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Mark 10:17-31

You May Have to Move Something!

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Mark 10:17-31

You May Have to Move Something!

By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

One of the advantages of being married to the same person for a long time is that you and your spouse get to establish your own comedy routines.

Consider, for example, George and Mary, a couple who live in another state. George goes to the refrigerator. He’s looking for a specific item he’s pretty sure is there. He doesn’t see it, and so calls out to Mary about the object of his search. Mary is also pretty sure that what George is looking for is in the refrigerator—somewhere. She calls back to him, “You may have to move something, George!”

 

I believe God addresses us in this way, not when we look around in the refrigerator, but when we try to make sense of our lives. That’s what I hear Jesus tell the man who asks him about inheriting eternal life. “You may have to move something, George!”

In versions of this story in other gospels, the man appears as young or as a ruler.( Matthew 19:16-22, Luke 18:18-23.) Here he is simply a man. We are not given his name. Only when he goes away are we told that “he had many possessions,” that he was someone of significant wealth.

So when he approaches Jesus with his urgent question, this fellow is simply “a man.” What he asks Jesus about is how to inherit eternal life.

Jesus quizzes him about his morality. Has he kept the commandments that prohibit murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and fraud? Yes, he has, since his earliest days. This is a straight arrow guy!

Jesus looks at him with love and then says, in effect, “You may have to move something, George!” What he may have to move, what he must set aside, is his wealth, his many possessions. This man’s wealth is blocking him from what he wants: eternal life. He must sell what he owns and give the proceeds to the poor so that he may have treasure in heaven.

Is this a general prescription? Yes and no. Not everyone needs to liquidate their assets to enter the kingdom. But some need to do so. And still others must set aside whatever blocks their access to the gift of eternal life.

“You may have to move something, George!” This holds true for one man in particular who asks Jesus about eternal life. And it may hold true for any of us who is not innocent and trusting like a young child.

The obstacle may be our wealth. Our credentials. Our relationships. Our patriotism. Our work. Even our religion. Any of these things can be good in itself, yet we may need to move it in the crowded refrigerator of our heart if we are to gain the treasure we are looking for and without which we will not know peace.

What we must move may even be something we would rather not have in the first place, such as suffering or the status of a victim, but which nonetheless sits there on the shelf, an obstacle to what we are looking for.

So each of us must pay attention  in case Jesus looks at us with love and says, “You may have to move something, George!”

And we will find that to move this something demands far more of us than does pushing aside a jar of pickles. It may require that we turn from what we thought was security and fall into the invisible arms of God.

 

Whatever the obstacle is, moving it out of the way can have many implications for us. This is certainly true when the obstacle is wealth, or rather the grip that wealth has on us.

Moving wealth to one side has implications for how we understand ourselves. Our life changes: it becomes something more than getting and spending, more than working and amusement.

Instead, we recognize our time as an opportunity for both contemplation and engagement, which in the end are not opposites, but complement each other.

We are no longer so determined by the clock and the price tag and the television, but we give attention instead to what actually happens around us here inside of time.

Our moving of wealth to one side has implications as well for how we regard other people and all living creatures. We are here to share the world with them and they with us. Their fellowship, both actual and potential, enriches us immensely.

Jesus hints at this when he speaks in today’s gospel of those who leave behind what is commonplace, and are rewarded many times over with “houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields”— although not without persecutions. Eternal life is a life of ever-deepening communion.

Moving wealth to one side certainly influences our relationship with the dominant culture. For our society views wealth as sacred and as the source of salvation. Significant traditions of opposing attitudes challenge these beliefs, but the greed movement remains powerful, scarcely able to recognize other viewpoints.

However, for those who struggle to resist affluenza, the virulent epidemic of always wanting more, even small victories feel exhilarating; they are victories for which heaven cheers.

Finally and most deeply, putting wealth to one side, declaring it relative and not absolute, makes us more available for relationship with God.
Our salvation is not up to us. We do not earn it by our efforts, receive it through a legacy, or steal it when nobody’s looking.

The man who asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” asks the wrong question, just as someone whose boat is carried by a persistent current is wrong to ask, “What must I do to get downstream?”

“You may have to move something, George!” When the issue is our lives and what they mean, then this can be for us the voice of grace.

Does something block your access to the gift of eternal life? That gift is meant for you right nowas well as hereafter.

The Holy One not only offers you this gift, but also the wisdom and strength to move whatever must be set aside so that you can grasp this gift and enjoy it. Welcome all that the Holy One offers you. Start with the Bread and Cup of today’s Communion and take it from there.

“You may have to move something, George!” The words are comic. The voice is the voice of someone who loves you.

Copyright 2015, Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.