Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost (B) – Mark 10:17-31
When I was visiting my mother in August, I took one last look around for things that belonged to me, things that I wanted to keep. It is, after all, about time I fully move out of her house; at age 35, I don’t need to still have things there to go back to. It is her home, but it is no longer mine. My home is here. So, last look around. I had done a pretty good job of cleaning things out in previous visits; after poking into every corner I could find, there was just one large box full of items that belonged to me. Into my car it went. And, into my car it stayed, until just yesterday, when I finally decided it was time to go through it.
Among other things, inside was a small shoebox full of keepsake items wrapped in newspaper. I thought I’d share them with you. A porcelain sea lion. A glass coke bottle, with a little ball bearing trapped inside it. A small, wooden sheep. A plastic spork with the likeness of a dog on it. A mug in the shape of Star Trek’s Commander Spock. Some candles that, if I remember correctly, I purchased during the semester I went to school in Vienna, and which traveled back in my suitcase. An elephant that looks to be decoupage.
I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. I have NO IDEA what the significance of most of these items is. None whatsoever. This coke bottle is the most enigmatic of the items to me. Not only do I have no recollection whatsoever where it came from or why I have it, I can’t guess why the little metal ball is inside, either. How did it get in there? With the cap pushed back on? Was it a fraternity thing in college? Or from when I was in theater, or band, in high school? What was its significance? Not a clue.
What I do know about these objects is that ten years ago, when I was getting ready to go off to seminary in Chicago, I weeded through my collection of things. Not particularly well, mind you, and I don’t think I made great choices, because once in a while I go looking for something I really want, and realize I threw it away in that purge. Among other things were books. I gave away thirteen banker’s boxes full of books! I never give away books! But I clearly did weed through my collection at that time, and divested myself of a lot of things. And this little shoebox full of items was created about that time. I took the time to select each one of these items as valuable and important to me, attached to meaningful memories that I wanted to keep. I collected them together into one set only because they all date, I think, from before the year 2000. I carefully wrapped them in newspaper to protect them from breakage. And I put them together in this box, and put it on a top shelf in the basement, where I knew it would be safe. So safe, in fact, that I forgot it was there and lost the memories that were attached.
I’m at a little bit of a loss for what to do with these objects now. They don’t have any meaning to me anymore, so I could just throw them away. {Lift up trash can to put in, but…} I probably SHOULD just throw them away. Except that I can’t. I can’t do it. These things connect me to a time in my life—admittedly I can’t quite remember why—but they connect me nonetheless to a time in my life that seems, in so many other ways, very distant. I remember when my best friend in college, Keith, met his girlfriend, Jen. I remember it like it was just yesterday. But I saw on Facebook that Friday was their daughter’s seventh birthday. How can they possibly have a seven-year old girl now? When did that happen? My life has moved on, and I’ve lost all connection to these people. How can I just throw away my last remaining link to that era? It’s too hard. These things that mean so little still mean too much to me.
The man in today’s Gospel reading is a genuinely faithful person. He does everything he can to follow God’s law. When Jesus speaks to him of following the commandments, he affirms that he does. He comes to Jesus as an act of faith. “Good teacher,” he calls him, when Jesus knows that no one but God is good. Is this a hint that the man knows he is the Messiah? In any case, he trusts that Jesus has with him the key to eternal life, and he’s come seeking to be a part of that promise.
And Jesus looks at him, and loves him, and hands him that key. “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.” And the man is shocked, and walks away grieving, for he has many possessions.
It’s funny, you can tell in the eagerness of this man’s inquiry, kneeling before Jesus and asking a rather audacious question, that he’s excited and eager to do anything that Jesus asks of him. He expects that, whatever Jesus asks, he’s going to go and do immediately. And then Jesus asks the one thing—THE ONE THING!—that is too hard. The man loves his possessions, cares about them too much, is too proud of what he has done to get them, or too attached to the meanings they have for him, and he can’t, he just can’t get rid of them, can he?
