I’ve always had a beef about this story about the rich young man who ran up to Jesus asking how to get eternal life. And here’s my beef:
Everybody I’ve heard interpret it treats it like that was the end of the story – the guy ran up, asked his question, got a tough answer, and then went away grieving because he just couldn’t hack Jesus’ tough advice. And we don’t want to be like him – end of story. It makes up for a nice little lesson, right?
The problem is, I just don’t see anything here that draws that conclusion – it never says the guy didn’t follow Jesus’ advice. That’s not what it says, here or where it’s mentioned in the other Gospels. I looked at the Greek, at the commentaries, etc etc. And all I figure out about this guy is this:
He was a rich young man – or Luke has him as a ruler. But the point is, he was young, rich, powerful – so, what we can conclude from that is that he was obviously from the right family, since the Ancient Near East wasn’t notable for being an upwardly mobile society. Things had worked a certain way all his short life, and so he probably understandably had a sense of entitlement.
And while that rubs me the wrong way at first, I think we need to look at it compassionately the way Jesus did. There had probably not been anything yet in this guy’s world to suggest that he wasn’t just entitled his life. His family had been well off, they had lived in nice places, they were well connected to the power structures, and there was little that might have suggested to him that all these things were just the accident of birth – or maybe the fact that he hadn’t squandered anything yet, but he was young so just give him a little time, right?
But the bottom line is that everything in his young life had suggested that following the rules that had worked so well for him meant that he’d done everything right. So of course he thought that way. It made all the sense in the world. And the world reinforced that sensible-ness.
So, I think we’ve had all this telegraphed to us in the story. But let’s see what he does.
He runs up – so he feels an urgency, maybe nervousness. Scripture doesn’t tell us about any kind of self-importance or pomposity that entitlement might suggest.
And he kneels down – also showing a kind of humility, despite his obvious power.
And then he asks a question – what does he need to do to inherit eternal life.
And I find it interesting that this is what he would ask. He’s not asking how to secure his fortune or who’s going to be the greatest (like the disciples asked). He knows something lies beyond his wealth and power that’s important, something that’s worth asking about. Of course, I could be giving him too much credit, he could really be a twit and just asking because he thought he already knew the answer. But I don’t see anything here to tell me that, so I say that, like Jesus, we should look at him with love.
And the word there for love is “agape,” which as we’ve talked about in some of our programs here, has to do with not just a romantic love or a friendship love but a love that is defined this way: this love wants only the well-being of the other. And at this moment, more than anything in the world, Jesus looks at this guy and wishes for his greater good. Jesus wishes that this guy can get to fullest and most satisfying life that he can bear.
So Jesus lets him know that there is more in store for him – there’s a whole level of life that he can access – but it’s going to rub up against the way his world works right now. Jesus says he needs to free himself up from his possessions – which probably is the first time this guy ever even gets the idea that those possessions were keeping him from being free. And then, when you find that freedom – Jesus says, Come walk with me. Accompany me.
And then we get the part that I want to make the case that everybody misunderstands. When the guy realizes that he’s not as free as he thought, when he realizes that the social stuff that had worked so well for him wasn’t helping him after all but was even standing in the way of something better; in short, when he realizes that the world wasn’t what he thought it was – he grieved.
Ok, right there, is the whole reason I think we need to give this guy a chance. And pooh on all the church fathers over the years who haven’t. He grieved, the writer of Mark says. And what is grief? We grieve when something has died. We grieve when something doesn’t exist for us anymore. We grieve when something is over.
And that’s just it – maybe this guy realized that his old way of working the world was over. But that meant there was a chance for a new one.
That’s the thing about grief – it lets us let go. Which is why we need to grieve. As we all know, when we let ourselves go through the pain of grief, that very process is what lets us come back to life in a way.
And that’s exactly why I have hope in this guy. His grieving process wasn’t a sign that Jesus’ teaching didn’t work, it’s a sign that it did work – to me, the grief was a sign that Jesus’ teaching took hold. Because the grief meant something had died – and it was probably the illusion that being rich and powerful didn’t have a downside or a risk. Transformation doesn’t happen without something old breaking apart and making room for something new. And while that’s painful, and we shouldn’t seek pain for its own sake, what Mark is saying here is that pain is going to be part of the seeking process, if our seeking is real.
