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Mark 10:17-27 CEB As Jesus continued down the road, a man ran up, knelt before him, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to obtain eternal life?” Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except the one God. You know the commandments: Don’t commit murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Don’t cheat. Honor your father and mother.” “Teacher,” he responded, “I’ve kept all of these things since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him carefully and loved him. He said, “You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.” But the man was dismayed at this statement and went away saddened, because he had many possessions. Looking around, Jesus said to his disciples, “It will be very hard for the wealthy to enter God’s kingdom!” His words startled the disciples, so Jesus told them again, “Children, it’s difficult to enter God’s kingdom! It’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.” They were shocked even more and said to each other, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them carefully and said, “It’s impossible with human beings, but not with God. All things are possible for God. Much in scripture challenges us, and for the Christian church, the words of Jesus doubly challenge us. For the next six weeks, we will be exploring some of these difficult words of Jesus, the statements of Christ that cause us to wrestle with ourselves and our God. We will find ourselves blessed with greater understanding and wisdom through struggling with these texts. Today, we start with one of the most challenging for Christians throughout history: “‘Go, sell what you own.’” These words, are spoken by Jesus to a man who approaches him to ask the question: “‘[What] must I do to obtain eternal life?’” We have wrestled with this radical command through the centuries, struggling to live up to it, avoid it, or explain it away, but these words of Jesus continue to make us uncomfortable up to the modern day. In exploring this encounter, we will find that Jesus challenges us to acknowledge the cost of following him. In addition, our discipleship calls on us to see what false idols we pushed into the God-shaped hole in our lives. These idols are blockages that keep us from fully following Christ.
Although this story pops up in Matthew and Luke as well, today we are focusing on Mark’s version of this exchange between Jesus and a man with “many possessions.” We don’t know much more about this man. Later, the other two gospels will add that he is young and a ruler, but here he is just a man with wealth. In the gospel, this man runs up to Jesus on the road just after Jesus has finished blessing the little children. Now, children in the ancient world were seen as worthless. They were “culturally considered property of their father,” and were low on the social ladder because they had no wealth.[1] On the other hand, the rich were seen “as recipients of divine favor”[2] in Jesus' day, so there should be no doubt that a wealthy man would enter the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps, the man even runs up to Christ after hearing what he said about worthless kids to double-check, making sure he with his many possessions is still a shoo-in for the kingdom! In antiquity, wealth was “land turned by labor into food, which, in the case of the rich, was turned into sufficient money to be turned into privilege and power.”[3] To say this man had many possessions is not the same as saying that he just simply had a lot of stuff, it means he had land that others worked on to grow the food he traded for money, power, and privilege. Back in the days of Jesus, “the resources needed for daily living were in limited supply,” so for this guy to have much, “other people had less.”[4] He exploits others, his neighbors, in order to have as much as he did, and he is under the impression that the wealth that he has means that God blesses his way of life and will ultimately reward him for it by giving him eternal life. Except, Jesus has shown up, praising and elevating worthless children, and now, the man is a bit more uncertain, so he approaches Christ with a question, “‘Good Teacher, what must I do to obtain eternal life?’” I always admire how Jesus takes every question seriously. He doesn’t simply repeat what he had said a few verses before about followers needing to become like children to enter into the kingdom. Instead, Jesus answers the man, albeit with a question at first, but still starts to respond! You’ll notice that man wants to know what to do to “obtain eternal life,” in other words, how do I get – secure – this item, this thing called eternal life. What are the conditions? What is the price? Here he is asking Jesus, the “Good Teacher,” for the secret to obtaining eternal life, and instead, Jesus tells him the commandments. You’ll notice that Jesus doesn’t cite all ten, but focuses in on the last six. These are all concerned with actions, and especially with how we interact with and treat our neighbors. His list of commandments focuses the man and all of us “on life in the here and now, not in the sweet by-and-by” of eternal life.