Twenty eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:17 – 30

There was a little girl sitting in church on Sunday. When you are little services seem to last forever. She colored in her coloring book. She crawled around under the pew. She tried to take a nap but it didn't work. Finally she tugged on her mother's arm and in a loud whisper, asked, “Are you sure this is the only way to get to heaven?” Today we hear Jesus answer that question.

We've heard this story so often, because Matthew and Luke tell it as well, almost in the same words. And Matthew calls the man “young” and Luke calls him “rich” and as you noticed, Mark just calls him “a man”. And if you are like me, when you hear the story you see a rich young man. And only in Mark do we hear the words, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” There is one more interesting bit. When Jesus talks to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, only in Mark does he address them as “children”. And I think these little differences might be a clue as to how Mark wants us to take the story.

First, in Mark he is just “a man”. If we make him rich or make him young, well, most of us are not rich or young, so it becomes a story about someone else, and we can sort of sit in judgment. And that is even more obvious in the Greek, because the one who runs up to Jesus is referred to as “one”, not “a man. So Mark wants us to identify with this one, he's talking about you and me. Mark makes sure we know that Jesus loved this one. And I think that tells us something as well. This is a good person, someone who not only keeps the commandments that Jesus lists, but probably all the commandments. As you've probably heard, the rabbis and pharisees eventually identified 630 commandments, and to a good Jew, eating pork was not different than adultery; every commandment of God was to be kept. And there were lots of commandments about taking care of widows and orphans, and welcoming strangers into your midst, and treating foreigners like natives before the law. Tithing of course was a commandment. So Jesus is looking at this person, who has been trying since he was a child to keep the commandments out of love for God who gave them to Moses.

But the person's joy is short-lived. Here he figured he had it made. He'd been doing everything right. But Jesus says “You lack one thing; go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”. Now I have to pause and give you a little bible history. You probably remember that Saint Jerome translated the bible into Latin. In those days, the Gospel of Matthew was considered the “real gospel” and Matthew was considered more reliable because after all, he was there, he was an apostle, and Mark and Luke weren't. Modern scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, know now that the Apostle Matthew did not write the gospel, at least what we have today. So Jerome left out some words in his translation of Mark because they weren't in Matthew. Those words were “take up the cross” and follow me. Many modern translations from the original Greek include those words, but others don't. I think Mark meant to include them because Jesus tells us in other passages that we will have to take up the cross.

The person's face fell and he went away because he had many possessions. He could not part with them; Jesus is asking way too much.

Now if you were reading the gospel of Mark in a continuous way, instead of only hearing a little bit on the weekend you would remember than only a few verses ago the apostles were trying to keep children from approaching Jesus, who told them, “let the children come to me” and he added that you had to become like a child to enter the kingdom. Now Jesus calls the apostles children and he points out that people who trust in riches simply cannot enter the kingdom that way.

That is why the apostles are astonished. After all, as everyone knows, if you are rich, it's either because you are dishonest or because God favors you. And God would favor you if you keep all his commandments, right?

But Jesus goes on to say that even if it's impossible for man, with God all things are possible.

And Peter picks up on this. We have left everything to follow you, he says. And Jesus says, “You've got it. The only way to heaven is to follow me, to take up the cross.”

You know, we human beings spend the first halves of our lives getting stuff. Almost everything we do is rooted in that instinct. We get stuff; we work hard to get stuff, most of us try to find someone to spend our lives with; we want children, a car, a house, a flat panel TV set, and stuff leads to more stuff. We may not be rich, but what we have we want to keep. I visit a lot of people who are shut-in's and sometimes you see evidence that they are hoarders. But being a hoarder is just an exaggeration of our instinct for stuff. And stuff gets in the way of a relationship with Jesus. Jesus wants to give us himself, and he will not hold back his gift. Every time we receive His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, we are reminded that he is always offering himself to us. But we can't receive his gift without getting our stuff out of the way. Do we have to sell all we have and give it to the poor? If so, we are all in trouble, even the Franciscans over at Saint Stan's, because they may not technically own anything, but they have stuff – clothing, a bed to sleep in, a computer to use, a television to watch.

The little girl finally went home and got out her dolls and her stuffed animals and a little table and set everything up for a tea party. Then her father walked through the door and held out his hands and she dropped everything and ran over and jumped into his arms, abandoning all her toys. That's what Jesus wanted from the person in the story. And that's what he wants from you and from me. Because that is what makes a little child different from someone who is attached to stuff.