“The Grace of Impossibility”
Mark 10:17-31
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
10/14/18
17As [Jesus] was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’”
20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”
21Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?”
27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, 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, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”(NRSV)
Mark writes the earliest and the shortest gospel. And he tells the story of Jesus with urgent yet thoughtful purpose. Pay close attention to the context of a story in Mark, and you’ll likely see more than meets the eye.
For instance, when a man asks Jesus what he “must…do to inherit eternal life” – as if grace can be earned – his question immediately follows Jesus saying that to enter the kingdom of God, receive it as a child would. The man either didn’t hear that teaching, or he’s so possessed by his possessions that he’s blind and deaf to grace. Mark creates revealing tension that way.
Responding to the man, Jesus says, Only God is good, but I bet you know that. And I bet you know the commandments, too, don’t you? Don’t kill, cheat, steal, and lie. Respect your parents.
“Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth,” the man says proudly.
Jesus looks at the man and with that deep, selfless ache called agape love, says, Good. Now, you’re missing one thing; “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
And just like that, Jesus loses another disciple, because the wealthy man just doesn’t get it. Indeed, with the unforgettable image of a camel and the eye of a needle, Jesus implies that preciselybecauseof all their determination and proud self-sufficiency, wealthy people can’tget it.
Christians who live and worship in wealthy and powerful nations crave stories like the one about a single tiny gate in the wall around Jerusalem, a gate called “the eye of the needle” through which a camel could actually pass if unloaded and forced through on its knees. Such tidbits suggest that maybe Jesus wasn’t entirely right. Maybe violent domination and hyper-consumption are not entirelyantithetical to the ways of the kingdom. But there’s no evidence of such a gate, so it’s a false hope.1
Some have also tried to find comfort in the fact that the Greek word for camel and the Greek word for the thick rope used to tether a ship to its mooring are only one vowel apart.2Such a rope may be smaller than a camel, but threading it through a needle’s eye is no less impossible.
After his eye-of-the-needle comment, Jesus even loses his most faithful disciples – for the moment, anyway. ‘We’re all doomed! they cry.
Well, if you try to do it by yourself, yeah. It’s impossible, says Jesus, “but…for God all things are possible.”
Peter, ever the clueless hero, whines that the disciples have “left everything.” We’re good men, he says. We go to synagogue. We listen to you and other rabbis. We do what you tell us the scriptures tell us to do. We may not deserve to get into the kingdom, but for crying out loud, we ought to! We followed the rules!
The gospels reveal that disciples often mistake rule-following for Jesus-following. Rule-following religion breeds score-keeping, and, therefore, judgment of others. It doesn’t make people grateful, or generous, or humble. Being all about reward, rule-following breeds idolatry. It renders us proud, satisfied, and entitled.
When all we hear Jesus say is Believe in me so that I will forgive your sins and give you eternal life,discipleship can become pretty much whatever we want it to be. So long as we believe, and mostly behave, we don’t have to do anything really difficult.
To enter the kingdom,says Jesus,to understand true abundance and blessedness, follow me. Let go of all your stuff, and learn to practice the impossible.
I’m going to share some personal observations. Now, this isn’t sociological research. These are simply the reflections of a 55-year-old who has been listening, watching, reading, and, for the last 22 years, trying to preach Jesus. In the limited cross-section of culture familiar to me, it seems that some of us emphasize adhering to long-standing traditions of thinking and acting. We seek to control property and people for personal gain that we then claim as divine blessing. Others of us seek blessedness in challenging conventional ways of thinking and acting. We declare solidarity with poor, oppressed, and marginalized people, and all the while remain comfortably sheltered in privilege and security. As the culture around us gets increasingly polarized, as we all grasp desperately for control, our rhetoric toward each other gets more accusatory, demeaning, and stuck in absurd superlatives. We’rethe best and the first. You’rethe worst and the last.
Our polarization isn’t linear, though. Our respective furies seem to arc in such a way that we’re actually coming closer together. And rather than finding a place of creative ferment, a place in which we acknowledge both our very real differences andthe ways in which we necessarily balance and complement each other, this new place – which is anything but new in grand scheme of human history – becomes a place in which we simply mirror each other’s brokenness, a place marred by fear, competition, and vengeance. And in that place, our hostility toward each other is breeding a fresh and violent chaos.
Again, that’s just my subjective musing. So, take it or leave it.
Then again, Jesus experienced a time and place in which his disciples and his detractors came together to create fresh and violent chaos. And in the verses immediately following today’s text, Jesus predicts, for the third and final time, that day of darkness. That day when everyone tries in their own broken and selfish way to control the outcome of an out-of-control moment. And in doing so, they find themselves, as differently motivated as they may be, equal partners in the execution of God’s Christ. And out of that all-too-possible violence God creates something impossibly beautiful and hopeful.
Impossibility is an idea that powerful and entitled peoples tend to embrace. And when we limit ourselves to the possible, we regard worldly wealth and violent power as sovereign. So, whoever has the most stuff and can inflict the most damage wins. The world calls that “reality.”
Then Jesus says, Lay all your stuff down. Give it all away. As long as you put your trust in human means and human systems, you will never experience or bear witness to the personally, communally, and globally transforming gift of grace. No,says Jesus, whoever loses wins. Whoever is last is first. And the world calls that “fantasy.”
The Christian philosopher, Jacques Ellul, wrote the following paragraph specifically about money, but if you hold onto anything tighter than you hold onto Jesus, as I read these words, wherever Ellul says “money,” insert whatever idol you may be holding onto: “How [do we] overcome the spiritual ‘power’ of money? Not by accumulating more money, not by using money for good purposes, not by being just and fair in our dealings. The…only way to overcome the spiritual ‘power’ of money is to give our money away, thus desacralizing it and freeing ourselves from its control…To give away money is to win a victory over the spiritual power that oppresses us.”3
Jesus says it this way, more or less: When you demonstrate discipleship in concrete deed rather than superficial piety, when you find yourself fulfilled at the back of the line rather than the front, thenwill you be following me rather than rules. Thenwill you live a life defined by love rather than fear. Thenwill you inhabit a creation in which the impossible – in which resurrection – is the gracious new reality. And thenwill you inhabit the kingdom of God.
All of this is absurd and impossible, until we surrender all we have and all we are to the grace of God.
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle
2C. Clifton Black, in his article “Exegetical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Year B, Vol. 4. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Eds. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2009. Pg. 169.
3Charles L. Campbell, in his article “Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Year B, Vol. 4. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Eds. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2009. Pg. 169.
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