The Possessions Pivot: A Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday

The Possessions Pivot:  A Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday

Preached at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday, October 10, Thanksgiving Sunday and the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost.  

Readings for Proper 28B:  Job 23:1-9,16-17; Ps. 22.1-15; Heb 4.12-16; Mark 10:17-31

 

When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.  Mark 10.22

Today’s gospel comes to us as a rude shock, especially if we were looking forward to Thanksgiving Sunday as a time to be grateful for the abundance we enjoy, only to hear Jesus say “It’s nice that you have good things, now give them all to the poor and follow me”.   Probably not the message we were expecting to hear today, so we could probably be forgiven for trying to use the traditional trick of assuming that Jesus isn’t really speaking to us.  I think there’s a tendency, certainly one I’ll confess to, to assume that when Jesus has pointed things to say in the gospels, he’s not really speaking to us.   Surely Jesus is speaking to someone who really needs to hear the unvarnished truth – tax collectors, or pharisees, yes, but not me, not us, not us Anglicans.

As comfortable as that side-step might be when convenient, I think today’s gospel reading from Mark is a bullet that we simply can’t dodge.   First, there’s the anonymity of the man who comes to Jesus.  Just like us, really, for didn’t we all come here today to meet Jesus and hear what he has to say?  Furthermore, he’s someone who wants to please God, lead a good life, and be rewarded in heaven.   Again, just like us, because it would be odd if you came to church regularly but didn’t want to lead a good life and didn’t want to.  So this well-intentioned man serves as a kind of mirror in which we glimpse our own faces, however uncomfortable that might be.

To make the rich man even more generic, even more mirror-like, unlike in St. Luke’s version of this story he is not described as being a ruler.   Thus we can’t say “well, this guy’s in a higher tax bracket than me, so it doesn’t apply” because in looking at him, Jesus seems to know the man’s one flaw, that his attachment to his “many possessions” (Mk 10.22) will hold him back.  Sound uncomfortably familiar?  Don’t we have “many possessions”?  

Most of us have boxes, bins, garages and storage units full of possessions.  Many of us are sitting in real estate that’s insanely valued in an insane market, not to mention wealth portfolios and pensions.  Even those of us without these things, those on fixed incomes, are wealthier and more privileged than most people on this planet, and certainly we’re wealthier than most people who have ever lived.  As the biblical scholar Matt Skinner notes, there is no getting out of this gospel lesson, no escape route, not even wishful claims that there was a gate in Jerusalem called The Needle that camels could squish through if they dropped some of their load.  So, no, there’s no way we can pretend that Jesus’ words don’t apply to us.

“You lack one thing.”   This “one thing” that Jesus focuses on is pulls this man out of the comfortable sphere of his own personal piety and into the wider sphere of society and community that Jesus later describes in the gospel reading as “the kingdom of God”.   The kingdom of God us social.   To want to enter the kingdom of God, we must be willing to enter a community of transformed and transforming people, knowing that the entrance will cost and will change us.

 The social values of the kingdom of God make demands on us.  As Christians and disciples, we know that charity, the care of the poor, is one of the values of this kingdom that we’re obliged to follow.   Many of Jesus’ teachings (Mt 25.31-46 is perhaps the most dramatic example) tell us that God will judge us on how we care for the least among us.   Most of us are comfortable with the idea of some tithing, of donating a modest share of our wealth, but here Jesus takes it to an extreme.  His call to “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor”, seems akin to the vows of poverty required by monastic organizations.    No wonder the man is “shocked” and “grieving”.   I think that if Jesus fixed us with his gaze and told us to do the same, we too would be “shocked” and “grieving”.

I think it’s important for us to sit with this gospel reading for a while and acknowledge our own shock and grief at our inability to be generous.   There’s a word for this kind of self-examination in our Christian tradition– repentance.  Mark’s gospel practically begins with this word.  As soon as he is baptized, Jesus baldly states what he is about:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near  repent; and believe in the good news” (Mk 1.15).  Repent here is used as part of a pivot, away from the world (repent in Mark’s Greek, as is often said, means a changing of the mind) and towards the good news of the kingdom of God coming into being.   Jesus here gives the man a glimpse of what it means to accept this kingdom and the kind of transformation it offers, but the man turns away in despair, unable to make the pivot, held back by his old life.

The man isn’t alone in his depair.  Surely there’s something of despair, mixed in with petulance, in Peter’s words to Jesus, “Look, we’ve left everything to follow you”.   The disciples feel that they’ve made the necessary sacrifices, and to be fair, they have walked away from families and livelihoods to follow Jesus, and now Jesus is telling them that it’s impossible for humans to save themselves by their own pious efforts.   In one breath, Jesus seems to say “give away all you have”, and in the next, he seems to say, “it won’t be enough”.    If we were there, surely we’d be grumbling along with Peter and the disciples.

 If we’re perplexed at this point, let’s recall that this gospel story happens on a road, as Jesus is “setting out on a journey” (Mk 1.17) – the Greek text simply says Jesus is setting out on the way.  It’s not a random stroll.  We know where this road goes.   Three times in this part of Mark, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to Jerusalem, where he will be killed  (Mk 8.27, 9.33,10.32).  Seen in this context, Jesus’ invitation to the rich man is a variant on “If any want to become my follower, let them take up their cross and follow me” (Mk 8.34).   Sell your possessions and follow me is the same call to self-sacrifice, and no wonder that the rich man remains at the side of the road, watching Jesus go where he cannot go.

Again to quote Matt Skinner, if the rich man is standing at the side of the road, he’s in good company, because that’s where we are.  As Skinner writes, “You and I are beside the way ... We watch. We evaluate. We take a few steps in the right direction every now and then. Sometimes we hide in the bushes and hope Jesus has forgotten our pledge to follow him.”

We know that Jesus is going to the place where we can’t go, to be the sacrifice that we can’t be, to give what we can’t give, out of God’s love for us, the same love with which he looked at the rich man, the same way that he looks at us.  We are saved by love and grace, and for that we are ever grateful. 

At the same time, sacrifice is in our DNA as disciples and as church.   Sacrifice is part of the kingdom of God.  We know that we are called to give, to care, to help.   We know that the story of the Good Samaritan is always there to pull us back from our moments of complacent and self-congratulatory holiness.  We know that we must hold our prosperity and security less tightly if we are to reach out a hand to those around us.   Indeed, how can we help others, if our hands our firmly clutching out stuff? As Jesus promises his disciples, the way of self-sacrifice, however timidly we take it, leads to rewards and blessings.

As disciples, we never know when this sacrificial giving may be asked of us, but I think we may recognize these moments when they come, and even be grateful for them.   Near my home in Barrie, a United Church congregation was dwindling, and after years of struggle and waning energies, they agreed to close, but in a way that had a profound impact on their community.   After selling the building, they put the proceeds in a trust, and chose deserving local charities, such as a women’s shelter, to receive funds from that trust      That congregation could have gone on for a few more years, perhaps, but instead they chose the way of the cross, and as their final act, brought the kingdom of God a little nearer to those who desperately needed it.

People, like churches, may find similar opportunities as we draw near to the end. For many of us in a greying congregation there may be opportunities to plan our estates or dispose of assets in such a way that we can be less encumbered as we follow Jesus.    Wherever we are in life, all of us can take a moment to ask, how much further could we follow Jesus if we were less burdened with the things we selfishly cling to.   This Thanksgiving weekend, I pray that we may be all more thankful for our call as disciples, and less mindful of what sacrifices that call might ask of us.