In a story we assume is about wealth, Jesus reveals our misconceptions about life, grace, and the human project.
God, Grace, and Hope
Proper 23B | Mark 10:17-31
The teacher collected his students and set out to do the work. It seems like a long time ago now, but it wasn’t that long ago. Not ages, a generation, but maybe a year. Not long.
And he healed people. By the thousands. It was incredible. All kinds of people. Sick kids, parents, grandparents, spouses, cousins.
Assorted maladies. Even people possessed by demons.
But then the people kept coming. Constantly. Every single day. The teacher was literally surrounded. He couldn’t move, eat, or leave. The crowds began to push and became an imminent danger.
So the teacher put space between himself and the crowd. He literally climbed into a boat. And he continued his ministry.
This is the first sign of what the teacher is up to. He didn’t come to heal individuals. He came to heal the world. And that is not done by only healing individuals. The people needed to hear and learn and grow.
And that is when the teacher took his students aside, called them teachers, and sent them out to do the work themselves.
The flipped script
When this young man shows up, looking for the teacher to evaluate him, he’s expecting that he’s already aced the class. It’s like he thinks he can test out of the intro and intermediate classes. Like the prof will just give him an A for being awesome so he can go on to the stuff that “really” matters.
But Jesus flips the script. That’s his favorite teacher move. To turn you upside down to see the world in a completely different way. And why he said earlier that the first shall be last and servant of all. The point isn’t just to reverse-engineer the order of the cue. It is because of what we think greatness is about—about making others serve you—to do what you want.
For the teacher, this isn’t a rhetorical technique, however. It is actually the worldview. His worldview. And ours, the one we’ve inherited, is predictably opposite. We’re the deviants who need to be shown a different way.
The Young Man
We usually refer to this story as being about “The Rich Man” or the Rich Young Man. Which is pretty reasonable. When Jesus tells him to give away his stuff, he gets upset and runs away “for he had many possessions.”
Then Jesus talks about wealth and the kin-dom in a way that sounds like: hey, if you’ve got a lot of cash, you’re not getting in.
From our side of the unflipped script, this sounds exactly like a condemnation of wealth. And, in a sense, the disciples agree with us.
And yet, this gospel isn’t about money. But it is totally about money. We’re just looking at it backwards.
So let’s join Jesus in the flip.
From the Other Side
Jesus gives us a clue to the problem from the moment the man greets him. He calls him “good teacher” and while many focus on the man’s narrow understanding of Jesus by “only” referring to him as teacher, Jesus objects to the other word. Good.
“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”
Because the man has already made his biggest mistake. He assumes the purpose of life is to be good. Like any good student seeking the approval of his teachers, he sees the measure of his worth by the grade the teacher gives him. In his mind, the grade follows the worth. So being good is reflected in personal piety. And this man’s resume is unimpeachable.
But Jesus tries to show him how he’s got it backward. None of us is “good”. We’re called to do good. But it doesn’t end there. There is no arriving at “good” because it isn’t a destination or an evaluation. You can’t earn the designation of “good”.
You can’t earn grace.
That is the root of everything. You can’t earn grace because it can only be given.
The pious young man wants to be assured of his place by doing something. Like if he can get an A in the class of life, then he can be assured of graduating into heaven. And yet, with the arrogance that always follows certainty like a lapdog, he wants assurance now of something a long time from now.
He’s the phenom who graduates from MIT at 16 and wants Jesus to call him the perfect little boy! You did everything right! You win Life!
So Jesus tells him he is missing one thing: absence. He doesn’t know how not to have everything he wants. What he needs is insecurity.
So he must sell his stuff, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus like a student. Trust. Live. Learn. Embrace the uncertain future.
Follow the Money
So why then is Jesus talking to his disciples about wealth? He told this pious young man to give up everything, be generous, and follow him. And yet we want this moment to reflect a universal ruling about money that can answer our insecurity about our wealth. In other words, where does Jesus draw lines.
And this is when we must realize just how much we all sound like that pious young man. We’re asking Jesus for a ruling. Am I good?
Right about now we should get some comfort from the fact that the disciples have both missed the point in the exact same way and gotten the point.
They jump to the conclusion that under Jesus’s vision of things, none of them would be saved. Which, objectively, is kind of crazy. They’ve given everything up to follow Jesus! So in Jesus’s inverse greatness hierarchy, they are closer to the front of the line than this guy!
But they also sense that there’s something there! Something that trips them up, too. They feel condemned by this teaching. Even as they have far fewer resources and far more commitment to the missio dei (the mission of God), they are feeling hopeless.
They are hearing Jesus from the wrong side of the flip.
Following him over
Jesus bring them back to the kin-dom side saying:
“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
They were in the pious young man’s headspace, thinking they could earn grace. No! It isn’t that wealth is a permanently disqualifying state! None of us is good. That’s what Jesus said moments earlier. We aren’t “good”. Only God is good.
It isn’t about our state of being. Our character. Who we think we are. Our salvation is not contingent on these things.
So think about all of the implications. Sexual orientation, physical ability, gender identification, race, creed, age, nationality, education, “value” to this society. None of that matters! It doesn’t factor into salvation.
And we can’t earn our way in.
It’s about grace! Generous grace. It is not about doing something to prove yourself worthy of grace.
We aren’t trying to learn the cheat code to get into the good place.
And we can’t say the magic words that force God to let us in.
Nor is God obligated to reward someone for gaming the system!
This is literally how we use our economy to exploit the vulnerable. Which means we’re not using Jesus’s kin-dom thinking.
Peter’s redemption
In the end, it’s Peter who turns toward Jesus. Two chapters after making himself a stumbling block to Jesus, misunderstanding the kin-dom vision, he makes the turn that the pious young man can’t stomach.
He names what they’ve given up to be where they are. With Jesus. Here.
And Jesus gives him the only certainty that we can give one another: that this is true wealth. Being here, on the other side, dwelling in the kin-dom work, is the very assurance we crave.
It is seeing this other side, the kin-dom realized, that propels Jesus’s teaching. And it informs how we learn, how we teach, and how we live. As disciples, apostles, and saints.
We welcome children, for hospitality is central to our community.
We share in our abundance, for God is generous with us.
And we show mercy, grace, to one another, because that is the work.
This is living: true eternal life.