“The Final Answer”

Mark 10: 17-27 (NRSV)

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
Have you ever seen a toad on a toadstool?
How can there be self-help "groups"?
How do you get off a nonstop flight?
How do you write zero in Roman numerals?
If athletes get athlete's foot, do astronauts get mistletoe?
If peanut butter cookies are made from peanut butter, then what are Girl Scout  

         cookies made out of?
If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags?
If swimming is good for your shape, then why do the whales look the way they do?
If you jog backwards, will you gain weight?
Why do they call it 'chili' if it's hot?
Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game," when we are already there?

Lastly, isn't Disney World a people trap operated by a mouse?

Have you ever asked a question you knew you didn’t want to hear the answer to? We usually follow-up the answer with the phrase: “I was afraid that was what you were going to say” or some such comment.

Life is full of questions we really don’t want answers for because if we knew the answer it would have some kind of hold on us. The scripture passage we’ll be reading today is one such question and answer.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.””

He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”

Jesus looking at him, loved him and said, “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.” 

When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.  Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 

And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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.” 

They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

The Greek word used for question here is syzēteō (sü-zā-te'-ō) and means to suggest the start of a discussion, a dispute, or exchange of ideas. It can be a friendly inquiry or a formal challenge.

This question to Jesus comes from someone who can be truly called a seeker; but what he is seeking is a way to inherit (in Greek klēronomeōn (klā-ro-no-me'-ō))

eternal life. The word he uses means to receive an allotted portion as one receives an inheritance as one's own or as a possession.

He is telling Jesus that God owes him eternal life for what he has done by his behavior.

Jesus’ reply talks about entering eternal life. The Greek word He uses, eiserchomai  (ās-e'r-kho-mī) means entrance into a condition of spiritual existence. We won’t inherit eternal life – we will be granted access to it.

Please don’t think Jesus’ was talking about “cash, riches, or wealth” in this passage. We have nothing that will buy a ticket to eternity.

Jesus is interested in you and your “Free-Will” commitment to Him. He wants you to understand that the gate to eternity only runs through His loving grace,

The problem with this young man seems to be his attitude towards the 'many possessions' -- that they were symbols of having been blessed by God, and thus he had earned the right to inherit a place in Heaven.

People that encounter Jesus time and time again in the Gospels want to insist that God's love is something that must be earned. Take, for example, today's lesson from Mark's Gospel, which tells the well known story of a man who seeks out Jesus and asks him the question, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

This story of Jesus' encounter with the man is found in three out of the four gospels, and each gospel writer reports the story in much the same way.

An unnamed person approaches Jesus and asks him what he needs to do to live forever. How does he go about earning God's love or in this case salvation for his soul?

After giving the person a brief review lesson on the Ten Commandments-do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother-the man tells Jesus that he has observed all these since his youth. He has, as I mentioned before, done all that he can to earn God's love.

Jesus tells him that he lacks only one thing. Go, sell what you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

The narrator tells us that when the man heard this he grew sad, and he went away because he had lots of possessions.

Now although the story appears to be the same in all three gospels, there is a critical difference between Mark's version and the accounts in Matthew and Luke. And it hinges on this concept of our Lord's love for this individual.

And Jesus looking at him, loved him-loved him-and said to him, you lack one thing, go sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.

As it says in Scripture, we did not choose God but God chose each of us. And it is the very essence of God's nature that he loves his creation and he loves all of us.

Jesus loved this unnamed and unknown man, even if our Lord told him things about himself that he did not want to hear.

The key to our story is that each individual has to decide whether to accept God's invitation, and this helps get me to my final point, and it is an aspect of the story that Matthew and Luke missed.

Our Gospel tells us the man who came to Jesus decided to reject the love that he had been offered. He was not ready to make the kind of changes that were necessary to follow our Lord and he turned away from God's love, sad and depressed.

However, if this man had been receptive to God's love, this divine love would have left no part of his life untouched or unchanged. And I suspect that is what ultimately frightened him away.

George MacDonald, a 19th-century preacher, put it this way when he wrote: "All that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God, our God is a consuming fire."

His point is that once we make the decision to leave behind what we think we love and follow Christ, that is when God begins to go to work on our lives.

For MacDonald, it is the essence of God's nature that it will destroy all that is not beautiful and refashion our lives to be ones of true holiness.

It is, as I said before, a gift freely given, but the man in our story wasn't ready to have this kind of love and ultimately resurrect his life. He was still, like so many of us today, trapped in a world of love that involved obligation and commercial transactions.

"What must we do to inherit eternal life? We must let go of all that we have and all that we do that gets in the way of seeing that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves."

Amen.

“THE PERFECTION OF GOD”

Mark 10: 2-16 (NRSV)

It’s better to marry than to stay single, a survey of 12,000 men aged 15-44, said. That was the finding of a recent study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sixty-six percent of men agreed with the statement, “It is better to get married than go through life single,” compared with only 51 percent of women.

