Mark 10:17-31
October 15, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When the Fall season comes around, we tend to get in that mode of cleaning and decluttering our lives. Yesterday, a great team of people swept through the church with vacuum cleaners, dust clothes, sponges, paintbrushes, and a lot of elbow grease to declutter and spruce up the church.
Fall cleaning comes at the right time when we have bought those numerous souvenirs or more accurately described as “dust-collectors” from our summer vacation trips. They cover the tops of our coffee tables, kitchen counters, dining room tables, windowsills. It’s time to declutter! I hear that there’re a few people in our church who have hired themselves out to go into your home and ask the tough questions that you are afraid to ask yourself: “Do you really need this?” When our physical surroundings need decluttering, I wonder how much of our spiritual lives need decluttering too?
In our consumer-driven society, we are persuaded to believe that when we have many possessions, we can be happy. We think that the more money or wealth that we have, the happier we can be. While we are coming to church this morning, we see busses all lined up on Kearney and Stockton taking people to Reno. They believe that wealth will make them happier.
Over the years we have gotten used to women carrying Louis Vuitton purses and men donning designer suits as symbols of wealth. But now even your Christmas tree is able to say something about how rich you are. A group of tree growers in Oregon are marketing a “designer” tree, known as Oregon’s Noble Vintage. The trees generally sell $25 to $80 more than the typical tree you find in a Christmas tree lot. The trees, which are culled from the top 10 percent of the crop, are valued for their symmetrical shape, vibrant color, long-lasting needles and of course, comes with a designer label. When visitors come for a cup of good cheer over the holidays, they will be able to see the distinctive Oregon’s Noble Vintage tag still left on the tree. Owners of designer trees can show off their wealth even at Christmas time!
Rich Man
When we take all three Synoptic Gospels account of this story we read this morning, we see that in Luke, the man is a ruler (18:18), in Matthew, he is young (19:20) and in Mark, he is neither but just someone who runs up and kneels before Jesus as Jesus is setting out on a journey. The man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” After the man said that he has done everything that the commandments asked of him, he realized that he lacked one thing.
The disciples must have been nearby and heard Jesus’ conversation with the young rich man. Jesus then turned to his disciples and said, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples got confused by these words. Jesus then took the largest animal that they were familiar with and almost sarcastically said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were even more confused. They said, “Then who can be saved?” They had questions because according to Peter, the head disciple, they too have given up everything to follow Jesus—homes, family, and their original jobs. The disciples in a way decluttered their lives by giving up everything they knew that gave them security, prestige, status and perhaps even power to follow Jesus.
But the young rich man was not ready to do that. You can imagine Judas, the treasurer for the disciples getting upset with Jesus letting a potential recruit with wealth, prestige, and power get away. Indeed, what pastor today would drive away a man able to make a big pledge to the 2007 Proposed Budget? But that’s exactly what happened here!
Something was missing in this young man’s life. He had all the possessions he wanted. He didn’t need to declutter his house of summer vacation souvenirs; all he had to do was to build another house to put them in! But what he couldn’t seem to declutter was not his physical world but his spiritual life. He had a cluttered heart!
The world and the disciples see the young rich man as blessed by God, but Jesus smiles knowingly because he knows that God is not the center of the young rich man’s life. Jesus knows that the emptiness the young man seeks to fill can only be filled by God and by a relationship with God. Jesus knows that this young man will have to lose his sense of power and control—his sense of ownership of his own life—before he will seek a first commandment relationship with God. The only way this young rich man can fill the void in his life is to let go of all the ways he seems to be in power and control, rid himself of his worldly riches, and allow God to be the one true source of power in his life.
The young rich man asks, “What must I do?” He has always been able to control the world around him. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” implies that there is something that he can do all by himself to get what was missing in his life. He wants to buy eternal life. The world cannot offer eternal life. It is not for sale. It cannot be bought. It cannot be achieved. His cluttered heart is filled with his own sense of self-importance and control where there is no more room for God. Jesus knows the cluttered heart of this young rich man and points him to God.
Love God
When we are doing Fall cleaning, we first decide what would stay. For example, on this coffee table, we’ll have this stone lamp we bought in Mexico and everything else must go. We place first priority on this particular stone lamp to be the center of the attraction so that everything else needs to be put someplace else.
What was missing in the young rich man’s life is the priority that God is number one. God should be the center of attraction in this man’s life and not his wealth. Everything else should go; they are less important.
The man first called Jesus, “Good Teacher.” Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Jesus is telling the young man that the first and most basic commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me. The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
The young man is placing a value on Jesus. No doubt Jesus is a good teacher but Jesus knowing where this young man’s real loyalties are directs him to see that if there was anyone in the world that is good, it is God alone who is good.
Jesus is saying to this young man, “Yes, my son, you have kept all the human relationship commands to the letter. You have shown the world that you love your neighbor, according to the letter of the law; and yet you are dissatisfied. You think there is something missing from your life. You come seeking a fullness you have never known; and what you seek, my son, is the first commandment. You seek a relationship with your Creator. You seek to know God, but as long as your wealth allows you to seemingly control your world; you will not truly be able to receive all that God has to give. So you must let go, let go of all that is in the way of receiving God.”