[5] Jesus doesn’t provide a rubric to this man so he can check whether he has met the requirements, instead, Jesus asks whether this man is living faithfully through how he treats his neighbor. Living faithfully should be an especially important concern for a man who has achieved his wealth by exploiting his neighbor! Jesus even hints at this by changing one of the six commandments he cites. You’ll notice that rather than saying “Do not covet,” Jesus changes it to “Don’t cheat,” sometimes translated as “You shall not defraud” (NRSV). “Covet is an attitude; defraud is an action.”[6] In particular, defrauding is “connected with the rich who exploit the labor of the poor.”[7] Jesus responds by inviting the man to consider whether he is living faithfully, and he cannot live faithfully if he is actively harming his neighbor. The man misses the point, instead dismissively responding that he has “‘kept all of these things’” since he was a boy. The man knows he is lacking something, but he cannot see it even when Jesus calls on him to examine his living to see where it has deviated from God’s example. Jesus could have then dismissed him as a lost cause, could have responded in anger or rebuke or judgment, but instead, turned and looked at the man “carefully and loved him.” This is the only time in the gospel of Mark that we are told Jesus loves someone, and it is this stubborn wealthy man. Jesus sees what he lacks, sees it there in the depth of his soul, and so now, Jesus must bring this hole to the surface. He must show this man that he has filled his soul’s hunger with wealth earned off of the sweat of another’s brow. Christ tells the man, “‘You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.’” Here it is, the challenge, the cost of discipleship, as “[discipleship] means adherence to Christ” through following Christ’s example and teachings.[8] What matters more to you? God or wealth? What will you follow? Will you keep to the ways that have caused you to take more and leave others with less, or will you give this path up to truly find the way that will take you to eternal life through Christ? We all have idols. We all have totems fashioned from the things and people of this world. We make them into our gods, we use them to fill the hunger of our souls. There are many. We can hunger after love, safety, security, health, and wholeness. We use many things to answer these hungers: money, sex, power, privilege, ideologies, children, family, and patriotism to name a few. When Jesus makes this demand to sell all you own and give it to the poor, it is a mistake to think this is the call for every Christian. This man has treasure on earth but he lacks treasure in heaven, so Jesus tells him, with love, how to gain what he hungers after. He has not been able to do it on his own because he has tried to get what he hungers after by loving something more than God and neighbor. He has tried to do it through his idol. This idol, like the many idols we have in our own lives, keeps us from fully following Christ, following God. Like trying to squeeze a beast of burden through the eye of the needle, these things keep us from fitting into the lifestyle of following God. Money is a common one that keeps us from getting through because money is often seen as the thing that gets us everything we could ever need or want in this life. However, it is not the only thing, and that’s where the challenge in these difficult words can be found today. What is the cost of your discipleship? Something holds all of us back from fully following God, and it’s not something inconsequential or we wouldn’t find it so hard to act faithfully toward our neighbors. We wouldn’t have needed God to come here and carry a cross to offer us a chance to break the chains on the things that hold us down and hold us back. We love our idols so much that we do not see them as idols, as falsehoods. We cherish them and protect them, so when Jesus comes along and offers us the out, sometimes drastic measures are needed to show us where our idols lie and what lacks they are trying to fill up. The only thing that can fill the hole in our souls, these hungers of ours, is God. What is your hunger then? What lack causes your soul to grumble and growl despite the idols you have tried to feed it? Is your idol money? Are you using it to answer that need for security and life? If Jesus gave you this command, would you go away distressed and depressed at the cost? Could it be something else? If tonight Jesus came to your house, what is the one thing you would not want him to ask for in your life? What is the one thing you would fight the most if Jesus said to you, “Give this up and then follow me!” Look closely at that part of your life with God, and see what God lovingly points out to you. God will say, “See, this is where you love this or that more than me, more than your neighbor, so give it up! Follow and find what truly fills you in and through me.” Amen. [1] David Fenton Smith, “Mark” in Wesley One Volume Commentary, eds. Kenneth J. Collins and Robert W. Wall (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), 588-614. [2] Ibid., 605. [3] Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 3. [4] Joel B. Green and William H. Willimon, eds., The Wesley Study Bible, Common English Bible (Nashville: Common English Bible, 2012), 1268. Notes Mark 10:17-31 CEB [5] Amy-Jill Levine, The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2021), 21. [6] Ibid., 17. [7] Ibid., 19. [8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1959), 59.
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