The verdict is already in. We are guilty with a capital "G." The reality of this led the young Martin Luther, as a newly ordained priest, to pass out as he served Mass. Whatever means and methods the church had provided to mitigate the verdict and the sentence, he knew in his heart of hearts he was guilty. He knew that even as he tried to avail himself of the means of salvation the church offered that he was doing it more out of self-regard and interest rather than a genuine desire to reestablish a right relationship with God. Try as he might he could never eliminate the element of hypocrisy that was always present in his thoughts and deeds -- busted once again and no way out.
Certainly, the case can be made that guilt, and its resolution, is not a major theme of angst for moderns. Potential verdicts and their consequences have been mitigated by a thorough reading of Freud and reading the latest scientific evidence that tells us that so much is encoded in our genes. A modern Job would not go to court with Blake's law dictionary or copies of Talmudic commentaries to make his case. He would come with Freudian volumes, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, or the doctor's pharmacological reference. "There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge."
We expect the judge to be amenable to such presentations. Certainly modern forensics has benefited us all. However, Job and our problem might be relying so heavily on the courtroom context to settle anything. How rarely does it? Years ago, the country hung on nearly every word of the O. J. Simpson trial. Just how much did that settle? We often expect the miracle from our courts that would put an end to our pains and sorrows. Many who demand the death penalty are astounded how little closure it provides. The court can settle the civil suit. Our capacity to be civil with each other will come from another place. We look for resolution in court only to find that, at best, it often only sounds the bell for the next round of struggle. One translation of the Lord's Prayer reads in part, "lead us not into the time of trial." The time of trial is when we are not likely to find God. When we are in court mode, we are likely to be bunkered down, full of self-justifying rationales, expecting triumph of our point of view. I can't blame anyone for that. Indeed, if I find myself in court, those are exactly the qualities I want my lawyer to have. However, I do not always expect to find God when I am in court-overdrive mode. This seems to be what happens to Job when he finds himself in the court mode even with all his careful preparation. "If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left, he hides and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him." The language seems to suggest that left or right, in the end we court disaster if we use this public place to solve all our disputes and to chart our course. God gets lost along the way. Something more is required.
Job speaks of God as the one before whom his heart has grown faint and he is terrorized. For those of a courtroom bent, it is terrorizing to know that the verdict might be that God really did mean for it to take all kinds of people and that those of right and left have something to contribute that the other needs to receive. The verdict might be that something will get lost in determining winners and losers. How determined are we that all feel like they are winners in some sense? Are we willing to hear a verdict that says that God's starting place is not our well-crafted arguments but God's unarguable love that embraces all people regardless of our own verdicts on them?
Hebrews 4:12-16
Not too long ago, I had the interesting experience of buying a new car. In our times, such a moment is heavily freighted. One cannot come to such a moment without feeling somewhat of an environmental/energy criminal. One brings a sense that we have overdrawn on the balance of the resources that God has provided us. As I waded through the brochures featuring chrome and color, I wondered just how much sense of betrayal I would feel as I drove off the lot. What made it particularly hard was how easy they made it. I drove off in a new car, having agreed to a time I would come back to pay for it. Granted, I had to sign a promissory note to pay things off with a certified check. I kept looking in the mirror to see if the police would catch up with me at some point. To get the car on our insurance, it was a simple matter of calling our insurance agency and giving the vehicle identification number. Somehow it did not feel comfortable at all; we were covered. In my estimation, money should have changed hands somehow -- before taking the car!
"And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account." I come to such moments before the car dealership believing that my credit score would rob me of any chance to buy a car, shy of leaving my firstborn as collateral. It is quite a shock to discover that you are covered. Isn't that the good news of the gospel? You are covered. You may drive off the lot without fear that they are coming to get you.
You are covered. Your biggest foul up, your most basic blunder can be turned into something that gives glory to God and blessing to you. Before you even open your credit file, God's heart is open to you -- open to the time you might spend wandering in the wilderness trying to find your way and who you are. You are covered with God's love.
In church life, it is easy find yourself coming up short with each other. We are so committed, we get so close; we can rub each other in a way that generates more heat than light. Yet, we are covered by God's love.
