How to inherit eternal life

Introduction

A common question you often hear asked for people exploring different religions or different denominations even within Christianity, is how to I get to heaven? This question is asked in many different forms but in essence it boils down to seeking understanding for (a) confirmation there is life after death and (b) how do I get there (and in a good place). We have all probably asked that question at some point whether we are trying to figure out what Christianity is about or whether we are trying to sort out what we must do to get to heaven or make sure we go to heaven. Our story today is about a young man who wanted to know the answer to this question. I want to first begin by doing a retelling of his story in modern terms and language.

(Retelling of Mark 10:17-31)

A young man once came in to Asbury church and asked the preacher, “Hey Good Preacher, what must I do so that when I die, I can be sure Jesus will be happy with me so I can go to heaven.” The preacher replied, “Oh I would’t call myself good because Jesus is the only one that is good all the time. I have made my fair share of mistakes but Jesus sets the bar where I should strive to be.” When the preacher asked him what he thought it took to get into heaven he replied, “I have been a good citizen, a good Christian, I have gone to church most Sundays. I have read my bible and followed the ten commandments really well.” When the preacher pressed further about his life, he brought up his successful career and how he had been treating everyone by the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The young man was pretty sure he was doing everything right. The preacher though noticed something missing in his story. The preacher noticed that this young man had accumulated much wealth but didn’t do much good with it. The preacher pressed him further with asking, what he planned to do with his wealth and the young man said, it was there to provide his future security, to keep up with this lifestyle he enjoyed much. Saddened by the young man’s response, he asked him if he had considered helping with some of the local mission programs that provided food for kids who may be going hungry, or helping pay for supplies to stock up the local community food pantry, or donating his wealth to help with any other programs that were to help the poor in the area. The young man didn’t like what the preacher was suggesting and became agitated and confused why the preacher was hounding him to give up his hard earned wealth. When the preacher sensed the young man didn’t agree or like the subject they were talking about and that the young man didn’t want to do what the preacher was suggesting, he opened his bible. The preacher shared the story in Mark 10:17-31 and talked about what Jesus meant in this passage. The young man nodded his head and left the church unsure what he would do with this conversation.

Trouble in our world

If we look at this retelling of the story, it mirrors the problem the same as the original story. The young man has worked had and built himself a secure future. He hasn’t broken laws or harmed others when accumulating his wealth. He has followed some of the basics such as the 10 commandments and golden rule so he thinks he has done everything he should be in order to get to heaven. However, there is another underlying theme that often gets missed when people look to see what they must do to inherit eternal life. This theme is helping the poor. This theme is taught throughout both the old testament and new testament. When you read your bible end to end, you see this theme. Often when we read our bibles, we read it to get the cliff notes version of what is the minimal I must do to make sure I can go to heaven. In some cases, people believe there is nothing they have to do because they read the verse Romans 10:9-10

Romans 10:9–10 NRSV

9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

Clearly this verse says, all you need to do is say out loud Jesus is Lord and believe in your that Jesus was raised from the dead then you will be saved. When you are just looking for the quick summary of what must I do to inherit eternal life, then this verse fits the bill nicely. It doesn’t mention doing anything other than saying something and believing Jesus was resurrected. However, when you read your bible end to end, you won’t be able to accept this oversimplified answer to the big question.

What about if we follow the same logic as the young man in our story earlier, I have followed the ten commandments, I have followed the golden rule. I have gone beyond the oversimplified version where you just say Jesus is Lord and believe he was raised from the dead. In this version, you have also followed some of the bible’s teachings. Yet, again in reading the bible end to end, Jesus expects more. In some ways, this model is not far off the mark though. If you wanted the simplified version, there is another way Jesus did sum this up for us but it is not in the golden rule. We need God’s grace to help us understand this big book with so much wisdom and history. We need God’s grace to understand how to take the bible in its entirety and confidently answer the big question in such as way where it can be simple enough to understand without leaving out big themes.

