Thursday, October 12, 2006

Second Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Mark 10:17-31

[Mark 10:17-31 is the Bible text on which this weekend's worship celebration at Friendship Lutheran Church, the congregation I serve as pastor, will be built. This is the second look at the lesson I've posted this week. Click here to see the first.]

A Few More General Comments
1. I've mentioned many times here how important narrative context, where a passage falls within the particular book of the Bible, can be in understanding a particular passage of Scripture. Bryan Findlayson talks about the context of this weekend's Bible lesson:
Mark carefully places the story of "the rich young ruler" between the blessing of the children, v13-16, and the rewards of discipleship, v28-31. In the blessing of the children, we learn that the kingdom of God is received by the humble seeker as a gift of grace. In the story of the rich man we are reminded that the righteousness worthy of the kingdom is beyond any of us and this because we are all "rich" in this world's things. Then, in the disciples' response to the rich man's sad departure, we learn that the rich man's sorrow is far safer than the disciples' pride, for in the end the kingdom is given to the broken, not the proud.

2. Somewhere I've read that Howard Hendricks, the Baptist seminary professor, once calculated that Jesus addressed the issue of money more than he spoke about the topics of heaven and hell combined.

Another contextual prism through which we can view this Bible lesson is Jesus' teachings on money and possessions.

As Lutheran pastor Ed Markquart points out, each of the numerous stories (or parables) which Jesus told about money comes at the topic from a slightly different angle. But the reason that Jesus addressed this issue seems apparent: Money is a power that can become so important to us that it takes the place of God in our lives. And when God's supremacy in our lives is supplanted, we're separated from God.

Quaker theologian Richard Foster's assertion in his classic, Money, Sex, and Power, is right on from the perspective of Jesus' teaching: We will either control our money or our money will control us.

The Bible Lesson: Mark 10:17-31
17As 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?”
(1) Is the man trying to butter Jesus up? Maybe. But, in the next verse, Jesus is going to key in on the man's use of the adjective, good.

(2) The man offers a religious question. The idea is, "What do I have to do to earn the favor of God?" Jesus, of course, turns such notions on their head.

18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
(1) Only God is worthy of the term, good, Jesus tells the man. Don't throw the term around so loosely!

(2) In beginning this way, Jesus might be saying, "I am good because I am God." I've often toyed with that interpretation. But I don't think that's correct.

(3) A far more likely valid interpretation is that in saying this, Jesus, Who understands us inside out, already sees that this man deems himself good, morally uncorrupted. Confident that his behavior has earned eternal life, he wants Jesus to confirm his own goodness. Sometimes we can become so religious that we mistakenly think of ourselves as being God's moral equal, whether we say it or not. We forget, as the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich put it, God is "wholly Other."

19You 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.’” 20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”
(1) Because the man apparently has a righteousness rooted in the law, Jesus begins by citing five of the Ten Commandments--not in order--and another command which doesn't appear among those laws given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai.

(2) The latter command, the one that isn't part of the Ten Commandments, is, "You shall not defraud." Why did Jesus mention this? I think that by the man's response, Jesus establishes that he hasn't become wealthy because of dishonesty. That's laudable, of course. But the avoidance of particular sins doesn't necessarily mean that we have life from God.

(3) The five commands from the Ten Commandments that Jesus mentions are all part of what's called the second table of the commandments. The first table--numbers one to three, deal with our relationship with God. The second table--numbers four to ten, deal with our relationship with others. (For more on the Ten Commandments and the varied ways of numbering them, see here.)

(4) Religious thinking is mired in the self. It's all about what I've done, how I've kept God's commands. Christianity sees God as the main actor in our lives. We don't earn His love and forgiveness; we receive the love He offers us as a matter of course. We can't earn the life made possible through Jesus Christ, we can only surrender to Him and follow Him...or not.

The man is confident that he has kept all the commandments that Jesus cites since the demarcation point between youth and adulthood, then thought to be twelve years old.

21Jesus, 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.”
(1) This is the only place in the New Testament where we're told that Jesus loved a specific person. The clear implication is that Jesus felt compassion and pity for this man. His spiritual pride--his pride in the sins he'd avoided--kept him from surrendering to God's grace.

