21st Sunday after Pentecost
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Social
Immediately on the heels of last week’s message of the rich young man comes another discourse on money from the eternal Lord.
The problem with money is that it can buy things. But Honestly, it’s too cheap of a way to solve what ails us. Too often money becomes synonymous with manipulation rather than conversion. Money becomes about control and power over life giving. Here’s what I mean.
In the book of Acts there is a magician who sees that God’s Spirit is falling on people all willy nilly through the apostles and in order to get some of that sauce what does the magician do?
Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
The problem with wealth is that it can buy things. When we have wealth we then want to have THINGS.
The Kingdom of God is not a thing: it is the state of the world.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
When we try to buy a thing we settle, we end up with tunnel vision, and relinquish our ability to receive the whole desired outcome.
There’s a great line in ‘The Social Network’ where a bunch of lawyers are speculating that the billionaire founder of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was in a lawsuit with his partner because his partner had recieved an invitation into a secretive club called the Phoenix club and Zuck had not. Zuckerberg responds: “at the moment I could buy Mt. Auburn Street, take the Phoenix Club and turn it into my ping pong room.”
It’s a great moment in the film and it’s the kind of thing we all wish we could say except that it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The great thing about the movie the social network is that it portrays a guy who creates a platform where you can have millions of friends but he’s all alone. They portray Zuckerberg as a billionaire without a place or people to spend his money. He has everything, it is amounting to nothing and it may just be true.
It’s astonishing.
And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”
We want to believe that we can pay it off, that at the end of the day either our merits, our kindness, or that shiny plaque with our name on it down at the moose lodge will testify to our ability to not just make our lives a neutral weight in the world but that we made it a better place.
When the Toyota dealer asked me why I wasn’t going to buy a truck even though we were right there on price I said ‘I came into this world naked and I’ll stand before my maker without a Toyota, I don’t need this truck.’
This also is a grievous evil: just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?
When Peter says ‘see we left everything and followed you’, the response from Jesus is good news. It takes exactly nothing to acquire life because the maker of everything has purchased it for you.
RT France encapsulates Mark 10 in this way:
The Gospel of Mark The Revolutionary Values of the Kingdom of God (10:1–31)
Jesus has called his disciples to accept the paradoxical concept of a messianic mission accomplished through rejection and suffering, to lose their life in order to find it, to choose between the approval of other people and the claims of the Son of Man, to become the least and the servant in order to be the first, to welcome those whom they would naturally reject, and to envisage the possibility of drastic renunciation in this world in order to gain ‘life’.
There’s a fascinating thing that is unfolding in and around Mark 10 and it is set up in Mk 9. On the way back from the transfiguration the disciples start to argue about who is the greatest. Jesus then begins this discourse about welcoming children and we’ve been there already.
What unfolds afterwards is of interest to us- a series of events occur where Jesus encounters the greatest people in society and we see how He meets them. Progressively Jesus meets the wise, the wealthy, and the powerful. Each time Jesus points to the lowest in stature and power and says that the Kingdom is for them.
Whats the point? Jesus meets incredibly powerful people, the disciples, the religious leaders, the wealthy and points them all to the cross. At the end of all this- In Mark 10:37 James and John ask for greatness!
And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
Who ends up on the right and left side of Jesus?
Two robbers. Two people who had to steal for their wealth.
Jesus doesn’t ask us to steal our way into the Kingdom. He grants it.
Wealth and power are not the problem, thinking it brings life, or joy, or anything lasting is.
The good news about Jesus telling the Rich young man to sell all that He has is that at your last, when you have nothing, not even a breath, to offer - you shall be first into the Kingdom of Heaven.
But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
The Kingdom of God values those who have nothing.
This should cause us to radically evaluate how we value life.
There’s been a change of course of sorts in our generations and their use and portrayal of wealth. In the past wealth was displayed, a new car, a nicer watch, a better shirt. Today, wealth is lived. Better education, better vacations, better retirements, better life experiences - or so we are told.
The Kingdom of God says that if have neither material goods or lived experiences you are welcome here. Socio-economic standing has no bearing in the Kingdom of God.
This then drives us to Ecclesiastes 5.
Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.
The only real, lasting wealth in our lives is to know God. St. Augustine of Hippo says it like this in his confessions, and you don’t have to read much of it to see this quote - its on page 1:
The Confessions of St. Augustine Chapter 1
Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
There are things that try to hinder us from entering it but revel in this dear Christian, Christ has secured it for you.
Amen.