Pentecost 20 – 11 October 2015 - Year B
Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for our meditation is written in the 10th Chapter of
the Gospel according to St Mark: Verses 17 – 31.
17 As he 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?’ 18 Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is
good but God alone. 19 You 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; Honour your father and mother.”’ 20 He
said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ 21 Jesus,
looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own,
and give the money[a] to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ 22 When he
heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How
hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ 24 And
the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again,
‘Children, how hard it is[b] to enter the
kingdom of God! 25 It 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.’ 26 They
were greatly astounded and said to one another,[c]
‘Then who can be saved?’ 27 Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For
mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’
28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything
and followed you.’ 29 Jesus 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,[d] 30 who 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. 31 But
many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’
Let us pray: Father, guide the words of my mouth and the meditation of
our hearts that your Word of truth may lead us to you in faith as beggars, that
we may be saved by your abundant grace. In Jesus name. Amen
From time to time,
I wonder what the rest of the world must think of the developed countries of
the world; Europe, USA, Australia etc. as they watch our lives and programmes on
television. When members of small third
world community gather together for a little social time around the one and
only television in the community and watch the satellite feed, I wonder, what
do they think? What do they think of
houses with more than one room? What do
they think of a woman who can’t decide what to wear while their entire
wardrobe consists only of the clothing they have on at the time? What do they think of people trying to decide
where they will have lunch while they wonder if they will eat at
all that day? Even the poorest of the
poor in Australia would be judged wealthy by citizens in many other nations of
the world. That is why the words of Jesus
in today’s Gospel should raise great concern in every Australian. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of
God.”
Jesus words are
even more startling when we study the role of wealthy people in first century
Israel. In the relatively recent period,
say two hundred years, in our society, there is a special reverence that most
westerners hold for people who take a voluntary vow of poverty in order to
serve others. We admire the doctor who
gives up the wealthy practice in the suburbs in order to minister to the poor
in the inner city. We admire the person
who leaves a good job in Australia in order to feed the poor in some third
world country. Most of us admire the
work Mother Theresa did among the poor in India. We in the church have heard the words of
Jesus concerning wealth so often that we have gotten used to the idea that the
poor have a special place in God’s heart.
This was not the case in first century Israel.
While Biblical
culture certainly frowned on people who amassed wealth illegally, those who
achieved wealth through diligence and hard work were considered to be the favoured
of God. The honoured places in heaven
were reserved for people who obtained wealth in legal ways and used it to
support the church and the community.
The disciples would have thought that the honest rich are the most
likely to enter heaven for they are the favoured ones of God. – I would like to
add here that this line of thinking is still alive and well today: Kenneth
Copeland, of the ‘World Faith Movement’ writes in one of his popular books
‘Laws of Prosperity’ about ‘The
Gospel of Wealth:’ “A
central tenet of the prosperity gospel is that God wills the financial
prosperity of every Christian. If a believer lives in poverty, he/she is living
outside God’s intended will. “You must realise that it is God’s will for you to
prosper” - Friends, this is abhorrent
New Age teaching that draws many people away from our Triune God and leads them
to despair, confusion and in extreme cases suicide.
So to the Disciples
the teachings of Jesus that compare the poor and the wealthy were very
startling for them and the people in that day.
Jesus must have given the disciples a headache when He pointed to the widow’s
mite offering and said in Luke 21:3-4:
“Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their
abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
We can see the
confusion of the disciples in their response to Jesus in our Gospel text. They said to him, “Then who can be saved?” If the odds of the rich are the same as the
odds of that camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle, then who can
get into the Kingdom of God? If the
honest rich can’t get in, then none of us have a chance.
Well “None of us do have a chance through our own effort”. That is the message of the law
in today’s Gospel reading. The teaching
in today’s Gospel reading from St Mark is not that it is bad to be rich, but
that no one is able to enter the Kingdom of God with his or her own
resources. When Jesus said that the most
respected members of the culture could not earn their way into God’s Kingdom,
He is saying that none of us rich or poor can earn a place in God’s
Kingdom. All of us who attempt to use
our own efforts, are as likely to enter God’s Kingdom as a camel is likely to
pass through the eye of a needle.
