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The Greatest Possession
Pentecost 19B
October 10, 2009
Mark 10:17-31
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! If you have heard me preach at all, you have no doubt heard me preach about discipleship. We are all called to discipleship. What we may not realize, however, is that there is a cost to discipleship. And we are just not accustomed to thinking that way. We are saved by grace through faith, you say, and God freely gives that grace. It is unearned, undeserved, unmerited – we have heard you say it many times! You are right! You have heard me say many times that we are saved by grace through faith, freely given by God. No doubt you have also heard me say that it is through grace through faith that our call to discipleship comes to us. We are not called to discipleship before we believe, but after. We are not called to discipleship to earn our faith, or to keep our faith through our discipleship, or by works that we do as a result of our faith. Well then, the cost must be that illustrated by our Gospel this evening. The cost is illustrated by our Gospel, but not necessarily in the way you might be expecting. Let us set the scene – a man kneels before Jesus asking him “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” First thing we notice is that the man knelt, the second is that he calls Jesus “good.” Both these are indicative that the man, perhaps like Nicodemus, knew that Jesus was not just any man. The Jewish people would kneel to God, but not to one another, nor did they call anyone “good,” which was a term customarily used to characterize only God. Of course, we all immediately pick up on the question – “what must I do…” With the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight, we know there is nothing we can do, much less “must do,” to inherit eternal life. Jesus itemizes some of the commandments – not a complete list, there are several missing, and one added, but essentially you shall not murder or commit adultery, you shall not steal or bear false witness, honor your father and mother and you shall not defraud. The man answers that he has kept these since his youth. Jesus looks at the man, loving him. No doubt he looks at us the same way, loves us the same way. And he tells the man “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.” The man is “shocked,” and leaves for he has much. Of course we know that the man has broken the first commandment, “you shall have no other gods before me.” And that is a key consideration, one that applies to all who put something else ahead of God – possessions, money, position in life, whatever it happens to be. It applied to the man back then, it applies to us as well. Let us think of it this way… if God, our God, is first and foremost in our lives, then all else is secondary. If we love God above all, then we love others above all, above all possessions, money, above our position in life, above everything else. And these things will have no power over us, no claim on us. I wonder if the man was shocked, hurt by what Jesus said, I wonder if the man had fooled himself, or if he thought he might fool Jesus. I suspect the former because if he thought Jesus was more than just a man then he probably would have known that Jesus would know his heart, his sincerity. I wonder if we would be shocked, hurt, by what Jesus might tell us, Jesus who looks into our hearts, knowing whether we are fooling ourselves, fooling others. The truth of the matter is that the call to discipleship, the call to “follow me,” replaces all other obligations, all other considerations. The cost of discipleship, in human or earthly terms might be quite high. Or is it. You already have the greatest possession, the one beside which all other possessions, all money, any position in life, pale in comparison. And the thing is, we are not asked by Jesus to give up other possessions, or anything else. We are asked to give some of it back to God, that it might be used to further the kingdom, to care for brothers and sisters who are not as well off as we ourselves are, but we are not told to sell everything we have and give it to the poor. No, because in this story, Jesus simply tells us to keep everything in the proper perspective, Jesus has already paid the highest price, he has already given us the greatest possession – we receive it in the age to come – eternal life. Thanks be to God! AMEN. Rev. Bruce Hannem, Associate Pastor
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, Minnesota |
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