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SERMON
Of all the questions asked by our Lord in the Gospels, probably none is more perplexing, at least at first reading, than the one he poses in today's lesson. A young man eagerly approached and addressed Jesus with the utmost respect: "Good teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" - "Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked him. Isn't that a strange thing for our Lord to say? But it is our best clue to what, I think, is the pivotal issue in this encounter.
Nearly every Bible study I can remember of this story, every sermon I've heard on this text, focuses on the issue of wealth and the problems it poses for those who would be followers of Jesus. That's understandable. After all, Luke follows his record of this encounter by noting that the young man was very sad, because he had great wealth. But I'm convinced that, in those words between Jesus and the young man, the central issue was simply this: what does being good have to do with being a Christian.
Let me tell you why I've come to see the text that way. When that young man asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life, his question betrayed an assumption on his part that has caused untold anxiety among Christians in every generation. The assumption is this: you and I can be good enough to deserve God's love; we can earn our salvation; we can nail down our eternal inheritance by following the right program of personal piety - if we can just figure out what it is. That is the assumption that comes through, loud and clear, in the young man's request for guidance. "Good teacher, you can teach me, if you will, how to be good enough to earn my inheritance." It sounds noble, humble, perhaps even a little heroic. As if to say, "I don't expect something for nothing. I want to earn my way." And I daresay, most of us understand (even applaud) that sort of mentality - sometimes especially in church. In fact, many of us have been conditioned, over the years, by moralistic preaching and well-intentioned Christian teachers and leaders. And the result is that we have come to believe that Christianity is a program of goodness - that we can only be Christians if we're good enough; we can only be effective ministers if we're good enough; and in the last analysis our only hope of swaying some heavenly admissions committee in our favor is if we can prove that we're good enough. And that, men and women, is a lie.
Somewhere, somehow, someone needs to expose that faulty notion on which so many of us try to operate as Christians. That's what Jesus did for his young inquirer. And this is how he did it. First Jesus asked the man, "Why do you call me good?" Then, after asking the question that raised the root issue of goodness to the surface, Jesus said to him, "You know the commandments." Then he began to reiterate the law: "No adultery, no murder, no stealing, no lying, honor your father and mother…" But before Jesus could finish the list, the young man interrupted him. You can hear the disappointment and frustration in his words. "Teacher, I've done all that - ever since I was old enough to know better. I've memorized all the rules, and I've always played by them. I'm doing all that! Please! Tell me what I'm not doing right. What's missing?"
His few words speak volumes. He speaks for all those people who still see Christianity as a log of rules rather than a living relationship. He speaks for those who still see God as a cosmic enforcement officer rather than a waiting heavenly Father. He speaks for those of us who see the Church as a jury of our peers (where we feel subtle pressure to become more religious) rather than seeing it as a healing community of fellow strugglers. And because so many of us have been conditioned to think that way, most of us probably fall into one of four categories.
1) Some of us have tried to live a good life - above reproach. We have tried to be very good people and, frankly, we've done rather well at it. So we feel we have reason to be justifiably proud of ourselves. One of the problems with that approach, however, is that we're tempted to wish that others would take being good as seriously as we do. (You may be sitting near just such a person right now.)
2) Others of us have tried to live up to the expectations of what it means to be "good" people, but then we've failed. Every time we fail we go through yet another round of self-recrimination, and then follow it with a resolve to do better next time. The problem is that that cycle is never satisfied; because we are never as good as we think we ought to be. (Many of us here now, I daresay, fit that description.)
3) Then there are those who have stoically resigned themselves to the idea that they will never be good enough to be Christians, so they've stopped trying. But, sometimes openly - more often secretly, they are hostile toward God, and they resent those self-righteous emissaries who try to improve them. (I suspect that such people seldom get closer to the church than the parking lot.)
4) Last, there are those who really couldn't care less. They've seen the inconsistencies in most Christians, and have written off the faith as little more than pleasant idealism that's generally harmless, but equally ineffectual for living this life.
Now, there's a common thread that runs through all four of those categories. They have all missed the truth of what Christianity is. All of them are either acting out, or reacting to, that same faulty assumption under which the young man in our text was laboring: that you have to be good enough to be a Christian - to win God's love and acceptance. God help us! Fortunately he has!
