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Mark 10:17-31

Then Who Can Be Saved?

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Mark 10:17-31

Then Who Can Be Saved?

By Pastor Curtis Tilleraas

“There was a man who loved gold. Then he inherited a fortune. With a sense of great joy he redecorated his bedroom. He put gold parchment wallpaper up, he hung yellow curtains, and he had a golden colored rug and a yellow bedspread. He even bought some yellow pajamas, when he was feeling especially good. But then he got sick and came down with, of all things, yellow jaundice. His wife called the doctor who made a house call and the doctor went up to the bedroom for an examination. The doctor stayed up there quite a while, and when he came down, the wife asked, “How is he?”

“I don’t know,” said the doctor. “I couldn’t find him.”

Indeed many people today are absolutely absorbed in and lost in a world of greed and materialism.” (Dr. Adrian Rogers) Today’s gospel is about a man who was owned by his wealth. He came to Jesus, but he returned to his wealth. He let the spark of life flicker and burn, but he didn’t let Jesus take that light under his protection, and so the wind blew, the light went out; and he went home sad.

How frightening it is to be on the verge of getting what you have always wanted. It seems like — when a dream is finally about to come true, we begin to wonder: is this really what I wanted? It also seems like this is the time when other things start looking even better, and we become afraid of making a commitment. I think the reason these things happen is that we are afraid of losing the illusion of freedom. The illusion of freedom is very different from real freedom, because in real freedom there are real limitations. The greatest figure skaters in the world do not achieve great freedom on the ice by dreaming about skating, do they? No, they become great skaters by making a commitment to their art and then by following through on that commitment. They learn to exclude many things that other people take for granted and do all the time. They learn to focus. The more they focus, the more limited their lives become — and the more limited their lives become, the more freedom they acquire on the ice. It is the same with the Christian life. It means putting into practice what we believe and being less afraid of making mistakes than we are of doing nothing. It means practicing justice with as much fervor as we seek to develop a personal and communal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Henry Miller, a famous American writer once said that the greatest novels ever written were traveling about unseen in the minds of café dwellers on Montmarte, a famous hill in Paris where artists used to gather, and still do. The real test of our talents, our dreams, our faith and our character is in the doingand not in the wanting or in the imagining. Sadly, though, many have found that it is easier to dream than to go after the dream and take risks. And there are many who choose not to accept Christ’s invitation to follow him out of fear – fear that they will lose their friends – fear that they will become a fanatic – fear that they are not good enough, as if that were a real qualification, and fear of persecution.

One of my great pleasures as a father was in taking my son, every weekend for years, to basketball games. There was a boy on his team who wanted to be a great basketball player, but he hardly ever got to play. When he was sent into the game he played with a tremendous amount of desire, but every time he took and missed a shot, he would get furious at himself. He was so busy being angry with himself for his mistakes that he seldom, if ever, let himself play the game. There was another kid who had decided, at some point in his young life, that he was not going to worry about criticism. He didn’t care how many shots he took and missed because he knew that the more shots he took, the better his chances were that some of them would go in. And they did! This young man was focusing on the game and not on his mistakes. He let the coach deal with his mistakes.

One thing that can be said for the first young man was that he took the risk of showing up and being on the team. He puts his dreams to the test, but he was unable to forgive himself for his mistakes, & so he seldom really enjoyed the fact that he was on the team.  A lot of Christians are like this boy. They are so busy looking at their own sins and mistakes that they seldom, if ever, let themselves enjoy the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. And the other boy was a bit like the disciples, who were happy to be on the team, on the Lord’s team, even if they made a lot of mistakes along the way.

If you never go after the dream, you never risk losing it, and you can always have it. But then it’s just a dream. The real desire, the one that frightens us and challenges us the most, is to make our dreams come true. As dreams alone, they don’t really satisfy us, because there is a hunger inside of us that is never quite fed – never quite satisfied, if we don’t make a commitment.

This is what is happening to the young man in today’s gospel. He imagines that he wants to inherit eternal life, and he becomes excited when Jesus rattles off some of the commandments, because, in his mind, he has already done all those things! We can imagine that he is thinking, “I’m almost there!” He already has in his possession all that the world has to offer, and now he imagines that he is on the verge of having it all – wealth and success in this world, and in the world to come.

But then Jesus drops the bomb. Jesus tells him that he can’t have it all. He will have to choose — this world, or the next. To attain eternal life, he will have to give up what he values most of all in this world; and then he will be free to seek eternal life and follow Jesus. To follow Jesus is to follow the one who says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and  “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and “No one comes to the Father, but through me.”