I think the answer is, “no.” He walks away, grieving, because as important as fulfilling God’s law and sharing in God’s promises are to him, his possessions are even more important. He decides that he can’t, or better, won’t follow Jesus’ instructions, and knows that he’s giving up eternal life in the deal. That’s what I read in this story, but one commentator wisely points out that we don’t actually know whether the man followed Jesus’ instruction. It is entirely possible that he walks away grieving the loss of his many possessions that he’s about to give away. That he’s going to follow Jesus’ command, but it breaks his heart. That it is so difficult for the rich to inherit the Kingdom of God, and so this man is about to do a very, very difficult thing.
That’s what Christian living is all about. Our instincts, our society, our world all teach us a series of values that are shaped around individualism, independence, freedom to love ourselves, to be selfish, to be self-driven, to acquire what is best for ourselves, to have the kind of life we want, to love ourselves first. My first priority is myself. We say things like, “God helps those who help themselves,” a sentiment you won’t, by the way, find in the Bible anywhere. Even our religion is self-serving: We’re like the rich man; we want to know what it takes to gain eternal life for ourselves. And Jesus has an answer for us, but it’s one we won’t like. The answer is, stop thinking about yourself! Stop imposing YOUR values on other people. Stop using your gifts for only YOUR own benefit. Stop acquiring things for YOUR own self. God will take care of you. Your job is to love not yourself, but love God and love others.
And that is a very, very difficult thing to do. To trust someone else to take care of us. To stop worrying about how we’re going to pay all our bills and supply all our own needs. To allow God to be God and let him worry about our worries. To let go of our attachments to places and possessions and memories and even values and religion and all those good things that we turn into self-serving idols. To let Jesus transform them and transform us into something new, something interdependent and communal and free to love other people and share interests and help others acquire simple dignity and justice and peace. Jesus frees us in ways we can’t even imagine! But first, he has to free us of the things that are holding us back. And that can be difficult, and that can be painful, and that can even be impossible.
Impossible for us, anyway. Not impossible for God. Nothing is impossible for God. Not even cutting through our selfish, intractable attachments. The truth is, we don’t know what happened to the rich man in today’s Gospel story. But we can be assured that whatever he went and did, God did not give up on him when he walked away. That God started to cut through his attachment to his possessions that day. That he was forced to choose between his faith and his stuff, and then forced to examine that choice. That somehow his life started down a different path, that day when he met Jesus. Because that’s what happens to us whenever we encounter Jesus. We get derailed, and set off in a new direction, and God works his way into our lives in new and exciting ways.
One of the worst days of my life came in December of 2001. I realized, or rather was told, that I wouldn’t be coming back to college the following semester. I had failed most of my classes that fall, and it was a waste of money to continue doing what I was doing. I had failed out of college. The shame I feel about that! And the loss! I wouldn’t be going back to my friends, to the place that I now called my home, to the life I’d built there, as miserable as it was. My life, in effect, fell apart. Granted, it was my fault. But I felt like I’d lost everything.
A month later, God took me in a new direction. Within a few years I had a career and a college degree from somewhere else. And soon I was off to seminary, which was the best experience of my life. It changed me forever, and in ways that I love and for which am so grateful. And it got me here. Thankfully, amazingly, here. In this place I now call home, with people I love, doing work that I think really matters.
I don’t have a lot of connections to that old life. To be honest, it’s just this old shoebox full of stuff I can’t remember the meaning of. But they’re important to me. I don’t want to let go of where I was. As messed up as my life was in those days, it still has meaning to me. But I have to admit, it’s still holding me back. I may have moved on with my life, but there’s a part of me that still listens to those old feelings of shame and disappointment in myself when I dropped out. It whispers, you weren’t good enough to succeed at college on your first go, and you’re probably not good enough now. It holds me back when God wants me to flourish. And the only connection I still have to it is in this old shoebox full of memories that I cherish…
Pause. Throw shoebox into trash can.