In addition in the same study 76 percent of men and 72 percent of women in a similar study agreed that “it is more important for a man to spend a lot of time with his family than be successful at his career.”

90 percent of the married men in the survey said they would marry the same woman if given a chance to do it again.

The study involved 12,000 men and women, ages 15-44.

A man who sold Christmas trees, noticed a couple hunting a Christmas tree. Both wore clothes from the bottom of the bin of the Salvation Army store.

After bypassing trees that were too expensive, they found a Scotch pine that was OK on one side but pretty bare on the other. Then they picked up another tree that was not much better — full on one side, scraggly on the other. She whispered something, and he asked if $3 would be OK. The man figured both trees wouldn’t sell, so he agreed.

A few days later he was walking down the street and saw a beautiful tree in a neighborhood window.  It was thick and well rounded. He knocked on their door, and they told him how they had pushed the trees together where the branches were thin and tied the trunks together. The branches overlapped and formed a tree so thick you couldn’t see the wire. He described it as “a tiny forest of its own.”

“So that’s the secret,” he said. “You take two trees that aren’t perfect, have flaws, might even be homely, but that maybe nobody else would want. If you put them together just right, you can come up with something really beautiful.” Marriage!

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People where bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

What each of us needs to take away from these verses is not the negative, but rather the affirmative: God created this world in simple perfection; everything has a purpose, place, and natural order to it. Marriage was a gift given to humanity from an extremely loving God to balance men and women out.

Marriage is the ideal and an example of covenant that God would like to make with each of us. Not only would He like us to be loyal and committed to marriage with each other He would have us relate to Him in the same way.

This was and is what His relationship to Israel was all about. He would be their God and they would be His people, His children. Yet Jewish history is full of infidelity and adultery as the Jews embrace the gods of the peoples they find around themselves as a country. It’s why God seems harsh in the OT – He wants Israel pure in relationship.

It’s why Jesus called the church “the Bride of Christ.” Marriage is God ordained.

The perfection of God is often marred because, as Jesus puts it in verse 5, “the hardness of human hearts.” God, through Moses, allowed the Jews to divorce, not because God desires it, but because humanity could not live without it.

The Book of Ezra’s central theme surrounds giving second chances to people who have disobeyed God and screwed up their marriages and covenant with Him. Through offering repentance and sincere changes of heart God offers second chances even in the area of marriage. Because of this we know there is hope for people who divorce or who are divorced. It is not an unforgiveable sin.

But not for those who flaunt it!

That’s what we need to understand: God gives us a perfect goal yet knows we’ll never achieve it, so He makes allowances for that. Divorce is not an unpardonable sin but is still pretty serious. Some of the disciples would deal with the question of divorce in their writings. We have these guidelines as well. But nowhere is it a death sentence.

Either way, marriage is not to be taken lightly or ended easily. I often wonder which human sin causes Jesus the most grief: Divorce or abortion?

The Apostle Paul, who was probably the most difficult Christian of all time to get along with, said this about marriage to the Corinthians: If you have passion then get married, but you don’t have to be married to please God.

I think most marriages and relationships end because of immaturity, lack of personal responsibility, and hardness of heart. These are the human traits that drive our culture. (How  do you explain Charlie Sheen, Linsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton?)

Our culture is obsessed on avoiding responsibility and thus distressing our lives: think about it. When stress at work gets to be too much, many executives are finding new ways to escape. Instead of retreating to the beach, to the mountains, or to a golf outing, many adults are, well, acting like kids.

At California’s Camp Get Away, an adult can participate in sing-alongs, water balloon fights, kickball, eat s’mores around the campfire, and sneak out of the cabin at night to toilet paper the cars and cabins of other campers.

Some adults opt for the increasingly popular Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy Camps or go to Baseball camps to meet and play with celebrities and professional athletes.

A woman named Helen Oseen founded “The Ultimate Pajama Party,” a camp where older women can don their pajamas, pillow fight, and sit on the bed and share confidences late into the night. Oseen began the camp when she realized she worked a lot and didn’t save time for play in her life.

Christopher Noxon calls this trend “re-juv-e-nil-ing” in his book Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up. A father of three in Los Angeles, Noxon said, “In a world where pressure and problems pile on nonstop, more grown-ups are seeking a vacation from their adult side.”

 

It shows in our ethics, morals, divorce rate, and aborted children.

Contrast this with Jesus’ call for each of us to “receive the kingdom of God as a little child.”

The world’s answer versus Jesus’ answer. Which will we choose?

Unlike “re-juv-e-niling” Jesus nurtures us to grow into Christian disciples who accept responsibility and strive to meet God’s commands and perfect order.  

This is how  hearts are softened from the desires of the flesh and how we learn to overcome sinful natures that pull us away from God everyday. We learn the responsibilities of the Kingdom.

Amen.

 

 

“A CHRISTIAN’S SALARY”

Mark 9: 38-50 (NRSV)

This is the only joke I could find and share about salt: Mother: Haven't you finished filling the salt shaker yet? Son: Not yet. It's really hard to get the salt through all those little holes!

