20th Sunday after Pentecost

One day a pig and a chicken are going for a walk. As they’re walking along, they pass a porch and there’s the entire family sitting there on the front porch, just crying their eyes out. The pig, being the more empathetic of the two, stops and says to the family, “What’s going on? Why are you all crying so much? “We’re so hungry”, they all wailed. We haven’t had anything to eat for days. So, the chicken, not wanting to be outdone in the empathy department, pipes up, “Hey, don’t worry! We can help out! We’ll meet you here tomorrow and we’ll have the best breakfast ever for you! How does bacon and eggs sound to you??” And the family was simply overjoyed.  “Sure,” they said, “that sounds amazing!!”

So, the chicken and the pig continue on their walk. But the pig was not his usual chatty self. And the chicken asks the pig what’s wrong? And the pig says, “Why did you have to promise them that?? Best breakfast ever. Bacon and eggs!!” And the chicken says, “Well, we had to do something. They were starving! And you saw the look in their eyes when I told them that!” And the pig says, “Well, yeah. Sure. But for you this is just a contribution, for me it’s a total commitment!!”

That pig has a lot in common with the rich man in this morning’s gospel lesson. Here, in this familiar and yet always troubling story, Jesus demands a total commitment. “Go, sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Total commitment.

When you’re reading the commentaries on this story, it’s interesting to see how many ways we can find to soften what Jesus says. One common tack is to say that his words were intended for this one man, specifically. It’s not general prescription to everyone. The argument goes that Jesus discerned that this particular man was too much into his own wealth, and so Jesus, when he realized this, simply tailored his advice to this man’s specific situation. He never intended us to think he may be talking to us. Sell everything you have and give it all to the poor. Of course, it’s more difficult to maintain that attitude when you read the rest of the passage and see that Jesus’ words about wealth are applied more generally. The disciples themselves react with astonishment. That should tell us something right there. These humble Galilean fishermen, feel convicted by Jesus’ words. And if they took the words to heart, these subsistence fishermen who probably didn’t have two drachmas to rub together, then we need to do the same.

This rich young man is more like us, than we realize: comfortable, upright, moral, religious. He’d feel right at home in most of our churches. The English Baptist preacher Alexander MacLaren made a telling comment about this man. He said that he is “an utter stranger to the depths of his own heart.” In other words, the doesn’t really understand himself. He doesn’t see that his own material comfort is his biggest stumbling block. It comes as a shock to him. You could even say that he gets outright mad! The Greek word here translated as “shocked” means literally “gloomy”. It’s the word usually used to describe the sky just before a storm. The man’s face is stormy, because he can’t see what Jesus means. To him, his wealth, his material possessions, have nothing to do with his morality or his spiritual life. So, when Jesus makes the connection, he is upset. He storms off.

What he doesn’t understand—and what we so often don’t understand—and what Jesus says so clearly—is that we are easily trapped by money. It is so simple to point fingers about this. We like to point them at politicians who take advantage of their position to raise campaign funds. They’re corrupt, we say, greedy. But the truth is, they are very human people. They have fallen, hook, line and sinker, for the idea that money and power makes life worth living.

In 1991 there was a book published called “The Day America Told the Truth: What People Really Believe About Everything That Really Matters”. It resulted from extensive polling done across the country on a broad variety of topics. One of the things it revealed was that a majority of us, if we could have anything we wanted, would like to have lots of money. We’re really not too different from this young man in the story. Even if we’re not rich, we’d like to be.

Jesus’ point is that material things—money, possessions, property—material things have a way of taking control of our lives. They all too easily become all too important to us. And it’s nothing new. Gregory I, who served as Pope from the year 590 to the year 604, talks very pointedly in one of his sermons about being possessed by possessions. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was hardly an orthodox Christian, made the same observation 150 years ago: “Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind.”

Following Jesus means seeing things in a radically different way. It means seeing things from Jesus’ viewpoint, rather than our own. What happens when we begin to look at money and possessions, not as a ticket to happiness, but as a hindrance to happiness. That’s what Jesus sees when he looks at this man. After all, Mark clearly says that Jesus looked at him and loved him. His telling him to sell everything and give the money to the poor wasn’t a kind of punishment or penance; it was a result of Jesus’ love for the man. He saw that his money was harmful to him. If we had that point of view, then what Jesus says to this man is not crazy at all, but perfectly logical. If we could see—as Jesus apparently does—that money and possessions are actually dangerous to us, harmful to us, then we would find ourselves much less eager to hold on to them.

Think about it this way. This rich man looks at his possessions, his stuff.  To him they represent security, comfort, happiness. He doesn’t see them as a danger or a threat. Jesus is the one who says to him: “You need to cut this out of your life! If you don’t, you may die.” It is a different point of view. It makes “sell everything and give the money to the poor” sound quite different.

Anke and I listen regularly to WAMU, public radio station out of D.C. which just finished its pledge drive. They generally succeed by appealing to self-interest. Give to public radio because you enjoy the programming, and you would be unhappy if it had to be taken off the air. Give to the volunteer fire company, because you want the benefit of having your home saved from a fire. Sometimes the church falls into that same pattern:  give because you value our program, or support our purpose. But a text like this reminds us that the motivation for a Christian’s giving is quite different. We are asked to give out of gratitude, to be sure, but also out of a conviction that what we have will become too important to us if we hold on to it too tightly. We are asked to give because what we have can be a hindrance to our relationship with God.

When a person is baptized, we ask this question, either of the person to be baptized or of the sponsors: “Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises?” One of the most insidious of the empty promises is that which the rich young man in our story had heard. It was the promise that if he would just life a good, upstanding life, keeping the commandments, then God wouldn’t really demand total commitment. If he would just make a contribution, then he could keep the rest for himself—keep his treasure, his status, his possessions. But Jesus says that’s an empty promise. Jesus says that God wants it all, and that when we let things climb into the saddle, we have not really made that total commitment.

When we were baptized, we renounced that empty promise. Living in our baptism means that we are a new creation, that those scales have been washed off our eyes, that we give ourselves freely to our Lord in all the ways that the rich young man was unable to do. It is not what the world says. That’s why everyone in this story is so astounded at Jesus’ teaching—the rich man, yes, but also the disciples. They can’t believe it! “If this is what we need to do, who can be saved?” But Jesus has an answer. “You’re right,” he says. “It is impossible for you—but not for God.”

And that is the word of grace in this passage. The good news is that we don’t have to try to fulfill all these demands by our own strength. In Holy Baptism, we were given to Jesus Christ, and we have him to help us—to challenge us, yes, to astonish us, to shock us at times—but also to help us. He’s the one who can turn darkness into light, weakness into strength. He’s the one who can turn our selfishness and materialism into a flood of generosity, who can turn our contribution into a total commitment and make us glad for it! He’s the one who can take everything we have away from us, and then give us back more than we could ever think of asking. He’s the one who looks on us and loves us, right where we are, right here where we are, and who invites us to follow him, to grow in grace each day so that we may inherit eternal life.

AMEN