This rich young man discovered what many people discover when the real Jesus reaches out his hand and says, “Come, follow me.” They feel the tug, the pull, of all the things that they love more than Him. The idea of following Jesus fills them with a warm sense, a comforting sense of joy and possibility — perhaps even a sense of nostalgia for when they were little children and hearing stories about Jesus, the patriarchs and the matriarchs. But the real Jesus, reaching out to them and saying, “Come, follow me,” is another thing altogether. To follow Jesus is to die to oneself and to be reborn in Him — and it seems unfair. It seems unfair as long as people are looking at what they must leave behind, rather than looking at the riches they will gain — if only they will take His hand. As Jesus said, at the end of today’s gospel: “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 good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age… and in the age to come, eternal life.”

The disciples were filled with despair when they saw the way Jesus had just spoken to and treated the rich young man. They cried out, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus had just made an impossible demand, one that was far more demanding than the law and the prophets. According to the law, a rich person was entitled to his riches as long as he shared a certain percentage of his wealth, his fields and grain, with the poor. Listen again to the requirement, as we find it stated in Amos, and the consequences for not meeting this requirement: “Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” And now Jesus is saying, ‘Much more is required of you.’ He is saying, instead, ‘I want all of you,’ and ‘You cannot serve two masters at the same time.’

The rich young man and the disciples are filled with despair and sadness because they are looking into themselves and they can see that they are incapable of letting go. It’s just not in them. Even though the disciples try to cover up their despair & uncertainty by saying, “Look, we have left everything and followed you,” we know that they are uncertain by the way they have said, “Then who can be saved?” The voice of the disciples is the voice of our own hearts as we come to that precipice – to that place of decision — and look out at Jesus. Instead of seeing Him, and putting our trust in Him, we see the great difference that stands between us –  and we feel like Peter when he began to sink in the ocean, after walking, so happily, a few steps on the water.

Haven’t each one of you felt this very same thing? Haven’t you known in your hearts that you are still clinging to the things of this world – preferring personal comfort and security over justice and mercy?  Jesus has allowed the young man and his disciples to fall into self-questioning and fear long enough to drive His message home; and his message is this: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

The young man did not confess his inability to Jesus, did He? He didn’t say, “Lord, I can’t do it. Help me.” Had he been willing to confess his sin, as well as his inability to give his possessions to the poor, the Lord might have said to him, instead of to His disciples, “For you, it is impossible, but not for God; for God, all things are possible. Come, follow me.”

This is something we all need to keep in mind. When Jesus asks the impossible of us, He is willing to take taking the impossible part upon Himself; and He is asking of us only what is possible. The disciples were far from perfect when Jesus called them, but with the love of Jesus burning in their hearts, they stumbled and bumbled along – on their way to eternal life.

There are many in today’s world who believe that they can inherit eternal life by some other path, an easier or more fashion-able path, or by following some other philosophy of life. For some, the decision not to follow Jesus is a matter of intellectual pride. They believe that they are too intelligent to believe in the Christian faith, to believe in Jesus Christ. There are those, too, who have read a little bit of history and they have become embarrassed by the injustices that have been practiced by sinners within the church, off and on, throughout history, and they do not want to be associated with such things. Many others simply do not like the Christians they have met, and they see nothing attractive in that way of life. But all of these people, no matter how good their intentions might be – no matter how well they may know them-selves – no matter how intelligent or deluded they are – all of them will one day have to come face to face with Jesus Christ. And if they have denied Him before others, if they have rejected the faith that He has offered to them, He will reject them before His heavenly Father.

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Jesus Christ is Lord of Lord and King of Kings. He does not ask you to be perfect, but He does ask you to “Come” and follow Him – to Trust Him, and to put your faith in Him, rather than in your-selves. He invites you to let go of all those things that are holding you back – that are keeping you from taking that great Leap of Faith. Are you at the precipice today? Are you sensing that Jesus Christ is calling you to follow Him in ways that you have never followed Him before? What is holding you back? What do you love more than Him? All of those things that hold you back may be stronger than you, but what is not possible for you, is possible for Him. Only in Him will you begin to find true freedom.

“George Orwell, writing during the Second World War, tells of a rather cruel trick he once played on a wasp. The wasp was suck-ing jam on his plate and he cut him in half. The wasp paid no attention to what had happened to him, but just went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly did he realize the terrible thing that happened to him.” (Adapted fromOrwell, The Collected Essays, Journals and Letters Vol. II New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968, p. 15.) Brothers and sisters, we can get so caught up in pursuing our careers, dreams, or whatever, that we fail to see the trouble we are in, spiritually, until it’s too late. A man told his pastor, “I’ll deal with Jesus later – I’m just not ready right now. But I know that the Bible teaches that whenever we come to Him, He will forgive us of our sins.” “Yes, the pastor said. “But the Bible doesn’t promise you that you will live until tomorrow.”

Brothers and sisters, come to him now, while there is still time. Whatever is holding you back cannot hold a candle to the power of Jesus when He comes to save. Let us listen again to what St. Paul is telling us in today’s lesson from the book of Hebrews: ”Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Amen.

— Copyright 2003, Curtis Tilleraas. Used by permission.