(2) Why is it that Jesus told this man to do something then? Isn't that a religious prescription?

It was because this man's money and possessions were the source of his pride and his alienation from God. Like others of his time--and as we'll see, like Jesus' disciples--this man thought that wealth was a sign of favor of God, a sign that one was righteous and in sync with God. Poverty was seen as a curse from God.

Jesus is telling the man that he cannot rely on his wealth to establish either his identity or secure his place in eternity. The only way to get free of his slavery to wealth is to get rid of it. This is akin to what people are told when dealing with addictions in Twelve Step programs. The alcoholic can never again take a drink. If they do, alcohol will own them.

(3) This doesn't mean that wealth is inherently bad, any more than it's inherently good. But if something or someone causes us to sin, the only rational, appropriate thing to do is to flush them from our lives. No matter how many sins the wealthy man avoided, wealth was still his god. And we can have no other gods but the One Who created the universe and Who revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ.

Markquart says:
Jesus was asking for a positive action from the young man: “Do something positive for poor people.” In the Ten Commandments, people were commanded by God to avoid doing bad things to others. To avoid doing bad things is both good and proper. We should avoid doing bad things to others but that is not the same as doing good for others, especially poor people. Avoid doing something bad to someone is not the same as doing something good for them. We expect people to avoid doing bad to others…killing them, committing adultery with them, stealing from them, lying about them, defrauding them. But it is something else to do something beneficial for them. That is what this text is all about. The young man was Mr. Respectable, Mr. Honorable. Mr. Upright. He didn’t do anything bad to people but he didn’t do anything good for these poor people, to make their lives better, to share with those poor people the enormous financial resources that he had.
(4) Ed Markquart also writes:
It is important that we understand this passage and not take it literally. It is part of Aramaic hyperbole, overstatement or exaggeration in order to make a point. You don’t take these words literally or you get in trouble. Other examples of Aramaic hyperbole or strong exaggeration in language are “anyone who does not hate your mother and father and brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” Or, “if you hand sins, cut if off. If your eye sins, cut it out. If your foot leads you astray, cut it off.” These are all illustrations from the gospels where Jesus used Aramaic exaggeration to make a point. The message is: we are to generously share our economic resources with the poor and hungry of the world.

Following the same line of reasoning, we remember that Jesus did not ask Zaccheaus, who was the richest tax collector in town, to sell all he had and give it to the poor. Jesus did not ask Joseph of Arimathea, who the Bible says was rich, to sell all had had and give it to the poor. Jesus did not ask Nicodemus, the wealthy man from the Jewish Sanhedrin or Senate, to sell all they had and give it to the poor. Nor does Jesus ask us today to sell all we have and give it to the poor. To think such thoughts would misunderstand Jesus and the text.

Jesus was putting the rich young ruler to a test to see whether he personally and specifically loved God and his neighbor more than money. This test was similar to the story about Abraham in the Old Testament when God asked him to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. God was testing Abraham to see if Abraham loved God more than his son. Similarly, Jesus was testing this rich young man to see if he loved his riches more than God. That is what the story is about. God is testing us to see if we love our money and material possessions more God. We remember Jesus’ teaching when he said: “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart.” The man’s heart was in his treasures.
22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
(1) Jesus never forces Himself on us, affording us the option to simply walk away from Him and His claims on our lives. The rich man here did just that.

23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It 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.” 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
(1) The disciples believed, like others of their culture and time, that wealth was a sign of particular blessing from God. No wonder they were perplexed!

(2) It isn't possible for us to be saved because of our works, attainments, or power, Jesus says. But it's possible for anyone to be saved in the power of God, Who graciously offers new life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”
(1) Peter's statement is little different from the question of the rich man. He points in pride to his religious action of leaving home and following Christ.

29Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
(1) Those who genuinely put Christ first and follow will have life with God. They're the ones who humbly admit their need of forgiveness and of a Savior and find both in Christ.

31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
(1) The topsy turvy Kingdom of God!

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