Mark 10:17-31
“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The person who asks this question is known as the rich young man, or the rich young ruler. He has the sociocultural trifecta- wealth, youth, and status. He has many possessions, Mark tells us. He also seems to have a fourth important factor- faith. He has faith that this person that he calls a good teacher will have an answer for the burning question on his heart. He has a faith in the Torah, which he has observed since childhood. And he has faith in something beyond death, faith in the existence of an eternal life.
He has it all, really. He has wealth in a time and place that viewed wealth as evidence of God’s blessing and preferential treatment. He has youth, which likely means his wealth and possessions were inherited from his father and he has the rest of his life to accumulate more for himself and his future children. He has power, both as a man in a patriarchal society and as a ruler, either someone who has been invested with power by the Imperial government or by the local synagogue leadership. And yet, he perceives that something is missing. There is some emptiness, some nagging feeling that leads him to seek out the wandering preacher. He is already a man of faith, but still he is a seeker, searching for answers that will fill the God-shaped hole in the center of his life.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He asks this earnestly, and something in his voice or in his eyes moves Jesus deeply. Mark tells us that Jesus looked at this man and loved him. There are very few times in scripture that describe Jesus as loving someone. He has compassion for people, he is moved by their stories and their tears, he gets impatient with them when they seem hellbent on misunderstanding him. But this person, this young wealthy ruler, Jesus loves. The Greek says that Jesus agape-s him, loves him unconditionally. Jesus looks upon him with Divine Love. Jesus loves this man beyond human capacity.
Loving him, Jesus does not immediately give him the answer he seeks. They rehearse the commandments together, a callback to their shared upbringing as Jewish male children in their synagogues. The young man confesses that he has followed the Law all his life, revealing that somehow this does not feel like enough for him. He has done everything right, and still he has questions, still something is missing.
However earnest he is, however pure his intentions, he has asked the wrong question. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” There are two problems with this question. First, “What must I do?” Jesus gives him the chance to figure this out for himself, but he doesn’t catch it. Reciting the commandments, Jesus points to all the Dos and Do Nots that are expected of a person in covenant relationship with God. “I have done this” the young man says. He has done everything he is supposed to do, and yet, there must be something more. But it is his fixation on doing that has misled him. Just as the breath in our lungs is a gift from God, so is the life eternal, freely given. It is not in our power to take or earn. It is only God’s to grant.
Then there’s this word “inherit.” Inheritance is a complicated thing, both now and in the Ancient World. With few exceptions, inheritance requires death. A man would inherit his father’s property, any money he possessed, as well as servants and enslaved people, responsibility to care for any unmarried sisters and his widowed mother, upon the death of the father. Usually, only the firstborn male of the family inherited, although families may choose to divide assets among male siblings. Because of a general lack of upward mobility in the economy of the day, wealth and status remained within family lines, benefiting only those lucky enough to be born or married into them.
Almost surely, the young man is wealthy because someone died and he inherited everything. Jesus is not asking him to sell everything he’s bought with his hard-earned money laboring in the fields or working a trade. Jesus is asking him to give up his inheritance, the legacy of his father and all the expectations that come with it. Jesus is asking him to leave behind what others had left behind for him.
The rich man’s question is problematic because it reveals something that we fall prey to as well. Do, Inherit. He is experiencing his relationship to God as a transactional one. I do something for you, you give me something I want in return. Just as he inherited wealth by virtue of his birth, he seeks to inherit eternal life by virtue of his life. We do this too, consciously or otherwise. We bargain with God, we haggle and trade with our faith. Material wealth has always been necessary for the support and survival of church communities; even Jesus had patrons and benefactors. But wealth has also been the source of enmity and angst. Just as the details of inheritance can sometimes cause great damage to relationships among the surviving family, the ways money is handled within faith families can be fraught. There are always those who give sacrificially, and very often they are not the same people as those with the most to give. Some members may try to influence the decisions of leaders by offering large financial gifts, or by threatening to withdraw their pledge. Some may choose not to give at all because they don’t think their community needs their gifts. This is a transactional approach to faith, and it is this approach that left that young man bereft when he finally got the answer he was searching for.
Jesus did not tell this young man to sell everything he owns because that is the price tag on eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything because he needed to become unburdened of his transactional relationships with God and wealth. He needed to see for himself how much impact on the poor his wealth could have, to see their faces and learn their names. He needed to leave behind the world’s economy and embrace the economy of heaven, where everyone is an heir and none of us can do a thing to earn our place there. He had many possessions, and he was possessed by them. Jesus offered him an exorcism, and I hope eventually he accepted it.
So what can we learn from a rich young man with many possessions, and the poor itinerant preacher who challenged him to give it all away? We learn two things that are true at the same time. One- God’s love is not earned or bought, it is a gift freely given. Two- There are things in our lives that can threaten to come between us and true discipleship. For some of us, it may very well be money, or overconsumption, or habits that are wasteful of creation’s resources. It might be a relationship that is consuming us, or a grudge that hangs around our necks, weighing us down. It might be our relationship with alcohol or other substances, or it might be an ideology that clouds our view of the Gospel. It might be how we are choosing to spend our time, or friendships based on gossip and belittling others. Whatever it is, whatever is possessing you, preventing you from following Jesus- I hope you find the strength to lay it down. It takes courage, and you cannot do it alone. You have to let Jesus heal you, and you have to let your siblings in Christ help you. God already loves you, desperately and completely, unreservedly and unconditionally. Your inheritance is eternal life, and there is nothing you can do to earn or lose it. Let go of whatever it is that is holding you back, and follow Jesus. For mortals it may feel impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.
Mother A Writes 