Transcript
Close Encounters: An Encounter with a Rich Man
First Baptist Richmond, October 13, 2024
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 10:17-31
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?”
This is the second sermon in a series called “Close Encounters.” Last week Jesus had a close encounter with some Pharisees who wanted to know if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. This week he has a close encounter with a rich man who wants to know how he can have eternal life. It happened just as Jesus was setting out on a journey, Mark says. A man ran up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Inherit is probably the right word. It’s possible that this man has inherited everything he has. We often refer to him as the Rich Young Ruler, and if he is both rich and young then it’s likely that he didn’t earn what he has. Maybe his father died early. Maybe he inherited both his wealth and his position. But there he is, kneeling at Jesus’ feet, his fine clothes covered in dust, asking a question he prays this good teacher can answer. But Jesus says,
“Why do you call me good?”
I’ve noticed that when I try to type the word God on my smartphone, a feature called autocorrect instantly changes it to good. “Praying that good will be with you,” I text to a church member before surgery. “May good hold you in the palm of his hand.” But it’s not just autocorrect. The day we call “Good Friday” was originally known as “God’s Friday.” When we say “Goodbye” it’s an abbreviated
form of “God be with you.” Long before autocorrect the words good and God were being confused with each other. So maybe this man didn’t mean to say, “Good Teacher” at all; maybe he meant to say “God Teacher,” and it just came out that way. Because Jesus was certainly that. Even as he responds to his greeting he teaches the man that “No one is good but God alone.” And on a deeper level you and I might think of him as a God Teacher because we know that he is divine: he is the God who teaches. And what he is preparing to teach this man is a lesson about eternal life.
Let me remind you that eternal life is not the same as everlasting life. We often use those two interchangeably but all you have to do is ask someone who is on life support, “Hey, do you want to keep doing this forever?” And even if they can’t speak they will shake their heads. No, everlasting life is not the same as eternal life, especially when you look at it in the original language. In Greek, the phrase we translate as eternal life is zoen aionion. It means, literally, “the life of the ages.” This young man runs up to Jesus, falls at his feet, and says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit the life of the ages,” because that’s the way people in his day talked about heaven. They believed they were living in something called “the Present Evil Age,” and they looked forward to “the Age to Come.” Some people called it “the Messianic Age,” thinking of that time when God’s Messiah would be in charge, when he would run the Romans out of Israel, and sit on the throne of his ancestor David, and restore the nation to its former glory. In those days only those who were found worthy would take their place in the Messiah’s kingdom, and this Rich Young Ruler wants to make sure that he is one of those people. So he asks Jesus, “What must I do?”
I don’t know if he thinks Jesus is the Messiah. It’s not impossible. Two
chapters earlier Peter has said as much and Jesus did not deny it. But he did seem to have a different understanding of what the Messiah was supposed to do. In his thinking the Messiah hadn’t come to conquer and rule, but to suffer and die, and Peter was having none of that. He pulled Jesus aside and said, “God forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to you!” And that’s when Jesus turned and rebuked him, saying, “Get behind me, Satan. For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” And maybe this Rich Young Ruler was doing the same. He wanted to inherit eternal life, the life of the ages, the life of the age to come. Maybe he believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he was getting ready to conquer the Romans and rule over Israel. Maybe like James and John in next week’s reading, he wanted a place of honor when Jesus came into his glory. But Jesus doesn’t talk about any of that.
He says, “You know the commandments. Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t defraud, honor your father and mother…” And if Jesus is being genuine with this man he seems to believe that it’s not that hard to inherit eternal life. All you have to do is keep the Ten Commandments. “Teacher,” the man says, impatiently, “I have kept all these since my youth!” And that’s when Jesus can tell that this man wants more. He’s not only interested in getting into heaven. He wants eternal life! And that, I think, is the moment when Jesus looks on him and loves him.
Because he’s not just looking for a mansion in heaven someday. He wants life—here and now. You can call it whatever you like: eternal life, the life of the ages, the life that’s actually worth living. Whatever it is, that’s what he wants, and Jesus can see that. This man has tried living a righteous life. He’s kept all the commandments from his youth. He knows that it feels good to be good, but he
also knows that isn’t enough. It may assure his place in the Messianic Kingdom but in the moment all it does is assure him that he’s a little better than everybody else. And what fun is that? He’s tried living a life of luxury, that is, I assume he has. If he’s rich he has the means to buy whatever he wants. He probably already has a mansion, and if he does then he knows it’s nice, it’s comfortable, but there comes a time when it’s just where you live, and you can be just as miserable in a mansion as you can anywhere else. He wants life. He wants a life worth living. He wants a life full of meaning and purpose and Jesus says, “If that’s what you’re looking for then I can help.”