Today we’re going to talk about salt.

In the Hebrew Bible, thirty-five verses mention salt, one of which is the story of Lot's wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19: 26) as they were destroyed.

When the judge Abimelech destroyed the city of Shechem, he is said to have "sown salt on it," probably as a curse on anyone who would re-inhabit it (Judges 9: 45).  Salted ground grows no crops!

The Book of Job mentions salt as a condiment. "Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt, or is there any taste in the white of an egg?" (Job 6: 6)

In the Christian New Testament, six verses mention salt. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to his followers as the "salt of the earth." The apostle Paul also encouraged Christians to "let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4: 6). The Gospel of Mark has several references as well.

Chloride and sodium ions, the two major components of salt, are needed by all living creatures. Salt is involved in regulating the fluid balance of the body.

The sodium ion is also used for electrical signaling in the nervous system. Because of its importance to survival, salt has often been considered a valuable commodity during human history.

The word salary originates from Latin: “salarium” which referred to the money paid to the Roman Army's soldiers for the purchase of salt, or as currency.

The word “salad” literally means "salted," and comes from the ancient Roman practice of salting leafy vegetables. Let’s hear our Gospel Lesson: Mark 9: 38-50:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Matthew Henry said these verses are best summed up this way: "Without a Doubt, remorse of conscience and keen self-reflection are this never-dying worm. Surely it is beyond compare better to undergo all possible pain, hardship, and self-denial here, and to be happy for ever hereafter, than to enjoy all kinds of worldly pleasure for a season, and to be miserable forever." He suggests interpretation from an individual perspective.

I think Jesus went a little further than that! These verses are directed at community. I suggest a community perspective.

There are two keys to understanding this passage. Jesus begins this passage by talking about community.

The first key is related to the disciples’ reporting of finding others doing the work of Jesus. This passage has an interesting parallel recorded in the Book of Numbers, chapter 11, verses 26-29:

“However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but did not go out to the Tent. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. A young man ran and told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp."

Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses' aide since youth, spoke up and said, "Moses, my lord, stop them!" But Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!"

Jesus, just as Moses did, suggests tolerance for others who are doing God’s work someplace else or in the community around them. But Jesus also adds some conditions about community service in God’s Kingdom.

Listen closely church: Jesus tells His disciples to let those doing His work alone to receive their just reward but that those who are placing stumbling blocks in front of children and others must be stopped, must be cut off from fellowship and the nurture of the Kingdom. The reason: causing others to be cut off from God.

What did you just say preacher? Did you just say “Kick out the false teachers and those who do not hold to God’s word? Have no relationship with those who teach false doctrine such as gay marriage, ordaining homosexuals, forsaking the blessing of Israel, and upholding abortion?”

How do you get that preacher? Jesus’ punishments are designed to keep the “body of believers” pure at all cost.

By understanding that Jesus’ references to body parts being cut out in the text is actually a reference to the community and individuals in it who do not hold to the Christian community values and beliefs: Jesus is saying they must be cut off.

Self-mutilation was and continues to be forbidden in Judaism. Deuteronomy 14: 1, for example, says, “You are sons of the Lord your God, do not cut yourselves or make a bald spot on your head...” (HCSB)

If Jesus was speaking about self-mutilation to the disciples this teaching would have been very controversial, instead it is seemingly understood as a metaphor for those in the community (“the body”) of believers and not just the individual.

By using personal examples of body parts as relevant to the body of believers Jesus is driving home the idea of the damage that unbelievers and malefactors wreck on the mission and performance of the greater church body.  It blocks others from God.

Essentially Jesus is inviting religious communities to identify the self-constructed stumbling blocks that prevent success in serving God. In other words, we are to watch out for and prevent the subtle ways in which the larger church and the local church ends up sabotaging its own ministries.

The second key is exploring what the “never dying worm” means. It is translated from the Greek word “skōlēx,” and means having an unquenchable sense of guilt or remorse that does not go away. Jesus is saying that those who continue to sin without repentance and sincere change will forever suffer for the deeds of evil they have done.

A better translation of this passage shows us that Jesus actually repeats the phrase “Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched,” three times (verses 44, 46, and 48). I don’t know about you but if Jesus warns me 3 times about something I’m going to listen!

This passage is telling us the importance of repentance and the dangers of causing others to be drawn away from Jesus and God. The penalty is a never-ending state of unending agony of regret, suffering, and loneliness.

It becomes our responsibility to ensure our community of believers maintain a faithful walk in following Christ.

But we started out talking about Salt didn’t we?

Salt represents all those things Jesus said and taught that nurtures and uplifts us.

Thank God Jesus tells us that we will be given a “salary of salt” that will nurture and grow us into people who will inherit the Kingdom of God and know what is right.

Friends we believe that a great deal of good can be done by people who realize they are not perfect, that their motives may not be completely pure, that their faith is not yet fully formed, but who submit their desires to Jesus Christ and put him in charge of their inward lives, and remain faithful to His teachings.

Amen.