We have lived in times when major corporations have engaged in cover-ups of their somewhat shaky financial status. Our identities are so wrapped up in our financial status that some have hidden their layoff from their spouse, pretending to go to work. Credit reports are so crucial to our lives and many have engaged in their own personal cover- ups. But here the letter of Hebrews is saying that we need not cover-up because we are covered by the love of God through Jesus Christ.
Rendering an account of the truth of our lives we will find the grace of God operating in our lives. "Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Having been in banks asking for a loan I know that the merest upturned eyebrow of a loan office can suck all the boldness out of you. When the call comes that you have been approved for a loan it brings relief, joy, and surprise that somebody actually thinks that you are worth investing in -- so much for approaching the financial throne with boldness.
Yet, the letter invites us to approach the throne of grace with boldness. It reminds us that we can do so because we have a loan officer in Jesus who has been where we are and brings sympathetic understanding to the folks on the other side of the desk. Jesus cannot look on those sitting across from him, with more than a few beads of perspiration at the thought of rendering a full accounting of their lives, without being reminded of being in a garden sweating blood at the prospect of a full accounting being rendered of his own life.
Let us be clear also that this loan officer is fully knowledgeable regarding not only our situation but also the one whom he represents. "Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession." To paraphrase Douglass John Hall: Our loan officer is fully authorized to advocate for us before God and fully authorized to advocate for God before us.
Mark 10:17-31
If ever there was somebody who was making the bold move, it was the man who, approaching Jesus, asked, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus caught it at the beginning of their conversation, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Jesus is approached here by one of those folks who are bold not because they believe they are covered by the love of God but because they can cover their tracks or cover themselves with enough good deeds and works that it will cover all occasions in life when they might come up short.
We need not spend much time and effort challenging the man's statement that he has kept all of the major commandments from his youth. It ought to be a tip-off that Jesus did not go down that line of conversation. I'll just bet that he kept all those commandments and probably made everybody else miserable reminding them what a good person he was. I have the impression that Jesus is being quite savvy with this man. Note the commandments that Jesus lists. They all have to do with ethical conduct and not directly with our relationship to God. At the beginning of the conversation, Jesus reminds the man that none is good but God. At the very outset, Jesus sets forth the truth that the man must face; we all lack and fall short for none is completely good as God is.
Picking up on the arrogant boldness of the man, most of us would be giving him something other than the look of love. The man seems to combine the worst characteristics of both of the sons in the story of the prodigal. He has the moral superiority complex of the stay-at-home son and the brashness of the son who asked for his inheritance. Jesus' capacity to look on him with love astounds.
Jesus again demonstrates his savvy as he says to the man that he lacks one thing. No doubt he has the man's full attention for he seems to believe that he is fully capable of doing anything that Jesus might command. Yet, it all falls apart when the man is told to go and sell what he has. Jesus does not tell him to go and give away what he has. That might appeal to the man's moral assiduousness. Jesus asks him to do more: to go and sell. I do not see a kind of passive yard tag sale here. In this part of the world, buying and selling was done in the marketplace with dickering and give and take over the price. Jesus is moving this man beyond the moral to the relational as pathway to inheriting eternal life. The man will find he is not morally superior but on a level playing field with something to sell to others who might or might not be interested. He just might have to get off his moral high horse before he can inherit anything from God.
Jesus' questioner is thrust into another dimension. The act of selling will force him to assign value to what he has and measure that against other's estimate of his worth. He must consider the value of his way of keeping the commandments all these years. Has his approach brought him to a place where he is also bold in trusting others, open to learning from others? Has it increased his capacity to feel for and with others? Or have his years of keeping the commandments left him with a lack of appreciation for the other's context? It is interesting that his faith understanding did not get in the way of his acquiring many things. Jesus' instructions to his disciples for the journey seemed to involve trimming down and cutting back on what they were carrying through life. What could be the value of these things, however compatible with his religious understanding, if they get in the way of responding to Jesus?
