October 11, 2015 – Mark 10:17-31
Mark 10:17-31
The Medicine of Generosity
Lectionary 28B – October 11, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The man comes to Jesus with a pastor’s dream question:
“Good teacher: what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
I don’t get that question a lot, I’ll admit.
But if I did it would be a day I’d write an entry in my diary:
“Today someone actually asked me a religious question! THE religious question!”
I’d be pretty jacked up, I’m not gonna lie.
How would I answer?
“Well, I’d say,” not wanting to scare them off,
“why don’t you try worshipping with us one Sunday. That’s a good place to start.”
Or maybe, “Why don’t you come and volunteer at Food Bank one Wednesday.
See how that fits.”
I have known people like the man who comes to Jesus.
The person whose life looks great on the outside.
The person whose mode of like looks like they have it all together.
He’s probably highly respected because he’s followed the rules and
because he’s done what’s expected of him and because he’s wealthy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark told us he was also extremely good looking.
You get the picture: he’s a dream guy.
Probably a good catch. Readers of Mark’s Gospel probably wondered if he was single.
Like, where can I get his number, Jesus?
The man, though, has a big question for Jesus.
Apparently, all is not what it seems.
He doesn’t feel like he is really living his life to the fullest.
“Eternal life” is a tricky phrase to translate in Greek: zoe aionion.
It means fullness of life. It means lots of good quality life, now and always.
It’s not just about a quantity of life after death; it means quality life, now and always:
it means “really livin’!”
It means his big question is really this: how can I really live in a meaningful way?
To the man it’s a question of life and death.
Notice the details in the story:
the man comes to Jesus and kneels before Jesus, looking for blessing.
Every other person who comes to Jesus this way in Mark’s Gospel is sick.
And they come for healing.
They either have a disease or are demon possessed – and they come for healing.
And in every other case in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells them to go with some kind of medicine,
the thing that will make them well.
Well, you know how when you were a kid the medicine that was best for you tasted like crap?
The man receives this morning what is to him a bitter bitter medicine.
“Go,” says Jesus: here is the medicine for what ails you:
“Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.”
Oh dear.
Mark tells us the man was “shocked and went away grieving.”
No kidding.
Jesus dignified the man’s big question with a correspondingly big answer.
The man was shocked by the answer and most of the people listening would have been too.
Even the disciples are shocked: if this guy isn’t already blessed, who is?
Even according to the Old Testament riches are frequently a sign of God’s blessing.
But never to Jesus; Jesus knows the truth and is not afraid to state it baldly:
our money and our attitude towards it is a hindrance to the life God desires us to live.
It takes up a lot of brain space for us and is the cause of much of our anxiety and worry.
Jesus speaks about our relationship to money more than any other single topic in the Gospels.
It is getting in the way of the fullness of life we were made for.
And if we were as honest with ourselves as Jesus is with us,
we would come to the same conclusion.
So where is the good news in this story?
It begins with noticing that Jesus doesn’t scold the man or condemn the man or judge the man.
He looks at him.
Only, it doesn’t quite say that.
The Greek word here isn’t just the normal word for “looked,”
like when you glance at something in passing.
This word here means look intently, it means to bore into a person’s soul,
it means the look you give when you want to see right inside the other person.
It means to gaze.
And this is a gaze that is filled with love:
Gazing at him, Jesus loved him.
That is one of the most beautiful things all scripture, right?
Jesus, looking right inside the guy, sees what he is capable of,
sees what he is capable of becoming, sees all the hope and possibility there,
and Jesus loves that!
And he knows a small answer is not going to bring about the man’s healing or
the man’s transformation.
And so he gives him the big answer – the answer that drives the man away. Whoops!
Well, that is how much God loves us: God loves us enough to give us the big answer,
enough to hand us reasons to leave, enough to just let us walk away.
The man is sick, and so Jesus gives him the medicine of Generosity,
but that’s an easy thing to walk away from.
As difficult as this is, I think there is still more good news in this.
The good news that Jesus sees we are capable of much more than we think we are capable of.