The Holy Spirit
inspired David to write, in Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Paul writes, in Romans
5:12: “Death spread to all men because all sinned.” Paul listed a few of those sins
in Galatians and then concluded, in Galatians 5:21 “I warn you, as I
warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom
of God.” All of
these verses reveal our sinful nature to us.
We are sinners from conception and the only thing that happens as we
grow and mature is that our sins get more imaginative and destructive. With mankind it is truly impossible to
inherit the Kingdom of God.
What got Jesus into this line of
teaching? In the early part of our text we are told “a rich young man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him."
It seems as though he was going to worship Jesus; but yet, he says, "’Good teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?’" There is a fatal flaw in this young man’s thinking: "What
must I do?" This man was putting the emphasis on himself and what
he could do to save himself. I ask you and include myself, how often, do we
when faced with difficulties or problems, wonder just what we must do or even ask God what He wants us to do, instead of turning the problem over to Jesus in faith and
trust?
If anyone takes
exception to or has any doubt about what Jesus
states in the text, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all
things are possible with God.”
- If you’re not sure about that, pick up the Bible and start reading at
Genesis and you will soon get a clear picture of just how unsuccessful mankind
is at achieving their own salvation, and as you read on it can be clearly seen
how slow mankind is to learn and how deeply entrenched they are in sin, as they
failed God time and time again, only to have God forgive them and in grace
restore them.
You see dear
friends in Christ, God is almighty and He loves us dearly. He loves us so much that we are told in John
3:16-17 “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not
perish but have eternal life. For God
did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.” We do not have the personal resources to enter
the Kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God has all what it takes to enter
us. We do not pray for us to come to
God’s Kingdom. Instead we pray to our
Father in Heaven saying, “Your Kingdom come.”
The Kingdom of God
comes to us in the God-man, Christ Jesus.
In Jesus Christ, God took on a human nature and humbled Himself to live
with us under the law. In His humility,
He kept the law for us. He even humbled
Himself to death on the cross. His
death, the death of a perfect, holy, and innocent man, did for us what it is
impossible for us to do for ourselves.
He made it possible for the Kingdom of God to be in us and for us to be
in the Kingdom of God.
The Holy Spirit
provides the finishing touches for God’s work in us. He makes the impossible, possible. The Holy Spirit that we freely receive at the
Baptismal Font opens up for us an understanding of God’s inerrant Word. When we read and meditate on the Word in our
private time with God: When we share the Word among ourselves as we meet with
our brothers and sisters in Christ to learn and study it. When we hear the Word in Divine Service and
we also taste it as Christ gives us His true Body and Blood in the bread and
wine of the Holy meal; the Holy Spirit is active in our hearts and minds to
bring to life the words of the Holy Scriptures and opens the way for us to
actually hear our Lord and Saviour speaking to us and guiding us according to
His gracious will. The Holy Spirit generously uses all these ways to feed our souls
with God’s Word that we may be one with Him. Through that Word, He creates and
sustains faith in us. He gives us the
faith that believes that the suffering and death of Jesus Christ takes away all
our sins. Through that faith the camel
passes through the needle’s eye – that is, the rich and the poor alike enter
the Kingdom of God.
In our Gospel text,
we heard how a rich young ruler went away sorrowful because gold was his
god. We know nothing more of this young
man, that is God’s business; but we do see how Jesus uses the difficulty that
this young man had to lovingly teach
us that none of us, rich or poor can enter the Kingdom of God on our own. Instead, the Kingdom of God comes to us
because nothing is impossible with God.
Whether we are rich or poor, the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith in the work
of Jesus Christ puts the Kingdom of God in us and us in the Kingdom of
God. Amen.
The love and peace
of our great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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