at Batesville Presbyterian Church on October 15, 2006.
We're rich! I discovered I was rich a few years ago when I came across a British website soliciting funds for charity. There was a place on the website to input your annual salary and see where you fit in financially compared to everyone else in the world. Imagine my surprise when I typed in what I considered to be my modest annual salary and clicked the "enter" button and discovered I was richer than 99.2% of all people in the world! The numbers were staggering. There are 5,947,438,586 people poorer than me. Close enough -- let's call it 6 billion people who are poorer than me. Even allowing for the possibility the numbers may be off a bit you get the point. (And the point is not, as one woman said when I mentioned this in a Bible study: "Jon, we pay you too much!" The fact is that many of you make more money and have more assets than me.) The point is you and I are among the richest of the rich in the world. We are richer than 99% of the world's population.
I make this point to help us avoid the first mistake we usually make when we hear the story for today. Jesus starts talking about the how hard it is for the rich person to enter God's realm and we immediately start thinking of people who have far more money than we do – millions of dollars more than us -- and we admire Jesus for showing them where it's at. Let's not make that mistake today. This is a text that speaks directly to each one of us. So let us listen carefully and hear what Jesus will say to us in this story.
As Jesus is setting out on a journey, a man runs up and kneels before him, and asks him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" At the end of the story we will learn he is a rich man. This man is not trying to trick Jesus as is sometimes the case with some other questioners. He is sincere. I think he knows enough to realize that eternal life is here and now, where one is, not in some future time or place. And this eternal life is what he seeks.
Jesus replies to the man's question about eternal life: "You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.'"
The rich man tells Jesus: "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Envision this man's inner and outer life as a castle he has built by the strength of his will. Everything inside him makes sense. His actions are wed to his beliefs. His convictions are manifest with concrete actions. This man is a sincere seeker. He has lived right and done well his entire life but something is still missing. His life is off center. Something is slightly askew and he is spiritually sensitive enough to feel this imbalance in his very joints and bones.
Jesus, looking at him, sensed a kindred spirit. Jesus, too, had kept all the commandments since his youth and he knew the level of dedication it takes to keep the commandments not only in actions but in intentions. Jesus looked him hard in the eyes--and loved him. He recognized the dedication in this man. He saw his sincere desire to love and serve God. He sensed a kindred spirit.
In answering his question about how to inherit eternal life, it is significant that Jesus says nothing about the man's beliefs. Sometimes we miss the mark when we conceive Christianity as primarily a matter of right belief. We think if we can say the Lord's prayer and the Apostle's Creed and really mean it then we've got Christianity under control. But Jesus says nothing about beliefs. This is not a mental challenge. It is deeper than the mind can take us. The challenge is to a practice not a belief. Jesus says: "You lack one thing. Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. And come follow me." (Mark 10:21)
Aside from the obvious challenge of organizing a garage sale of all his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, Jesus is asking the rich man to surrender his inner vision of reality. Jesus challenges him to tear down his interior castle and start with nothing in the bank, nothing held in reserve through complete and utter surrender to Jesus.
This dramatic story reminds me of another spectacular story told in a book called The Golden Legend. Here is the story.
Saint Dionysius, first bishop of Paris, was beheaded with the sword before the statue of Mercury, confessing his faith in the Holy Trinity. And at once the body of Dionysius stood erect and took his head in its hands; and with an Angel guiding it and a great light going before, it walked for two miles, from the place called Montmartre to the place where, by its own choice and by the providence of God, it now reposes. (Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea; trasl G. Ryan and H. Ripperger, The Golden Legend, New York, 1948, pp. 620-621; quoted in Meditations on the Tarot, Anonymous, 9-10)
This remarkable story reminds me of the rich man seeking eternal life from Jesus. In both stories, someone needs to lose their head before they can get where they need to be. The rich man refuses to lose his head. He is caught up in his egoic consciousness, his sense of "I" and "me" and "mine" and he can not get beyond the mental level of consciousness to the more subtle level Jesus requires. The rich man cannot get beyond his mind. If only he could have figuratively chopped off his head like Saint Dionysius and stood up and walked under the power of the Spirit then he could have followed Jesus into the realm of God within. But the rich man could not. So his face clouded over and he walked away with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.
Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who 'have it all' to enter God's kingdom?" The disciples couldn't believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: "You can't imagine how difficult. I'd say it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to get into God's realm." (vs. 23-25)
Now we understand, of course, the rich man did not sell all he had and follow Jesus and we sympathize with the rich man. Yet, as Peter points out, this is exactly what he and the twelve disciples had done. As Peter puts it to Jesus: "We left everything and followed you." If we, like the disciples, could move beyond our minds and be guided by the inward compass in our hearts, we could find our way to a place to lay down and die to our false selves so that our true selves could be birthed into the realm of God within. Then we could follow Jesus' directive to utterly surrender ourselves and all we possess and go follow Jesus.
Death to the false self by the relinquishment of desires is the way into God's kingdom – God's realm within. The realm of God is here, now, within us. As Cynthia Bourgeault puts it: "The kingdom of God is not later but lighter." It is not "pie in the sky when I die" but a way of living our lives in this world. The realm of God is hard for us to enter because we are always distracted by our desires. So he says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God -- God's realm within you -- and all these things will be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33) The realm of God within is a place few Christians manage to find. It is especially hard to find for rich people like us. So now we know the meaning of Jesus hard to swallow statement: "Many are called but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:14)
Remember the story of the man named Job in the Old Testament. He had everything including a beautiful wife, children, land and wealth and he sacrificed it all on the altar of God. After the trial, God restored everything back to Job and then some. Likewise, Jesus says to Peter and his disciples, "Mark my words, no one who sacrifices house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, land—whatever—because of me and the Message will lose out. They'll get it all back, but multiplied many times in homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and land—but also in troubles. And then the bonus of eternal life! This is once again the Great Reversal: Many who are first will end up last, and the last first." (Mark 10:28-31, The Message)