Who could not agree with Jesus' observation that it is hard to enter the kingdom of God, especially for those of us who have great possessions? Only the power of God and that look of love that must be burned into the retinas of this man have a chance of getting us into the kingdom. Only the power of God who calls us into relationship and to consider the value of what we are holding can enable us to receive the inheritance that we long for.
Application
These texts take many clergy to places they are not used to going or at least talking about. Few clergy I know talk about their last court appearance, or reflect on what a joy it was to ask for a loan on a clergy person's salary. Not many clergy are used to the give and take of the marketplace. If anything, many like the notion of being shielded from the rough and tumble of the market. However, these are places where we may need to go if we are to hear some of what God is saying to us. I suspect that if ever we do go to these places, it is with a certain moral superiority. We come to court with a certain sense of superiority that we are not legalists. Or we find the bank a place where we want to proclaim that you cannot serve God and mammon. In the market we wonder what it profits us if we gain the whole world and forfeit our lives. We come to these public places well armed with some preconceived notions.
I wonder if we are sometimes best served by dropping some of our set ideas about these places and just enter them open to what God might teach us even in such places. Getting a feel for what it is like to be in court or facing the loan officer and trying to sell our prized possessions might get us a feel for what God goes through. Our God faces the high court in Jerusalem, is betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, and loves people despite their tendency to sell themselves short all the time.
Alternative Application
Mark 10:17-31. There must have been a lot of feeling behind Peter's words when he said, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." It seems to be an experience that is not a part of the religious life of many that most of us will preach. If anything, church is deemed to be about bringing families together. Perhaps the answer to garnering some meaning here is to focus not on the loss but on the gain. Like a wedding, where one can either focus on the loss of familiar relationships or on the gaining of the new family members, for Christian folks the bridegroom has come. It is high time to consider to what degree we will be a part of this new family. Like a wedding, we suddenly have a new family to get used to that is no more the result of our choice than our family of origin.
Women whom we might have looked on in less than a holy fashion will become sisters. Competitors might become brothers and collaborators. We might find that we are being mothered in ways that we do not expect. Children on the streets of the world might become ours. Special-needs children driving up the local school budget are suddenly ours. And persecution, too. Yes, but a small price to pay for eternal life in the age to come -- smaller price to pay than we pay for the infernal life of the age that is.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 22:1-15
In each person's life, there comes a moment of defeat and desperation. It is a part of the cycle of our humanness that brings us ultimately to such a time. Sometimes, of course, suffering is self-inflicted. Unwise choices, arrogance, and ignorance certainly add to our seasons of desolation. At other times, travail is brought on by circumstances beyond our control. No matter where the cause is found, that gut-wrenching moment when it feels as though even God has abandoned us is strangely universal.
It is not productive to compare peoples' pain and oppression. However, there is some comfort to be had in the words of this psalm because as we read through these verses we find ourselves on familiar terrain. We have traveled this road ourselves, and it appears that someone has gone before us. It is what one preacher called the "desperation location." Many things can take us to this place. The searing grief of loss through death or a shattered relationship are experiences we all share. We can be transported by conflict, poverty, illness, and of course, war. Many arrive at this point as we stare into the jaws of our own death. It is not for nothing that Jesus chooses this psalm to quote as he hovers in agony, moments from his own death.
Still, though, from the depths of our depravity and suffering, we reach to God for deliverance. Whether it is our psalmist pleading to a God who seems oddly absent, or Jesus gasping what everyone believes is his last breath, we reach for God. And it is in the reaching that we find both deliverance and clarity. Indeed, it may be that without reaching we will find neither.
Through the smog of our own confusion-limited vision one thing becomes clear. It is God who rescues. We may depend upon many other things and people for our security and our salvation, but it is God who delivers. Sure. We all want our Social Security checks when we get old, though this may be less available than we hoped. We all like to depend upon some semblance of civil order and freedom, though the times can erode these as well. We all like to feel safe from that which we fear, though fear can be manipulated with frightening ease. All of this is part of our daily reality, and it is a good thing to acknowledge. Still, it is God who saves. None of our machinations or preparations, in the end, will help. When we awaken to find ourselves in that "desperation location," let us "commit our cause to the Lord, and let him deliver...."