It was a wonderful moment for that young man when he admitted that he had tried his best to be good enough and still had come up empty-handed. "Teacher," he said, "I've tried all that, and it doesn't work! What's missing?" Mark, in his record of this incident, tells us that at that point "Jesus looked at him and loved him." He looked at him. There are so many people trying so hard to be good, and they're looking for a little encouragement, a little recognition. There are people starving for attention, for someone who will just look at them as if to say, "Good for you! I see what you're trying to do and I'm proud of you." It can lift your sagging spirit when someone will take the time to look at you and recognize your efforts to do well. And that's what Jesus did for this young man. "Jesus looked at him..." and saw in his eyes a deep hunger and thirst for goodness. And the exchange between those two (without words, eye-to-eye) may have been more substantial than anything that had been said out loud to that point.
But the silence lasted only a moment. Mark says that, looking at him, "Jesus loved him." And it was his love for the young man that broke the silence. "You still lack one thing," Jesus said. And though our Lord's voice was undoubtedly gentle, his prescription was radical. It cut more deeply into that particular young man's life than anything ever had. "Sell everything you have," he said, "and give to the poor. (You will have treasures in heaven.) Then come, follow me."
As I said earlier, the most common interpretation of this story is that it's a commentary on the problems that wealth poses for those who would be followers of Jesus. But the issue here runs much deeper. In those few words our Lord was prescribing nothing less than radical heart surgery. As I see it, the central issue here has to do with thinking that you have to be good enough to deserve God's love and acceptance. But that issue is only incidentally tied to wealth in this particular case. You and I know that being good has little to do with a person's net worth. In fact, there's overwhelming evidence that rich people and poor people alike suffer deep feelings of personal inadequacy and moral failure.
So don't read Jesus' words here as though he were saying, "If you will simply take and keep a vow of poverty, I can guarantee you at least a modest place in heaven." I can't imagine him saying that. St. Paul iced that idea in I Corinthians 13:3 when he said, "If I give all I possess to the poor, and even surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing!" Then what was Jesus getting at in his advice to that young man? I think he was saying this: "If you want to be on the right track and know it, you need to do two things: divest yourself and invest yourself."
First, divest yourself of every vestige of power and self-security to which you cling for assurance that, as a person, you are good enough. It may be money that helps you feel that you're good enough. If that describes you, remember what Jesus said: "What does it profit a man to acquire the world if he loses his soul in the process?"
But it needn't be wealth. It could just as easily be your program of good deeds to which you cling for assurance that you're good enough. But remember what Jesus said: "When it comes to doing good deeds, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." (In other words, become deliberately unselfconscious of your good deeds.) Or you might be banking on your reputation of personal piety in order to make you feel "worthy." But remember, Jesus said: "When you pray, go into your closet and shut the door." (That is, don't make a show of it.)
It could be any of a number of things we might do to try to prove ourselves good enough. Whatever it might be, Jesus says, in effect: "Go ahead and do it. But don't bet your life on it. Don't do it to try to prove to others or to God or to yourself that you're good enough. Divest yourself of it."
It's bound to be a painful procedure. In fact, it may be one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do, especially if you've invested much of your life trying to prove yourself good enough. Divesting yourself of your security can cut deeply. That's why I called it radical heart surgery. There are, in fact, times when only the Lord himself can perform that surgery. All we can do is submit ourselves to him in order to be set free.
"Divest yourself," Jesus says. But having been divested of every attempt at proving your own worth, there is one more thing you must do. You have to invest what is left. "Let go of the past," Jesus says, "and follow me." Take what is transparently, essentially you, and dare to say to God, "Here I am (what there is left of me). Use me as you will. I'm yours."
"Follow me," Jesus says. "Invest yourself in my service." You will never come across a better investment opportunity. As one person put it: "When you have nothing to prove, you have nothing to lose." When you know that the goodness inside you is God's own goodness which he's given you; when you find that the love and forgiveness you can express is an expression of the love and forgiveness that God has already shown you; then you can finally afford to be good - for nothing. You no longer need to be good enough to be a Christian or to deserve eternal life.
But here's the payoff. By following Jesus as a daily decision, as an act of the will, you find that goodness will become more and more natural. And by deciding to accept the gift of his love for you, the eternal life that you long for will follow as a matter of fact. Do you qualify for heaven? It isn't an issue of being good enough. It never has been! |