Loving God first and only is another one of those hard sayings of Jesus. But before Jesus told the man that there was still one thing that he lacked in his faith, Jesus, looking at him said, he “loved him.” We have no idea what prompted Jesus to say that he “loved” the young man. But what we can discern for ourselves is that even in the hard sayings of Jesus when he commands us to give up the dearest things that we prize, that he loves us. This is God’s grace and mercy. God knows that just as it was not possible for this young man to give up his possessions and wealth, it is not easy for us to do so as well. But this does not mean that God doesn’t still love us! God does!
Keeping the commandment to love God first is about priorities. You shall have no other gods before me, or, in other words, God shall have all of you. A farmer, who had just retrieved a lost sheep was asked, “How do sheep wander away?” The farmer replied, “They just nibble themselves lost. They go from one tuft of grass to another, until at last they’ve lost their way.” Unless we consciously and continuously choose God, making God and our walk with God our first priority, then we are apt to nibble ourselves lost; and whatever we nibble is what we become.
We become like the gods we worship—our wealth, prestige, power, and control.
But can we really give our whole being to God? There is a seed within our humanity that wants to belong to something greater, that wants to be possessed by a higher power that wants to give of our whole selves, and have that giving cherished. But the only thing that we really have to give is to give of oneself. Should God really get all of each of us? What about our responsibilities for family, jobs, loved ones, friends, hobbies and passions? Aren’t they important?
But when we give up our lives in little nibbles, in little pieces here and there, and when we take a good look at all the pieces, none of the pieces seem to be worth mentioning in the same breath with God. If our life has divided our focus on God, we have no focus at all.
But when we put God first and he becomes the source of our energies for our causes and issues then all of the good and honorable passions such as our families, friends, loved ones will be taken care of. While these passions are not our ultimate truth, they are not our end. While these passions are all worthwhile, these are not our first calling; they are not an end in themselves. Our first calling is to let God have all that we are, and then, from the gifts of God, we may give to our families, friends, neighbors, and causes that we cherish.
Giving ourselves totally to God allows God to be the source of our love for friends, family, and neighbor. God is the source of our energy for our causes and passions. God is the source of our ability to love, to enjoy life, and to enjoy the world around us. With God is our source, all things are possible.
When we have cluttered hearts, we lose sight of the truth that the only priority that we have in life is to know God. Nothing or no one is good but God alone.
How Much is Enough
During this stewardship canvass season, we challenge you to ask yourself, “How much money do I really need? Is my life worthy of Christ’s calling? Thus, how much can I give away to the needy and the church? When we ask these questions of ourselves, what should arise every time is that beyond groceries and paying for rent or mortgage, we need to ask, “Is it necessary?” Such questions probably rarely occur to the young rich man. Such questions didn’t occur to us when we bought that stone lamp in Mexico!
The plight of the young rich man who could not let go of his wealth, reminds me of a story about a monkey. In order to capture the little creatures, the hunters placed a banana in a cage that had bars spaced so closely together that a monkey could just barely stick its hand through to reach the banana. When it tried to take the banana out of the cage there was not room enough to do so because of its fist clasping the banana. The monkey was trapped and could easily be caught. The monkey could easily have escaped before its captors arrived by simply letting go of the banana, but it would not do so.
Like the young man, we are both rich and we are good. He is spiritually ambitious as well as materially well off. He is what all of us aspire to be, and that is not good enough. The point of this story is that he lacked sufficient trust in Jesus to follow his heart. It was too cluttered with his own self-importance and possessions. Like the monkey, our fists are holding tight what we treasure; we are unwilling to let go of our wealth.
Jesus says, “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.”
If the young rich man was invited to just give to philanthropy, he probably would have generously to help the poor. But he was invited to discipleship, and it was that invitation to discipleship that he was afraid to accept. It would have been easier to give away his possessions. The ultimate difficulty was that he wasn’t ready to give himself away.
So he went away, sorrowful, with all his possessions and with nothing that he sought for or needed or wanted, because he knew that he had made the wrong decision, he had done the wrong thing, the dumb thing; it is not the road not taken, it is the wrong road altogether.
For us to take the right road, we need to focus on God and allow God to be the source of our energy and love. It is a conscious, continuous, and often difficult choice. In doing so, we get rid of the things that come between God and us.
We declutter the sins in which we participate by confessing to God We declutter the guilt that we have and allow ourselves to be forgiven. We declutter the ways we try to control our lives—the ways we try to control God. We declutter what we merely want in order to receive what we truly need. We declutter so that we may receive God. We declutter so that God may be our all in all. We get rid, let go, and declutter so that God will give us all that we need, in our joys and in our sorrows, knowing that God will give us our purpose and values.
Let us declutter our cluttered hearts and follow Jesus Christ!
Let us pray.
Lord, help us to love you with all of our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Help us to love you, not only with our lips, but also with our lives. Help us to move from feeling that we are yours to lives that demonstrate all that we are, and that all that we have is yours. Help us to declutter our hearts to know you as our Lord. Amen.