The Possibility of Meaning in Life
By The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
June 24, 2012
Text: Mark 10:17-27
I think for those who are people of conscience there are many challenges today: many things to weigh up, many things to consider. Even in reading the newspaper this week we've been confronted, have we not, by the ethical challenges of our day and age? We have been struggling with coming to terms with the whole notion of euthanasia and the right to life. We are torn in many ways, torn between protecting the innocent, maintaining the integrity of life, but also dealing with people who are suffering profoundly and out of compassion wanting their suffering to cease. It is not an easy subject to deal with and people of conscience have to wrestle with it.
People of conscience have to wrestle, as we are doing this week, with how we can treat people who are non-Canadians who commit a crime, and if they can be returned to a country where they may very well face persecution greater than the crime they have committed. How do we protect the stranger in our midst and how do we protect the integrity of our citizens and keep them safe? No small task to work our way through such things. Life is complex.
At the macro level, how does one treat a nation abusing other nations and its own people? How do you prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and at the same time deal with those who already have them? These are not simple issues. A person of conscience has to wrestle with them.
The person of faith adds a whole new dimension to that struggle, far more serious in fact. A person of conscience must weigh up the evidence on the basis often of two countervailing things or maybe a few more that a person of faith, who seeks to be faithful to Jesus Christ, brings into their ethical decision making: eternity, how can we live on earth as it is in heaven? How does the eternal break into our deliberations and our life right here and right now?
That is why I love a T-shirt that I saw worn by a young man on the subway a couple of weeks ago. On the front of it was a man standing, a very tiny man, looking rather pleased with himself, small, but happy, and right above his head was an approaching bolt of lightening. On the back of the shirt it said, “Are you ready for what comes next?”
I thought, “This must be a religious person.” Seriously though, are we ready for what eternity brings?
Eternity is here right now. Eternity was clearly present in the ministry of Jesus himself. When a young man bows down before him asking that very question that a person of faith asks: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Helmut Thielike says that the question we would ask today would be coined somewhat differently: “To what end should I ultimately live?” He argues that for the person who has faced retirement, they look back on their life and the work that they did, and they ask, “What was my living for?” Or, for a nurse who having to face the death of a child that they have been caring for, “What was my service for?” Or, for the young person who is looking for meaning in their life and struggling with coming to terms with how to deal with the world, asking, “Who do I live for?” Or, the businesswoman who has accumulated a great deal of wealth and asks herself, “What is my power for?”
You see, these are existential questions that question the meaning of life, and Jesus, when he is confronted by this young man, who desperately wants to know what is the meaning of life, what is the purpose of his existence asks, how can he inherit eternal life, Jesus gives an incredible answer. It is an answer that has shaken the foundations of Christendom ever since it was first spoken. Jesus had something radical to say.
He starts off with clarifying some things for the young man, knowing that the young man must be a faithful Jew, knowing that he must know his Bible and his prophets and the Torah, Jesus says to him, “Why do you call me good?” because the young man comes to him and says, “Good master, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says, “There is no one good, but God.” He is just clarifying things for the young man: you can come to me, and coming to me is important, but you also have to make sure that you understand that you are coming seeking to be faithful to God. Let's be clear about the One who is really good.
Then, he says to the young man, “You know that it is already in the law. If you abide by the law, the law that says you honour the Lord your God, that you do not murder, you do not commit adultery, you honour your mother and father, and so on, [the Decalogue], you know what the law says.”
And the young man says, “Yes, and I have done all of that.”
Even though he had done all of that, he still wanted to know “How could I inherit eternal life?”
In an incredible moment, Mark tells us Jesus loved him. He knew that this young man had come with all this on his heart and mind. He had tried to be faithful to the law. He had wanted to live up to the statutes. He was a good person, but even though he was a good person, he was still missing something, and missing something profoundly. And so, he says to this young man, “You are lacking one thing. Go and sell everything that you have and give it to the poor, and follow me.” In other words, Jesus' answer to the young man took the form of an invitation, a straightforward invitation.
The young man wanted a philosophical and a theological discussion with Jesus, just like Nicodemus and in the Gospel of John. He probably wanted some esoteric idea, some philosophy, some path that he could follow to enlightenment. But Jesus wouldn't entertain such a philosophical discussion. He went right to the heart, and he said, “Follow me.” What Jesus was doing was equating this young man's quest for eternal life with the following of Jesus.
Jesus was making a pre-condition to this man inheriting eternal life to following him. And always, the call to follow, the call to discipleship, and the call to a committed life precedes any notion or any understanding of how we please God. We respond to a call and that call is what was put very firmly before this young man, for Jesus knew that there were things that were binding him and he had to let go of them to follow him. You know, this just makes sense. It makes sense in life itself in real and concrete terms. This isn't just an idea. This is what is needed in life.
