In ______We Trust

Mark 10:17-22

As we read this story, the first question is “What is it really about?” The man before Christ asks, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” Is he really asking about how to get to heaven? 

In my experience, folks who are most worried about getting into heaven are actually more worried about who and what they are right now. They fear that they will be on the outs when death arrives. They fear that God does not love them at the moment. They fear that they have lived in such a way as to make that possibility remote--they feel the impending judgment of God heavily upon them.

It is amazing how strong that inner voice of judgment can be. We are our own worst critics, far harsher with ourselves than with anyone we meet. We carry guilt and regret with us everywhere we go. We can easily recall the exact words we spoke that we wish had never flown from our mouths no matter how long ago we actually said them. We are quick to damn ourselves. 

The further observation is that the person who is so arrogantly boastful about themselves, becoming obnoxious in self-righteousness or denunciation of others, is often the person who feels completely insecure in their own worth--they HAVE to denounce everybody else because they feel lower than dirt--their only hope is in denigrating everyone else. 

So, the man in the story asks about eternal life, but the unspoken question is “Am I okay?” By using the terminology of eternal life, he is really asking, “Am I all right with God?” 

After a slightly weird statement about goodness (a topic for another essay), Christ answers the man with a condensation of the final six dictums of the Ten Commandments--the justice codes; i.e., how to love one’s neighbor as oneself. If you want to be right with God, be right with other people. The justice commandments lay down an outline of what it means to love another person as oneself. You don’t murder them--you nourish them, you care for them, you bring them to life. You don’t steal from them--you give to them freely what they need. You don’t commit adultery--you remain faithful and true to your beloved; you do not seek to steal someone else’s beloved from them, thereby destroying the basis for community. You don’t lie, but speak honestly about yourself and others. You don’t cheat someone to get all you can, you deal fairly in transactions with openness and forthrightness. You honor your parents, remembering that love begets love, that gratitude is best expressed by caring for those who offered care, and that love empties itself, so it should met with self-emptying. In other words, what God seeks from us is the acceptance of God’s love by embodying that same love in our lives. If you want to be a denizen of the Kingdom of God, you will act in accord with the Ruler. 

The man then answers, “I have always done these things.” For reasons which will be clearer in a moment, Mark wants us to take the man’s statement at face value, not as an arrogation of his merit. What he is saying, in effect, is that he has always tried to live a life rooted in faith. In the original context, the man is most likely a Jew speaking to a rabbi he sees as particularly attuned to holiness. He is telling the rabbi that he does practice the faith, was reared to do so, and intends to keep doing so. 

Mark alone of the three evangelists who share this story (Matthew and Luke borrowing it from him) adds the next thought--”Jesus loved him.” To me, this single thought says that Christ sees the veracity in the man’s search--he really does want to be right with God; i.e., he wants to find real and actual security in God; he wants to live a life of real and actual faith. His practice has come up empty. For us, he is the person who prays regularly, spends time with scripture regularly, attends church, makes his pledge, participates in the mission of the church, seeks to live by love, etc., but who still finds it lacking--it is just so much doing. The same haunts and doubts roil up in him. He cannot find true liberation despite believing as best he can.

Christ then issues a challenge--”One thing is missing--go, sell all you have and give it to the poor--this will please God.” This statement is not a radical denunciation of personal wealth, but rather is an invitation to deeply consider in whom (or in WHAT) the man entrusts his existence. When the rubber hits the road, what does the man trust to keep him rolling? 

Here, the story takes a tragic turn--the man walks away.

Jesus diagnoses a problem that is rampant in human nature. We trust that which is tangible. Materialism rules our decision making, choices, and values. We stake our lives on that which we define as real; and we define “real” as something felt, seen, heard, smelled, or tasted. So, we trust the money in the bank because we have tangible evidence it works--we go to the store, lay down our money, and get food to eat; we go to the doctor, lay down our money, and find cures; we go to the gas station, lay down our money, and get the gas we need to move; and on it goes, completely missing the abject irony that we label our currency with “In God, we trust.” But it is not just money we stake our lives to--there are any number of tangibles that we secure our lives upon. For instance, we will risk friendship with those who tangibly demonstrate that they love us. Or, we will choose a restaurant based on evidence given by a person whom we know will tell the truth about the place. Or, we will choose a doctor based on numbers--this doctor has a huge survivor rate with cancer patients. 

Faith in God is based on intangibles. 

For Christians, it is based on a story found in a book called the Bible. That book is judged true by centuries of testimony of the community that uses it and who compiled it. The skeptics are quick to point out that all of this is suspect--the book could just as easily be completely made up; the story it tells cannot be verified by any outside historians; there is no record of Jesus of Nazareth beyond a few vague references--the gospels are not biographies, but interpretations of a life that may or may not have been lived. The community itself is suspect because fairly early (i.e., Emperor Constantine) it became a state religion--always reason to doubt; and then grew into a monolithic institution that like all institutions loses sight of its original intent, ground of being, and purpose, becoming instead encumbered with the weight of self-preservation. Empirically, there is no reason to take any of it seriously. Yet, we believe. As Hebrews preaches, “Faith is hope in things unseen.”

What Christ offers the man in the story is the chance to liberate himself from his stuff and find God who is the source of all being. But to find God, the man will have to leap into the unknown, immaterial, and trust with all that he has that God will be there when he jumps. 

That is liberating because the more stuff we have, the more likely we are to be owned by what we have. Why else be there alarm systems? Why else do we pay someone to rent an empty room to store all the stuff we can’t fit in our house--i.e., the “storage company”? Christ invites us to consider our ownership. Can any of it save you from death, both literal death and figurative death? Can any of it love you with nourishment for your soul? Does it alleviate fear or increase it? Does it bring happiness in and of itself? The more we trust in tangibles, the more we fear because now everyone else is a threat because they might take our stuff, our position, or our life. The less happy we are because we are more afraid. A person living in a 20 room house will die just like the guy in a one room shack. The CEO will die just like the janitor pushing a broom. Christ invites us to be free to live with and for God whom we cannot see (the Apostle John said bluntly, “No one has ever seen God”). 

If the man will let go of his stuff, he will find his life. He will find there is another way to live, one in which he uses his stuff for the higher end of love. He finds to what good purpose we might use what we have and who we are, fulfilling the intent with which we were created in the first place. God made us to love. That is all there in the codes by which to live. As we live so, we suddenly find the strange economics of faith--the more one gives; the more one gains; the more self-emptying we become, the more full we are. 

It begins by staking one’s life on God. For example, we can look at our utter frailty--I can be with my dad as he deals with Parkinsons--knowing that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well--even if we die--because God is love, and in love, God gave us resurrection. That is the story told in Christ. It can’t be proved, it can only be lived.

So who do we trust?