Trouble in the text

Before we go there, lets return to the original passage. In this situation, the rich young ruler was trying to do right by the bible as he knew it by following the laws. Now here is Jesus, someone who seems to be very wise in God’s ways. While we don’t know his motive for asking Jesus the question, we can think of a few possibilities that make sense in the context of his response. In this culture being poor and living in poverty was normal. There was no middle class and you were either rich or you were likely poor and served the rich. The poor often were dependent on the rich for daily living wages or on others good will. There were no social welfare programs or safety nets that could help you if you were sick or hungry or homeless. Given the large majority of the population was poor, this young ruler knew well the culture and Jesus’ request meant turning the tables on his status. Instead of him being secure in his daily needs, this meant giving this up and becoming poor just life the majority of people that worked for him or he passed along the streets begging for food or money.

While the text does not share what his motive for asking Jesus’ question, my guess is that he either wanted confirmation he was doing everything necessary to get to heaven or perhaps he wanted justification that even though he had much wealth and many poor around him, it was not necessary to give up his wealth. The second note worth mentioning is that in 1st century Jewish culture, wealth was seen as a sign of God’s blessings on you. You were wealthy because God had blessed you to make it so. Here is Jesus turning the tables on that notion saying give up all of God’s blessings on you to give to others who are poor. In other words, give up God’s blessings for you and give it to someone else.

Regardless of this person’s motivations, this was asking him to do something contrary to what he wanted and in some ways contrary to what he may ha ve believed or wanted to believe was true. This young man needed God’s grace to understand Jesus’ challenge to reach harder towards perfection.

Grace in the text

While we don’t know the rest of the story of this young man, we know this story is taught and was witnessed by many. One could hope that while this young man might have walked away, Jesus did tell his disciples that with God all things are possible. While in this cultural context, this would go against every norm, and likely would never be chosen naturally, perhaps this encounter with Jesus made it possible with this young man. While we don’t know for sure, I would like to hope this encounter with Jesus struck a cord with this man that he could not shake. Perhaps this encounter is a turning point in this man’s life where he saw the world differently. Perhaps, this young man started helping others who he didn’t even consider helping before. Or maybe he was convicted by Jesus’ words to give up all his wealth and give it away to the poor. At any rate, we don’t have the rest of his story recorded in the bible. What we do have recorded is Jesus’ words that humanly speaking it is impossible to change a rich person’s mind about giving up their wealth and security for the sake of others. When the disciples asked if it was possible at all, for people like this rich young man, Jesus said with God all things are possible. I like to think this challenged the young man and his life was changed by God that day.

Grace in the world

What about our own story we started with today? Could a rich young person be convinced to use their wealth to help the poor? I would like to answer the question with a resounding yes. Getting back to my previous statement about us needing a simplified but concise summary of what God expects of us, I want to answer it with modifying the model we left with as acknowledging it as flawed. What about this model? Confess Jesus as Lord. Believe in your heart Jesus was raised from the dead. Follow the ten commandments. Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself.

We acknowledged in our story earlier that we were getting closer but something was still missing when we considered our passage for today. Jesus was challenging the young man to love his neighbor as much as he loved himself which meant he could not hold his wealth while there were so many neighbors he could help. Jesus challenges to love not just ourselves but all of our neighbors as ourselves. I would like to wrap up this sermon with a story about a Christian artist named Rich Mullins. If you are familiar with his life story then you probably already know what I am about to talk about but if not, then you will learn about someone who did exactly what Jesus taught here.

(Story of Rich Mulliins)

Rich Mullins was born and raised on a tree farm in Indiana. He rose to fame and fortune in Christian Contemporary music however, he gave it all away. Determined to follow Jesus and not let wealth or fame taint him, he gave it away and live a general laborer’s wages despite earning a lot of money from his music career. Could you imagine any musician who finally made it and were successful and wealthy turning around and giving the wealth away? After years of struggling to make it, only to turn around and give it up? While I am not going to share his full story, I believe his story has been put into a movie form and is named “Ragamuffin”. He had his struggles but he is proof, God’s grace can keep anyone on the right track when it comes to fame and wealth.

I pulled a quick quote from Wikipedia:

“The profits from his tours and the sale of each album were entrusted to his church, which divided it up, paid Mullins the average salary for a laborer in the U.S. for that year, and gave the rest to charity.[28] Mullins was also a major supporter of Compassion International[29] and Compassion USA.[30]

His philosophy can be understood by a quote he gave at a concert shortly before his death. He said,

‘Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you've done it to me. And this is what I've come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they're just wrong. They're not bad, they're just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken-hearted.[9][31]’”