There is a gentleman I have known since I have been in Toronto, who from time to time moves between life on the street and life somewhere else. He reappears from time to time as a homeless person in the city. It is fascinating, because when you talk to this man, you realize that he has his struggles, but the struggle that brought him out on to the street was gambling. He gambled so much that his wife and family could no longer live with him. It was unbearable! He was completely and totally consumed with gambling.
He had lost his money, he had lost his family, and he had lost his soul. He was in desperate shape. Every time I see him back on the street, my heart just sinks for him. If this man were to say to Jesus, “What shall I do to be able to return home?”
Jesus would say, “You lack one thing: the will, the power to give up gambling, and until you find that, and a way of being helped through it, then you will not be able to come home.”
There is a wonderful line in G. K. Chesterton's great poem The House of Christmas:
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come…
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Jesus knew when this young man came to him two thousand years ago that he needed to follow the invitation of the one who was homeless who could bring him home.
Therefore, Jesus tried to remove the very obstacle that was standing in his way from obedience. Often when we read this passage, we water it down. We say, “Jesus didn't really mean give up all that you have and give it to the poor.” He meant something else. No, he didn't! He meant for that young man to sell everything and to follow him. It was a divine command. It wasn't a command that was for everyone and all time. It was the command for that man at that time, because what Jesus was addressing was idolatry. Anything in our lives that stands between us and honestly and faithfully following Christ should be removed. The young man, we are told by Mark, went away sad, precisely because he had great wealth, and because he had great wealth, he couldn't stand it. The young man knew what was standing in his way, and he had to deal with it.
The more I look at life, the more I realize that idolatry can take many different forms. Sometimes it is as it was with that young man: wealth. It prevented him from following Jesus. We are told that because he had great wealth, he turned and he left, sad. He had been confronted by the truth, and the truth hurt him. But our idolatry might be different from his idolatry. Our idolatry might not be wealth. It could be power. It could be sex. It could be money. It could be work. It could be family. It could be obsessions that we have in our lives. It can be many different things. When Jesus comes to us and says, “I want you to follow me” whatever it is in your life that prevents you from following him, that is the command that you should receive and deal with. It is the way, the only way to open up the path.
The disciples objected. They said, “How can this be? If this young man is so wealthy, who will be saved?”
Jesus says to them, “It is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is hard, harder than the camel going through the eye of the needle” and we can unwrap the meaning of that as much as we want, there are many different theories. It doesn't matter! What Jesus is saying is, “It is not going to happen.” The disciples are depressed for what has all this been worth? If we have things that bind us, if we have idols in our lives that hold us, and they are going to be so absolute that we cannot do anything about them, then what happens?
Jesus then gives the pearl of great price: the great wisdom, that it is grace that makes that part possible. He knows that on our own we cannot do it. The young, rich ruler is tied to his wealth but he has to let it go. The problem with the young man is that he left the conversation with Jesus too soon. Once he had heard the command, he ran as fast as he could to get away from the reality of what Jesus said because he knew it was true. Even though the answer to his quest for meaning, for purpose, for eternity was right in front of him, he ran away. He didn't see it. His wealth had crowded it and he didn't want to lose it.
There is an incredible story told of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, as many of you know, at the turn of the twentieth century, was one of the great media moguls of his time. He was extremely wealthy. He made a decision in his life that he would follow his heart and be a supporter of the arts. He coveted many of the great art pieces of the world. One day, he was reading about a piece of art that he thought was particularly beautiful and he wanted it.
He talked to some of his friends and his assistants and said to them, “Would you go and search the world for this painting, for I want to have this painting, and I want you to get it for me so that I can own it, it will make me happy?” They went over the whole world. They went to art markets in Paris and Milan and London and New York. They couldn't find it. Finally, their search brought them back home. Their search led to a warehouse that was owned by Hearst and in that warehouse that painting was in a frame in a box, along with many others. He looked at it, and he was told, “You have had this great masterpiece all along. You just didn't know it.”
The young man was like Hearst. He had great wealth but he left before Jesus was able to say to him, “Here I am to help you, even to respond to my call. Here I am: that what is impossible with man is possible with God. The idol which holds your life can be removed if you will but follow me and let it go.
Jesus, since time immemorial, has said the same thing. We struggle, do we not, with the challenges of life? We struggle with making the right decisions. We struggle with ethical decisions. We struggle with that desire in our hearts, truly and honestly I believe for many, to be faithful to God. Here is the message: Jesus helps us remove any idol that stands in the way from doing that. Faith and belief and worship and prayer are our ways of saying, we already know what we have, and what we have is more valuable than anything else. We will follow you when you call us and we will go. Amen.