God's Last Words

“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.