Mark 10:17-30
I listen to WJMJ, the radio station run by the Hartford archdiocese. I like it because they play a lot of music that I liked when I was young. I don’t even know what music is popular nowadays. One song I liked was “Me and Bobby McGee”. Janice Joplin made it famous but it was written by Kris Kristofferson who just recently passed away. The chorus goes “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, and nothing ain't worth nothin but it’s free.”
If you aren’t tied down by stuff, wealth or power or pleasure or whatever, you don’t have a lot of worries or responsibilities. But there is a story about a rich man who was noted for his piety; he prayed three times a day, went to daily Mass, helped out at the soup kitchen… and someone asked a poor man why he couldn’t be more like the rich man. The poor man replied that he had to work all day long just to feed his family. If you don’t have the dough to do stuff, there’s not a lot of stuff you are free to do. Those people down in Florida who have lost everything are probably not feeling very free right now.
And the rich man who approached Jesus -- he was doing everything he was supposed to, so much so that Jesus looked at him and loved him -- but he must have felt that he was missing something, or why would he have approached Jesus?
It’s very troubling, Jesus words to the rich man. “Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and then come follow me.” We know there are saints who took Jesus literally -- Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of the Desert, and you could probably add other saints to the list. But there are saints who didn’t do this -- the saints who were kings and queens, rulers over people; saints like Louis and Zele Martin, who had homes and furniture and means of transportation; and indeed priests and nuns and brothers and monks -- who hold things in common. So people have found ways to get around Jesus’ statement. The easiest, of course, is to point out that Jesus was talking to this one person, not you, not me.
But Jesus does go on to tell his apostles “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” But then he goes on to say, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God”. He doesn’t qualify this statement, in fact, it is almost aimed at his disciples because those are the ones he calls “Children”. And Jesus doubles down: it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” My mother the theologian had pondered this and she may have read that old excuse that Jesus was referring to a particularly narrow gate through the wall around Jerusalem that had the nickname “needle’s eye”. But if that’s the case, why were the disciples exceedingly astonished? I think Jesus meant what he said and that’s why they were astonished.
But there is something else. In our gospel passage, the phrase “those who have wealth” is obviously a translation from the Greek. And the Greek words are literally “those who trust in riches.” We aren’t going to get what God wants to give us if we put our faith in riches. And we do. We trust that between our 401k plan and social security we’ll get by. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone, even a Capuchin like Padre Pio, who would run around without clothing and search through garbage or forage in a forest for something to eat. I don’t have that kind of faith.
Peter, speaking for all the disciples, begins to ask a logical question -- “We’ve given up everything and followed you…” In our gospel passage it looks like a complete sentence, but remember, he is just beginning the sentence. The rest would almost certainly be something like, “what do we get?” And Jesus answers the question. And it’s a strange answer, because he is saying that if you give up all this stuff, you will get it all back in this life a hundred times more, along with persecution. Do you know anyone, anyone for whom this is literally true? I don’t. But I’ve run across two theories, one being that Jesus is in a way rebuking Peter, who again may have missed the point. If you give up everything to follow Jesus expecting a great reward, aren’t you just like the man who starts this whole discussion, wanting to add another thing to his things? Another theory is that Jesus is referring to the family of people who follow him -- a far larger family than the family you have naturally, but a family that will be persecuted.
But the bottom line is that all we can do is do our best to follow Jesus, because nothing I do can earn eternal life -- it is impossible for human beings, but for God all things are possible. Someday we want to be like Saint Thomas Aquinas. One day the Lord appeared to him and said, “Thomas, you have written well of me. What do you want for your reward?” And Thomas answered, “Only you, Lord”.
