When We Lack Love, We Lack Life

A sermon on Mark 10:17-31

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Image by Nawal Escape from Pixabay].

The topic for next Wednesday’s Bible study on skills for scriptural study is going to be looking at the various literary genres in the Bible.

So, I suppose, I have literary analysis on my mind, and it inspired me with a little activity to start out my sermon today: I want you all to help me to design a character.

Specifically, I want us to identify the qualities of a character who would be likely to reject Jesus’s invitation to follow him. 

Let’s start with the general attitude toward discipleship:

Would you say – for a character who is going to say “no” to Jesus – this should be A) a character who values learning and following a teacher, or B) someone who tends to be more independent and suspicious of authority?

OK, next. Let’s talk about their moral code:

Would this person be A) deeply committed to keeping God’s law, or B) more likely someone who has a flexible relationship with morality, you know being too moral can be kind of inconvenient at times. Which sounds more in character?

This one might be a bit harder: what about their attitude to religion?

Are they bought into the whole God is real, we should seek to understand and follow God’s plan (that’s option A), or B) meh. What is truth?... or at least they’re pretty cynical about organized religion having anything to teach us about God?

Alright. Last question: what kind of emotional response does this character inspire?

Is this A) someone who is going to inspire warmth, and affection, and the desire to see them succeed? Or, B) Are we going to assume that the kind of person who will turn their back on an open-armed welcome from Jesus, is not going to be the most sympathetic of characters?

We have some expectations, right?

About the kind of person who could stand in front of Jesus…

this miracle of God-with-us,

whom crowds travel miles and hours into the wilderness to hear,

whom the sick and struggling reach out to just touch the fringe of his robe to be healed,

whom numerous people have just dropped their professions, and their families, and their entire lives to follow…

A person who can stand in front of Jesus, hear Jesus say to them, “you. I want you follow me…”

And say, “No… I’m good. I think I’ll stick with what I already have.”

It’s not that we cannot imagine anyone saying no to Jesus. (Clearly that happened.) We just expect them to be someone who is predisposed to reject the invitation…

Because they are independent, or rebellious, or irreligious, or cynical…

And we certainly don’t expect them to engender reactions of compassion and love.

But, as it happens, our gospel story today, as I learned from the SALT commentary this week, is “the only (instance) in which Jesus explicitly calls someone to follow him and gets turned down.”[1]

And when we look at the character of the man who says “no” to Jesus, he’s just not what we expect.

He’s not independent and unwilling to be taught!

Far from it, he approaches Jesus, addressing him as “Good Teacher,” asking for instruction, even kneeling at his feet in a position of supplication and need.

And moral ambivalence is not the barrier either.

Jesus rattles off six of the ten commandments, and the man doesn’t blink. “I have kept all these since my youth,” he says, and Jesus apparently accepts this as true.

Which means he seems to have just the RIGHT amount of religious devotion.

Enough to be committed to keeping God’s law, but not so much that he is invested in the pharisaical system and sees Jesus as a threat. He clearly wants what Jesus has to offer.

And then there’s the detail that breaks my heart a little bit:

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”

Of course, Jesus loves everyone. But this line feels intentional. We can feel the tug on Jesus’s heart when he sees this man, kneeling at his feet, urgently pleading with Jesus for answers because he knows he is missing something.

In fact… on most days, this man is what I aspire to be!

Open, and eager, and humble, and faithful.

Which means that he is not a character whom I can easily dismiss. He’s not a foil, written into the narrative as a cautionary tale.

He’s more complicated than that. More relatable.

He could be me.

He could be any of us.

I think that is Jesus’s point in his hyperbolic parable on camels passing through the eye of a needle.

He’s telling his followers to reject the easy, dismissive interpretation that writes off the man’s rejection of Jesus’s invitation to discipleship as just his personal character flaw.

His character is actually pretty exceptional.

He’s not the stereotype of moral depravity or even of self-righteous, false religiosity.

He is sincere, and faithful, and obedient, and moral and he WANTS Jesus to teach him.

And that’s not enough.

That’s why the disciples ask, “then who can be saved?”

Because they are suddenly worried they don’t fall into that category.

But, of course, that is not Jesus’s agenda. He doesn’t want to make his followers anxious, or motivate them to try to somehow do more to earn God’s favor, because the whole point is that it doesn’t work that way.

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.”

Which is… reassuring.

It’s good to know the pressure is off our shoulders. No matter how we stack-up in a character comparison with the man in the story, that’s not what determines our fate.

But… it’s a little unsatisfying, right? It’s good to know that God can handle it, but we maybe want to know… how?

Because the man still walked away… shocked and grieving. That doesn’t sound like a happily ever after.

And Jesus says everything is possible with God, but that’s not quite the same thing as saying God will cram the camel through the eye of the needle.

So, if there’s really not much to differentiate us from the man who walks away from Jesus’s invitation… what lesson does this story have for us?

To find that lesson, I think we need to ask not what the man’s character is, but rather what he “lacks.”

Jesus, of course, tells the man that there is one thing he lacks, but before we get to the instruction that follows this assessment, we already have two indications of what this “lack” is.

The first comes in his question to Jesus: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

The man comes to Jesus because he knows he’s missing something. He has obedience, and faithfulness, and religion, and (of course) wealth, but he nevertheless feels a lack, an emptiness in his life that he doesn’t know how to fill on his own.

And he diagnoses that emptiness as a lack of life.

Our familiarity with Christianese might condition us to hear “eternal life” as a reference to life after death, but the Greek word for “eternal” isn’t just about continuing forever in the afterlife.

It’s about life without beginning as well as without end. Life that starts NOW.[2] 

There is a lack of life in the man’s life NOW.

And when we look at the exchange between the man and Jesus about the man’s life-long adherence to the commandments, the substance of that lack is glaringly obvious: all of the commandments about relationship with God are missing.

Scholars frequently group the Ten Commandments into two lists, which (not coincidentally) line up with Jesus’s summary of the two greatest commandments: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The man has kept the letter of law in regard to not injuring his neighbor, but that’s all about what he has done, and his question is about what he can acquire. He has forgotten to turn toward God:

To remember that God is the one who saves us; to have no other gods; to honor God’s name; and to treat God’s day as holy.

Put together, these first four commandments instruct us into right relationship with God, a relationship that rejects any idol that would take God’s place (whether actual idols, of idols of our own self-sufficiency, authority, or time).

The man lacks that relationship, he has replaced it with the idol of his wealth, in which he thinks he has security, and because of that, when asked to sacrifice his idol for the sake of his neighbors, that neighbor-love fails as well.

To put it more simply: The man lacks life because he lacks love.

The rich man is not the stereotypical villain (of modern literature or of the gospels). He has a lot of goodness going for him.

And that’s why his story is relevant for us, because he doesn’t look that different from the average church person trying to do faith right.

But that doesn’t mean that we need to go away shocked and grieving as he did.

If we want the abundance of eternal life that changes us NOW and not just in eternity, it is here for us.  

Jesus’s promise that for God all things are possible CAN be good news for us.

Because it is that faith, that dependence, that recognition that fullness of life starts with putting God’s wholeness, and sufficiency, and grace at the center, so that life and love flow out from God in our lives, and not from anything we do…

When we embrace that for us, fullness of life is impossible, but for God all things are possible.

That is when we experience eternal life, and that life flows out of us in love.

Thanks be to God.

[1] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/twenty-first-week-after-pentecost-lectionary-commentary

[2] https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g166/kjv/tr/0-1/v.