He says, “Go and sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, and then come, follow me.” It’s a simple request. There’s nothing complicated about it. But he can’t do it. It’s like one of those movies where the train is pulling out of the station and the man is leaning out the window, begging the girl to come with him, to leave her old life and her family behind, but she can’t do it. She stands there on the platform with her heart breaking, wishing she could get up the nerve to just run and jump on the train. I can almost picture this man standing on a station platform, surrounded by a mountain of suitcases and steamer trunks as Jesus calls to him from the window of the train, but there’s no way he can bring all that baggage with him, and sadly he can’t leave it behind. In the end, Mark says, he went away shocked and “grieving,” for he had many possessions.
And so Jesus turns around and says to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And they don’t get that at all. Mark says they were “perplexed” by his words. Because they had grown up with an Old Testament version of the Prosperity Gospel. They had this idea that if you were a good person, that is, a righteous person, then God would bless you
with health and wealth. If you were sick, then that was on you; that was because you were a sinner. And if you were poor then that was on you, too. So, when Jesus says that those who have wealth will have a hard time entering the Kingdom of God the disciples don’t know what to make of it. Jesus repeats himself: “Children,” he says, 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.”
The disciples are greatly astounded by this. They ask, “Then who can be saved?” And this may be a good time to remind you that the word salvation doesn’t mean what we often think it means. We think it means to be saved from hell, but most of the time, when it is used in the New Testament, it is used in a way that means “to be healed,” or “to be made whole.” When Jesus opens the eyes of Blind Bartimaeus he says, “Your faith has saved you.” He doesn’t mean that he’s been saved from hell. He simply means that he can see again, he’s been healed, he’s been made whole. So when the disciples ask, “Then who can be saved?” they may simply mean, “Who can live the good life, the life of the ages, the life that’s worth living, if it’s not the rich?” And Jesus says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.”
That’s a reminder to me that the life we are living now is a gift. We didn’t do anything to earn it. And that eternal life—the life of the ages—will come to us not through human striving, but from the hands of God. “How can I have that?” the rich man wants to know. “How can I inherit eternal life?” And Jesus says, “It’s simple. Go, sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, and then come, follow me.” In that startling invitation is the suggestion that the life we are looking for is found not by being better than everyone else, and not by having more
money than everyone else, but simply by following Jesus.
I thought about that on Friday, at Lewis Myers’ memorial service. Lewis grew up in Mississippi, his parents were educators, there was nothing to suggest that he might become a missionary, but he did. At some point along the way he heard God calling and he answered. He went to seminary and got a Master of Divinity degree. He served churches in Mississippi and Kentucky as a pastor. But then he felt the pull toward foreign missions and ended up going to Vietnam. At his memorial service I heard that he made up his mind to master the Vietnamese language, which is complicated. I could picture him putting in the hours and hours that are necessary to do such a thing, sounding out difficult words and practicing his pronunciation until his tongue was tired. How does a boy from Mississippi learn to speak English, much less Vietnamese? But he didn’t give up, and his son Michael said that in the end he could speak it fluently, that he had a huge vocabulary and near perfect pronunciation.
After the service we gathered for a reception and they were showing pictures from Lewis’s life on the big screen in our dining hall. There was one that struck me in particular. There was a young Lewis Myers, handsome and with a head full of dark hair, standing in front of a group of Vietnamese people, leaning toward them, reaching out to them, and expressing something that must have been the best kind of good news. Because his eyes were alive with the excitement of it, and the look on his face was a look of pure joy. It seemed to me that all the hours of practice and preparation that had led him to that moment had been worth it, and if you had asked him he would have said, “Yes, yes! A thousand times yes!” And what was it that had brought him to that moment? Years earlier he had decided to follow Jesus, and he had not been disappointed.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Great. All I have to do to inherit eternal life is become a foreign missionary.” No, that’s not what I’m saying. If I’m reading Jesus correctly then, if all you want to do is inherit eternal life, you could do it by keeping the Ten Commandments. If all you’re interested in is going to heaven you could probably do it by saying the Sinner’s Prayer. But if you want more than that, if you want to live the life of the ages, the life that is actually worth living, then here’s what you have to do.
You have to follow Jesus.
How do you do that? Let me make a suggestion. Let me suggest that you start by forgetting everything you have learned about Christianity, and then start reading the Gospels. Start with the Gospel of Mark, which is the shortest of the four, and then read Matthew, then Luke, and then John. When you get finished read them over again. You don’t have to do it all in one day. You can spread it out over weeks, months, even years. But do it. Read the Gospels. Follow Jesus through those pages. Listen to him preach and teach. Watch him help and heal. Study his craft. Learn his moves. Become his disciple. Along the way you may discover that you have to give up some things, and giving them up may be painful, but if you want to keep following Jesus it may also be necessary.
Will it be worth it? I wonder what his first disciples would say. I wonder what Peter would say, who reminds Jesus in today’s reading, “Look, we have left everything behind and followed you.” Jesus answers, “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 gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—and in the age to come eternal life.” If you had the chance to ask Peter today, “What about it Peter? Was following Jesus worth it?”
What do you think he would say?
And what about you? What will you say, years from now, when someone asks you the same question?
—Jim Somerville © 2024