I think that in the humility this young rich guy showed, and in his grieving process, and maybe in his youth, he was open to some kind of transformation that lay beyond the rationale that “this is how religion and society and power work.” I’m giving this guy a vote of confidence. I say, You go, boy. Because this was a teaching moment – and for all we know, he took it.
And of course we’ve been talking all this time about this guy – but you know that’s really just a foil for talking about ourselves. Let’s lift the veil on this story, and find ourselves behind it. And maybe we’ll see that it’s as timely for us as it was for him.
Because I can’t believe that for all our intellectual resources that weren’t available to him, and the supposedly greater social opportunity of our society, I can’t believe that our own culture of possessions doesn’t hold us just as hostage, if a different way.
And I’m not being simplistic when I say that. I love pop culture, and society, and getting new sweaters, and being part of the world. I am not one for a cloistered life. But this story is so radical it doesn’t let us say, “Oh that’s just for people who don’t to be part of the world anymore.” It's precisely the radicalness that means it’s for all of us. And if we let the story be open-ended, I think we’ll find it ushers in a whole new way of how we look at the real decisions in our lives every day, and at how the things we put into our lives – most of which is stuff that we buy – end up being things we grab onto but that aren’t really all that helpful in the long run.
This story invites us to the deeper, radical challenge of releasing those things and the illusions that they may come with.
That’s a pretty radical invitation. And at the same time, it’s meant to be a realistic one. Exactly what that’s supposed to look like in each person’s life, I don’t know. But that’s what I find actually hopeful about this young guy: he’s in it asking that question with us.
We’re all in it together, figuring out this love that comes out of Jesus, and the challenge that comes out of Jesus – and the fact that the two can’t be separated. Jesus didn’t tell him to sell everything because he wanted him to be unhappy. It was the opposite. Jesus told him to do it because he loved him – agape – enough to want even better life for him. Real better life, not just an idea about it.
Jesus was really smart. He knew that the stuff we have has a lot to do with how we know ourselves, how we experience ourselves. It just does, every single day. The stuff isn’t bad in itself, the question is just how entangled we can be with it. It’s like what Tim says every Sunday at the offertory – what we put into the plate is part of us. When we do it, we feel it. I totally understand that, I feel it when I write my check to Christ Church. And this story understands that – that’s why it’s so smart.
Which is why we need the story – in my new, open-ended interpretation. Whether you feel like you have a close personal relationship with Jesus, or you find it almost impossible to feel Jesus anywhere in the zip code, or you’re somewhere in between – just hold on to this story.
Because even though it seems like the rich young guy got an answer, I think what he really got was a whole new set of questions that took a long time to answer, which to me is better. He got a long time of looking at his life and his stuff and his inner freedom, and remembering the love he felt from Jesus, even if only for a second. And I want to think that his whole life, whenever he remembered that strange strong love, he remembered the challenge that came with it, and whenever he remembered the challenge – he remembered that it didn’t come without the love and the desire for his greatest possible good.
It’s a hard paradox to preach. I believe, in my most deep human self, that God is every kind of love bound into one whole, and to the power of ten of the suns in the sky.
And I think, on a human level, it’s hard as hell to figure out what to do with that.
It’s very typical of the Hebrew Scriptures – it’s why I like the Old Testament so much. God’s love is presented over and over again in ways that knock your socks off, and then it always messes with people’s lives and their decisions and they stumble around and make more mistakes than not. And remember, that was the Bible for this young guy. They weren’t walking around with little Gideon New Testaments in their pockets. All he ever knew were stories of how people got confronted with God’s love, usually exactly like this guy did in an unexpected, awkward way that really threw them off and knocked them on their butts. That’s pretty much what the readings from Job and the famous Psalm 22 are about – lament from the depths of love and the challenges that love poses. And if they took it seriously at all, and it was hard not to – it totally turned around their plans and their decisions and what they had ever dreamed was possible.
In my view of this story, that’s what I think is happening here. So let’s get in their with the young guy and hold on to that strange love, and know that it’s going mess with our lives. But above all – don’t stop remembering both the love and the challenge.
It’s not easy. But I for one would rather be with it than without it. Because it keeps a kind of vigor and edge in my life that means I’m a little bit more alive.
And even with all my human mistakes and errors in being alive – I can say I’ve been a fool for lesser things.