Discipleship Challenges - Personal Life

Scripture: Mark 10:17-31

Mark 10:17–31 NRSV

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 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; Honor your father and mother.’ ” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

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Personal

Dr. Bob Tuttle was a kind of spiritual grandfather to me. He mentored my home church pastor back when he was a seminary student in Chicago, IL. After teaching there for a number of years, he eventually became a professor at Asbury Seminary's Florida campus. I met Bob first at several church retreat weekends, where he taught us how to pray for others, share the gospel with them, and invite them into a relationship with God and our church family. Some of my best ministry skills were passed from him, through my pastor, to me. He was a disciple-maker who made other disciple-makers.

He taught us that every few decades we have to rearticulate the gospel. The Gospel does not change, but the way words mean does change. 20 years ago I was taught that being a disciple meant having a personal relationship with God. 12 years ago, Dr. Tuttle taught us that almost all three of those words had changed meaning. "Personal" meant 'none of your business'. "Relationships" came in all types, some good, some bad. "God" could mean anything to anyone in the world we live in today. We could no longer assume that people understood what we meant when we used even these simple phrases from church.

Our scripture today deals with the first of these words: Personal. While you may be a Christian, the way the world uses this word plays an active role in how your faith is shaped today. And if you do not know Jesus, this may be part of what is holding you back.

When it comes to relationships, Personal Relationships are giving relationships.

Adding Jesus as a Missing Piece

The story of the rich young ruler, the wealthy businessman, is one that was surely repeated by the disciples and the early churches for decades. It was important enough to be included in three out of four gospels and it brings to life the teachings of Jesus about money and his kingdom. This story goes deeper than just the practical aspects of having and using money though. There are accounts of poor widows giving their last pennies and parables of wealthy servants that teach those practical aspects of money. This story dives deep into what it means to live for Jesus and to be part of his family.

The Jewish tradition, along with many other cultures, passed down family property and inheritance from father to the eldest son. The Oldest always received the largest portion. The second son would receive something less than half. Any other sons might be lucky to inherit anything at all. In the middle ages, when the Roman empire spread the Catholic church across Europe, the tradition was that the eldest son would inherit all the family property, the second-born son would be given to the church to serve as a priest, and any sons after that joined the military. Everyone was provided for, and families were supporting the church and the government that way. If this young man had as much property and wealth as the text says, chances are very good he was an eldest son of a family. The wealth was his, but not just for him to use as he pleased. He was steward of family land and a family name.

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This man knew he was missing something important. He wanted to take a good family and add Jesus to it to make it better. He wanted to take a good business and make it a good Christian business. What was the missing piece? That's what he went to ask Jesus.

He was looking for a new rule to follow, a new prayer to pray, maybe a new project to work on. From the very beginning of his dialogue with Jesus, it was clear that Jesus was not going to offer him the missing puzzle piece of his life. He was asking the wrong question. Normal life plus Jesus does not equal Christian life. Jesus is not an additive. Jesus wanted him to give up all of his old life so that he could receive all of the new life Jesus had for him.

Making Room for Goodness

Pride, greed, ambitions, and a general desire to be in control of our own lives make this kind of decision difficult enough. But there is a complex question of loyalty that is tied to this situation. Jesus pointed out that it was hard for a rich person to come into the kingdom of God.

The flip side of that is also true. It is much easier for a poor person to follow Jesus. Think of Blind Bartimaeus and the man possessed by all those demons in the Gerasene graveyard. They, along with the woman at the well in Samaria had nothing, no money, no property, no real family to speak of, and Jesus had to command them NOT to follow Him. They were going to give up everything and follow Jesus whether He asked them to or not.

We know it form our own experience as well. Many people do not turn to Jesus until they have a "hitting rock bottom" kind of experience, when they finally feel like they have nothing to lose. It is easier for the poor to enter the kingdom of God. Our struggles occur when poverty is seasonal. We may be poor and give up everything to follow Jesus, until we fall in love and want to get married, or have kids, or suddenly find ourselves caretakers, stewards of a family. The richness we may struggle with the most may not be dollars or property, but relationships - especially those relationships we feel responsible to take care of.

In the middle ages, the second son was given to the church as a symbol that families were supporting the church. But they would never give away the eldest son, and they certainly would not give up all the wealth and property, because that could mean the end of the entire family. No more Smiths, Jones's, Franklins, or Robbinsons. Jesus is adopting everyone into a new family and giving them all a new last name. Jesus solves the Hatfield and McCoy problem by inviting them all into a new family. And that is what the Church is created and empowered to be.

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We live our lives out of boxes. This box has times, places, and things that belong to God, this other box is my work obligations, another box is for family, and then there is a box labeled ""Personal"". We think that if we can put the boxes in the right order, and give them the right contents, we will live a happy life here on earth and go to heaven when we die. Those who organize the best win.

I think Peter and the disciples, watching this interchange between Jesus and this young man, suddenly realized how much they had given up themselves. They were so caught up in the friendship and mentoring, and most of all, the new family Jesus was creating, that they had thrown away all of their boxes except for the one that was for the family of Jesus. Peter suddenly remembered that he had a wife, and a family here in Capernaum. They remembered their fishing boats for the first time since they left them in the lake to follow Jesus. And they remembered the challenge Jesus shared with them when He told them about his upcoming death on the cross.

The boxes they had in their lives were not cardboard boxes, they were treasure chests. They held the most valuable time, places, and people in their lives. What used to be a life of very firmly set boxes had suddenly become a wide empty space of questions.

Wide Open Spaces Waiting

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But Jesus wasn't inviting them to live out of boxes. I think He invited them and invites us to live out of something more like a field. Here in the springtime of their relationship with Jesus, that field looked like a lot of dirt, across a vast area of land, with little green shoots growing up wherever Jesus was planting seed. I can imagine Peter, suddenly anxious, saying, "Jesus, look at all this wide empty space where there used to be an organized life built." And Jesus saying, "Yes, Peter, I know." Peter saying, "It's just dirt with seeds in it, and I don't even know what is growing there. Gosh anything could happen." And Jesus saying, "I know, is that so exciting?! Now that this land has been cleared, God can do anything with it! Anything at all!"

The first commandment, loving God with all we have and all we are, tells us that our relationship with God is not a personal or private thing. It is not something we own. It means our lives are not our own anymore, we have given them up. The second commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves, gives us the assurance that we will not become orphans or outcasts by giving up our lives to Jesus. On the contrary, we will join a greater family than we could ever inherit from our parents or loved ones. When we live out those two commandments daily, our lives together become that wide open field that God can work to harvest fruit ten-times, fifty-times, and a hundred-times what was planted and nurtured within it.

Brothers and Sisters,

Right now, your life may feel sparse, as if it got all plowed over and you only see little bits of green growing up. You may not even know if it is wheat or grass, corn or beans, growing in those fields. You may be surprised by pumpkins later on or watermelons. There might even be some carrots, radishes, and potatoes, whose fruit will be underneath the surface until the day you come to harvest it. I cannot tell you for sure what God will grow in your life if you knock out the kingdom you built for yourself and plow over those pavements that everyone else uses to drop their stuff onto your life. But if you clear out the space for God, I can tell you there is no limit to what He can do with you and with us together.