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Grace, mercy and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God.
Prayer: Dear Lord
Jesus, send to all of us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to
all of us that we may hear well. Amen.
In the Old
Testament, we read about King Solomon, and the thing that King Solomon was
particularly known for was his wisdom. We read about him that all kinds of
people came to visit him and ask him for advice, and they were amazed by him.
We can read some of this wonderful wisdom in the book of Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes, also his love poetry in the Song of Solomon.
But it’s a strange
thing that there is actually only one example written down of an actual case
study. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to have a collection of not just all the
sayings of Solomon, but also of all the conversations, and all the questions
that were put to him and how he answered them.
But there’s only
one example of Solomon actually solving a difficult case. You might know about
it – it’s a very famous passage. The only case and example of Solomon’s wisdom
in action written in the bible is about two women who were prostitutes. Both of
them had a baby, but one of the mothers rolled over in the night and accidently
killed her own baby by smothering the child. How tragic this must have been for
the woman! But then she tried to say that it was the other woman who had killed
her baby, and that stole her baby. So these two women come before Solomon, each
claiming to be the mother of the same child.
How does Solomon
solve this problem? He does this in the most amazing way. If I were dealing
with two women like this, I might sit them down and talk to them softly,
softly, gently, gently. But no – Solomon uses the full force of his authority
as a king, and almost goes a bit over the top. He order a sword to be brought
and the baby to be cut in half, and one half given to each woman. One of the
women says, “Go ahead—kill the baby. It’s better that neither of us has the
baby.” But the other woman says, “Give the baby to the other woman.” Then Solomon
realises that the real mother would rather give up her child to the other woman
than see it killed.
What’s amazing
about what Solomon does here? The problem here in idolatry. One of the women is
a real mother, but the other has an idol in her heart. One woman is telling the
truth, and the other is telling a lie. She loved her baby, but then she wanted
one at all costs, even to steal her friend’s baby. And then Solomon threatens
to kill the baby, but what actually happens is that a different sword is at
work—the sword of the Holy Spirit, the word of God, cuts to the heart of the
women, and the idol is exposed.
In our Gospel
reading today, Jesus does much the same thing. A rich man comes to him and
Jesus says to him: “Go, sell all that
you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come,
follow me”. We read: Disheartened
by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
This man comes to
Jesus with a massive idol in his heart. He is happy to follow Jesus, but he is
a slave to his money and his possessions. And Jesus takes the whole lot, just
like Solomon, and threatens to cut the whole lot in half with an axe. “Off you
go! Go and sell everything.” Here Jesus reveals to the man that he didn’t want
treasure in heaven at all, only treasure on earth.
What kind of
treasure do you want? What’s the idol in your heart that Jesus wants to cut
away from you?
As this passage
reveals, there is a widespread misunderstanding regarding Christianity – so
often people confuse Christian faith and following Jesus with a set of rules.
Our Christian faith, our Christian worldview is not a set of rules! Sometimes
people ask: “What’s your religion?”, as if a religion is just a set of rules.
What set of rules do you follow? No! If that’s what a religion is, Christianity
is not a religion.
In fact, if you are
“religious”, and all you want is to follow a set of rules and tick them all
off, you can’t be Jesus’ follower. That’s true. Let’s see how this Gospel texts
helps us to learn and to understand what our holy Triune God demands from us
and what He offers us.
The man goes to
Jesus and asks: Good Teacher, what
must I do to inherit eternal life? This was the young
man’s question. Can you see what the problem with this question is? What was
this man’s assumption? Can you see it? He thought that he could inherit eternal
life by what he did, by how he lived. What do I have to do?
This is what “religious”
people ask. And when I say “religious people”, we might like to say, “respectable
people”. I once heard someone say that throughout Christian history, the Gospel
has sometimes rained down in one place for a while, but then the cloud has
moved to another place. For example, in 300s and 400s, do you know what one of
the central places for Christianity was? North Africa! We might say, Tunisia.
Tunisia’s not a Christian place anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. It has
often been said that when the church simply becomes the place for respectable
people to come and help themselves look respectable, then the Gospel cloud
moves and rains down another place where people need it.
So someone may ask
more general a question: “What should I do to be a good, moral, respectable
person? How should I live, so that, if perhaps there really does happen to be a
“god”, he would pat me on the head and tell me just what a great job I have
done with my life?
