Let it go
Readings: Mark 10. 17-31
This passage is a challenging one. It’s one of those ones where Jesus says something hard, something which we’d either like to ignore or explain away. And in it Jesus gives us two challenges, one for us as individuals, and one for us as a community about our attitude to our money, possessions and the things of this world.
So this man runs up to Jesus as he’s travelling, kneels down and declares Jesus good, and then asks the question he wants answering. It’s a picture of deference, of respect, of honour towards Jesus. This is a man who is clearly keen to become a disciple of Jesus. This is a great start isn’t it. And then he asks the most important question, the one which no-one else has asked yet, the one on which Jesus’ whole ministry turns. Wow, amazing. And then when challenged by Jesus about the commandments he declares he’s kept them since he was young. Let’s get this guy signed up! And then we discover he’s rich! You can imagine the disciples there ready, eager to sign him up, to get him into their group. If someone like that walked in through the doors here I’d imagine many of us would be reaching for a connect card, wanting to get them connected into life here. And yet by the end of this encounter he’s walking away, far from signing up he’s leaving disappointed. Why? What’s going on?
The issue is to do with his heart. And there are a few clues about this. Firstly when Jesus lists the commandments he only lists 6, I hadn’t noticed that until I read the passage again on Monday. Only 6, and all to do with loving our neighbour. Notable by their absence are any about loving God. The second is that this man is all ready to become a disciple, to follow Jesus, and yet upon hearing the challenge, he walks away, doesn’t become a disciple.
You know we all look at the outward appearances, God looks at the heart. And in looking at this man Jesus loves him, he’s the only person in Mark’s Gospel that this is said of, that Jesus loves him. And this love that Jesus has for him means Jesus will challenge him, challenge him about the thing which is holding him back; his lack of dependence on God. You see for him his possessions, his wealth, meant that he didn’t need to rely on God, he could be perfectly self sufficient, even keeping the commandments in how he treated others. But all of this meant that whilst he could serve God, he didn’t need him, perhaps saw no need of him.
Now you might be thinking I’m being a bit harsh on the guy, I don’t know him, how do I know what’s in his heart? The final clue is in Jesus promise after the challenge; sell and give and then you will have treasure in heaven. I found myself hearing echoes of Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. For this man his treasure was his already, his heart wasn’t with God, wasn’t with Jesus. And that’s a problem. You know it’s not that wealth is an issue per say. There are a number of wealthy people that Jesus meets who he doesn’t challenge about this. But it’s about what we love, what we trust, what we look to for our security. And for this man, and for so many of us, it’s our possessions, our finances. We feel secure when things are good, worried when things aren’t. Our possessions so often possess us rather than the other way around. And Jesus challenge to us here is to let them go, to hold them loosely.
What’s the one thing that if Jesus challenged you to give up might make you consider walking away from him? What’s the one thing that if it was taken from you would make you reject God, stop following? Once you work out what that is, you’ll have seen what it is that stops you fully trusting God, what might become a stumbling block for your faith in the future. And Jesus challenges us about this stuff not because he wants to trip us up, not because he likes making things hard. Jesus loves this man, he loves us. And this love is expressed in his challenge. Jesus says some hard things, things which are difficult to hear, and even harder to put into practice. But he isn’t motivated by a ‘gotcha’ frame of mind. No, Jesus has hard teaching for us because he loves us and wants us to walk in the fulness of what he has for us.
That’s his challenge for us as individuals this morning. What are we depending on for our security? What do we love more than God? And then having worked it out to put it back in its proper place, to hold it loosely or get rid of it entirely.
As we return to the passage we find the disciples are just as shocked as the man walking away by Jesus challenge to give up his possessions. They question that if this guy who is morally upstanding, wealthy (often seen in those days as a sign of God’s approval) if he couldn’t be saved who could? And they’ve asked the exact right question. For humans it’s impossible, we can’t do it, we won’t make it to eternal life. But with God all things are possible. We can’t rely on ourselves to get us to eternity, we have to rely on God, we have to put our trust in Jesus.
As someone put it ‘If you want to be perfect’ says Jesus ‘Go and abandon all and yourself to me.’ This passage is a really practical application of what it might mean to deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Jesus. Our hope, our trust can’t be in anything else to get us over the finish line to eternal life. It can’t be in our wealth and possessions, it can’t be in what we do as this man so tellingly asks. Reaching eternal life for ourselves is impossible, but for God all things are possible. You may have noticed that Jesus has this encounter whilst journeying. And he’s journeying to Jerusalem, towards the cross. In the very next passage he’ll remind them of that, of his impending crucifixion, and of his rising to life. We won’t make it on our own, so God has made a way. But to do so our whole faith and hope and trust must be in Jesus, and him alone.
The second challenge is to us as a community, as a church. Because Jesus, responding to the disciples declaration that they, unlike this man, have given up everything to follow him, declares that no-one who has given up family or possessions will lack, instead they will receive a hundredfold in this age, along with persecution, and in the age to come everlasting life. Is Jesus declaring a prosperity Gospel here? Give up what money you have and very soon your bank will be overflowing? Give up your family and you’ll get a better one? No. In fact to use this passage to justify that way of thinking is to fall into the same trap as what we were talking about in the first part of the sermon. No, when Jesus says we will receive a hundredfold in return he’s talking about the church.
Have to give up family? Well as hard as that is, once you become a disciple of Jesus, you receive a new family in the church, with lots of new brothers and sisters. Notice how he says about Father’s in things you might have to lose, but not that we receive a hundredfold in return? That’s because we don’t, we receive our heavenly Father in return, the God of the universe we get to call Father. And the possessions we might have to give up? We receive a hundredfold because we as a church are called to share with one another. If someone lacks to share from what we have with them. I have a house, if you need somewhere to stay, we’re brothers and sisters, you can stay. But the same should be true in reverse, you have a house, can we stay there? The early church got this really well. If we turn to Acts 4 we see this in action, people seeing the need of their brothers and sisters and selling what they had to meet the need.
This is a really big challenge for us as a church. Are we as individuals heeding the call of Jesus to hold the things of this world loosely, and if so are we prepared as a body, as a church to let those things go to fulfil the promises of Jesus for our brothers and sisters who have had no choice but to give up things to follow Jesus. To meet their need, that they would know the hundredfold blessing of being part of the church.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus says hard things here today. But he says them because he loves us, wants us to grow into the fulness of what he has for us. To hold onto nothing tight except for Jesus himself. To be willing to surrender all for his sake and the sake of the Gospel. And as we do to become the blessing to our brothers and sisters and a sign of the age to come.
Because even if we have everything, if we’re like this man, morally upstanding, wealthy, lacking nothing and yet without Jesus we still fall short, we still lack what is most critical. And yet with Jesus we can have nothing else, have everything else stripped away, and yet in him we have all that we need. Let us count all things loss, compared to knowing Jesus for ourselves.
Amen.