The good news that Jesus sees we are capable of more generosity, more openness, more love.
The good news that even when we feel we have no hope in ourselves,
Jesus has lots and lots and lots of hope in us.
Jesus senses the vast potential of our possibility to be the people of generosity and
sacrifice and inclusion and love and grace we were created to be.
I don’t know what happens to the man in the story.
Sure, he goes away.
But maybe he goes away and thinks.
Jesus gives him the freedom to do that.
Maybe he comes back and says, “Okay, Jesus. I’m willing to give it a try.
Because what you say actually makes a weird kind of sense to me.”
As I’ve said before, Mark’s Gospel doesn’t tie everything up in a neat bow.
The first line says the Gospel is just the beginning.
And the end of the Gospel, well, is just weird and ends with an incomplete sentence that
leads from an uncertain present into the fullness of a future that has not yet arrived:
The women fled from the empty tomb for terror and amazement has seized them;
and nothing they said to anyone; afraid they were for . . .
Yah: it’s crazy but it means the story isn’t over yet.
It means the story is full of possibility, God’s possibility:
a dead man has been raised to life: it means anything can happen.
It means your story is part of the story of God’s bigger story to
love bless and heal this whole world and every person in it.
It means today’s story is not the end of the story for the man.
And it means today is not the end of the story for you.
The man is ill – and the Jesus writes him a scrip for radical generosity,
for radical giving and sharing.
Jesus says God can do impossible things, like releasing us from our worries,
and freeing us from our insatiable material appetites, and
delivering us into new lives of generosity and gratitude and justice and mercy.
Thanksgiving is a good place to start.
I have said many times that if you have one spiritual practice it should be
the everyday practice of thanksgiving.
Giving thanks opens your eyes to the great generosity of God,
of how many things are given to us out of great grace moment by moment by moment.
Our lives, consciousness, the gifts of astonishment and wonder, our neighbours and our friends,
the great gifts of the earth, and an entire system that delivers those gifts to
places we can easily access them: none of us is self-made: so much is given.
We are dependent on so much that is given, that if we look intently,
like Jesus looks intently at the man,
if we look intently at the people and things around us,
we will see the generous hand of God.
We will see there is nothing to fear from generosity, for God in God’s self is a generous giver.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
But tomorrow is full of possibility.
And thanksgiving opens the door into possibility.
Thanksgiving opens the door into the possibility of generosity and
the healing we so desperately sick.
Thanksgiving offers us a cure to the illness of possessions that so often seem to possess us.
Thanksgiving opens the door to the possibility Jesus sees in us for lives of generosity and
sharing and mercy.
Thanksgiving opens the door to tomorrow – today Jesus opens that door for the man.
And today Jesus wants to open that door for you.
Our communion table here is dressed for thanksgiving.
But every Sunday is thanksgiving day here at this table.
Every Sunday I stand here and give thanks on your behalf for, well, everything in all creation.
It’s a big response to the big generosity of God.
And it’s no accident that I assume a very open position for this thanksgiving:
It’s a biblical posture called the orans, and it’s a very open position.
Because thanksgiving has a way of opening you to the future God has in store for you,
thanksgiving has a way of opening you to the possibilities of tomorrow.
At this table we generously give in hope of God’s possibilities for tomorrow.
We give offerings of money and food and hope that God will do something with our generosity,
And every week God does: God feeds us with a little bit of that food,
and with that food God feeds us with a little bit of divine love,
and then God feeds the hungry poor with the food we gather here and
with the very bodies God has fed.
As if God’s generosity and our thanksgiving opens the door to the possibility of our generosity.
And so God’s generosity flows through us to those who need it most.
It’s the invitation Jesus gives the man this morning.
And it’s the invitation God gives us,
the God who loves us and respects us enough to
give us big answers to our big questions.
To those of us who are trapped in so many ways in a materialistic culture,
God graciously gives us the medicine of thanksgiving and generosity,
a medicine that opens us to the possibility that God in Christ sees in us when God
looks at us – right inside us – gazes at us with love.
And sees us better than we see ourselves, and what we are made for, and what we are capable of.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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