This is exactly
what this young man asked. What should I do? Jesus replied: You know the
commandments: “Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear
false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.
Jesus simply
repeated those commandments which people know the best, that is, those about
our relationships and our life in community. Do not
murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do no lie, honor you parents.
You will know this
from your own experience how people usually think. If you ask them what their
relationships with God are, they will often start telling that they haven’t
done anything wrong. They haven’t murdered anyone, or stolen anything, and so
on.
This is how respectable,
religious people think about their relationships with God, and this is how
people often misunderstand what it means to be a Christian. Don’t murder, don’t
steal, don’t commit adultery (…too often!), don’t lie, and you may sometimes
listen to your parents as well, and then - you are a good Christian.
Similarly as many
of our neighbours, friends and relatives, also this young man was trying to be
a good, moral, respectable person. Teacher, all these I
have kept from my youth.
I don’t necessarily
think that he was being hypocritical or arrogant. Probably he was as genuine as
he could be. He really felt that had done his best. We can read that also “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” Jesus loved Him, but now we get to the very heart of the problem with
Jesus.
You see, most
people actually like commandments. Because they are helpful. They help us and
help the community, they structure our lives and when we live according to
them, it feels good. And we think ‘that’s it – that’s what it means to be a
Christian’.
The great offense
of Christianity comes with what Jesus said the next. You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give
to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. What?!
As I said, many
people actually like God’s law. Not all of it, of course, but that part which
they can try to keep. But then Jesus says something that ruins the whole party.
What did Jesus
actually demand from this young man? The same that He demands from each of us.
Stop trying to be religious and respectable! Stop focusing on yourself! Focus
on Jesus! Jesus demands undivided commitment “follow me, whatever the cost is!”
This is what puts
people off: Instead of loving ourselves and delighting in our good lives, Jesus
Christ actually demands us to love Him more than anything. Instead of focusing
on our good works He demands us to focus on relationship with Him.
You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. You shall have the Triune God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—as
the most important in your life. Jesus Christ should be the most important
person in your life. He should be number One, the highest priority.
In case of this
young man Jesus said: Sell everything, give
to the poor. Now, not everyone is called to sell completely
everything and give to the poor. This is not some kind of general command to
get rid of your possessions. But the problem was that this young man loved his
possessions more that he loved Jesus. He may have been good by keeping less
important commandments, but he had failed to keep the main one, the only one
which matters the most.
What you love the
most is actually your god. There are only two things that you can love—either
you can love God, or you can love things that he has created. If you love
something that God created more than God himself, then you have carved out for
yourself an idol, and that idol needs to be cut in two. For this young man his
true god was his possessions. He loved his wealth more than he loved Jesus.
It’s not that possessions and wealth and evil. Not at all. The Bible speak about
wealth as God’s blessings.
But Jesus gives a
special warning in our reading about wealth. How
difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It
is easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to
enter the kingdom of God. It is true that nothing shows our
arrogance, pride and self-satisfaction more that wealth. Wealth makes us feel
that we are really in control of our lives, that we don’t need Jesus Christ as
our God and Saviour. For we already (seemingly) have everything that we may
need.
On the other hand,
even though poverty is really bad, it is also true that when you are not in
control over your life, you are much more open to receive God’s mercy and to
admit our continuous need for His care.
Perhaps this young
man was a really good person. He genuinely tried to do his best. But once Jesus
pointed that He actually loved his possessions more that true God, disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful…
We love different
things more than Jesus Christ. Admit it! The most of all we love ourselves. We
love our freedom to make up our mind regarding what is good and what is not. We
love to decide on our own what life is pleasing to God, and even what God is
like.
We love to live in
a way that makes us feel that we are really good people. We love good things in
our lives, our spouses, our children, our families, our work … and we love them
more than we love our Father in Heaven and His Son Jesus Christ.
And we don’t see
that this is a problem until Jesus says ‘leave everything and follow me!” When
people hear that they need to leave all of this respectability for the sake of
Jesus Christ, and that they have not even a smallest chance to enter the
Kingdom of God by their own genuine and noble efforts, people get upset. Really
upset!
“How do you, Jesus,
dare to say something like that! We are happy to live as respectable people,
but don’t push us too hard, or you will lose us!” As if He needed us and not
the other way around.
The irony of our
reaction is that we usually don’t understand that this is our sin, our
rebellion against God, our selfishness that forces us to disobey Christ. This
is the very thing that separates us from God and eternal live. This is our deep
rebellion against our Creator.
This is why Jesus
had to die, to free our hearts from this self-righteous rebellion against our
God. What Jesus is asking us is nothing else than to live according to God’s
design for our lives: to live up to our true nature, to embrace what it means
to be truly human, that is, to love God our Creator and Redeemer, to trust Him
and to rejoice in our creaturely nature as the greatest gift.
We don’t understand
all of that, for we are the slaves of our sin. Our hearts, our wills are in
rebellion against true God, - and we want to be gods ourselves. We want to
decide what is good, and what is not. No one is going to tell us what to do!
This is why
Christianity is so offensive, so shocking. It demands us to abandon our
religiousness, our “respectability”, it demands us to stop trusting our own
lives, to leave our self-chosen gods and put our whole trust in Christ Jesus.
Christianity demands that we follow Jesus, whatever it may cost. This is why so
many find following Jesus Christ too hard. They would rather chose to be
religious, upright, respectable people without the true God, without a future.
So far it was all
about what Jesus Christ demands from us. Now we need to understand what God
offers us. Once Jesus told that we can’t enter into Kingdom of God on our own,
by being good people, Peter and the disciples got really concerned. They ask: Then who can be saved?
f
Jesus says: It is impossible for you, but all things are possible
with God. Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers
or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the
gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers
and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the
age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last
first.
I want you to hear these
words and let them sink in, for they are so important.
Yes, Jesus asks you
to leave what is the most important for you, what you love the most, your
idols, your gods you really worship, and to follow Him instead. If you want to
know what your gods are, think what you fear to lose the most? What are those
things without which you can’t imagine your life?
When Jesus ask us
to leave them, it may appear unfair, it may appear that He is robbing you of
what makes your life good, but, in fact, it is the very opposite.
People have often
misunderstood this and have literally abandoned their most important callings, thinking
that by doing this they are pleasing God. This is not what Jesus is asking for.
When Jesus invites
you to follow Him and to leave everything else, He takes your whole life and
re-arranges it in a way it is supposed to be, with God the Father and Jesus
Christ in the centre, and all the other good things flowing from there. He
wants you to fear losing Him the most, your God and Savior.
Jesus helps you to
understand, that He is the Giver of all good things, and all good things in our
lives are simply His gifts. The Holy Spirit teaches us that the Giver is much
more important that the gifts. He helps you to trust that if only you have
Jesus, you will have everything you may need. Then you can strive to be with the
Giver, with Jesus Christ, and other things will be added to you.
This is true, there
could be situations, when following Jesus requires to leave something forever, like
things or habits that are harmful for us. When it comes to good things in your
live it is so different.
Once you realize
that the Triune God—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is the source of all good
things in your life, you can be at peace, you can enjoy them as God’s gracious
gifts, given to you so that you can benefit from them.
Do you know what
Jesus does when you love Him the most and follow Him? He takes all good things
- your spouse, children, family, work, carrier, hobbies, friends, etc., and makes
them even better. When you learn how much Jesus loves you, you are enabled to
love more. When you learn how much Jesus forgives, you are enabled to forgive
more. He purifies and transforms all your relationships and everything you do.
Jesus makes your
family relationships better, if your married, then he blesses your marriage and
makes it better, He makes your work, your career more meaningful, He changes
everything in your life, all its dimensions and fills them with joy, peace and
meaning. What you had before is transformed and perfected as you try to follow
Jesus, and on top of that you receive so much more once you join His Church,
His family, His chosen people. You receive hundredfold already in this life and
in the age to come - eternal life. This is how Jesus works. This is what He
offers to you, to each of you. We can see that to be a Christian is such a
privilege, such an unbelievable gift of God. We even receive back all these
gifts back with persecutions. But even these minor little sufferings are nothing but sign posts that
point us towards heaven and to walk with Jesus even more deeply than we have
before.
So let’s turn away
from our religious efforts to be respectable people, let’s follow Jesus Christ,
trusting Him above all things, allowing Him to transform our whole lives and to
bring us in the most wonderful eternal fellowship with the Father and the Holy
Spirit. This wonderful fellowship with God already begins here, in the Divine
Service, and it will continue forever. Amen.
Dear Jesus, take my
silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold, take my intellect and use,
every gift as you shall choose. Amen.
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