He Went Away Sad
Mark 10:17-27

While I am still freshly back in the pulpit and not yet taken by the siren song of committee meetings and to-do lists, I want to keep holding the bigger questions in front of us:

What is this thing we are doing?

What is this particular and peculiar life together we are seeking?

How is it so many different kinds of people can show up in churches across the country, read similar translations of ancient texts, and come to very different conclusions about life and love and neighbor?

What does it actually mean to follow Jesus?

Today we come to the story of a man who asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In Matthew’s telling of this encounter, the man is described as rich and young. In Mark’s, he is a ruler. And so the story is usually referred to as the rich, young, ruler.

Luis Menéndez-Antuña calls this text “one of the most radical teachings we can find in the Gospel.” Pointing to the modern-day misuse of the word radical,” much like “literally” and “awesome,” he goes on to explain, “‘radical’ comes from radix, radicis and refers to the roots of a plant, a problem, the grounding assumptions of an argument. Subsequently, to say that the teaching in this Gospel…is ‘radical’ is to hint at the idea that the narrative tackles a grounding problem, it touches a root problem. Since the passage in question broaches the topic of discipleship, the epithet ‘radical’ refers to what constitutes the essence of Christian belonging and identity.”

I might challenge Menendez-Antuna’s limiting the conversation to Christian belonging and identity because I continue to believe that Jesus’ words are best understood in the context of 1st century Palestinian Judaism and a larger rabbinical debate that was happening at that time. So taking this one encounter and then zooming all the way out to a big, broad perspective, I think Jesus is answering the man’s direct question about eternal life by pointing to the ultimate priority of God–the full living of our lives not just as individuals but as a collective. And Jesus can see the man’s fidelity is to his own wellbeing, status, and comfort rather than the comprehensive flourishing of his neighbors’ lives and his own.

Jesus can also hear unspoken questions and assumptions in the man’s voice: when have my sacrifices been enough? At what point have I kept enough commandments and made enough tributes in the temple that I have arrived? When can I say I have succeeded and don’t have to keep working at all of this? And Jesus knows those questions and assumptions aren’t about his own growth into the fullness of who he was created to be. 

See: what if the issue isn’t so much the wealth specifically. Let’s ask more questions of this conversation. What if the issue at hand is that this man could not be wealthy in a 1st century Palestinian culture without benefiting from the harm and suffering of others. Think of the story of Zacchaeus, a tax collector who gained wealth by stealing from the working class and the poor. Zacchaeus is meant to represent the villains of the economic structure, and he willingly and easily gives it all back to follow Jesus. 

The [rich, ruler] man’s wealth puts him in an oppressive role by nature of the systems and structures of the day. It’s how the economy was structured. If that’s the role he plays in his culture, which is a very big issue, then maybe Jesus is calling the RYR out for something else; and it’s not just about the role he plays in society. Jesus is calling him out for being able to comfortably stay within his lifelong, faithful, religious tradition knowing it will never actually, deeply cost him anything. The known tradition will allow him to live unchanged, unchallenged, unfazed by the call of God to live a life that’s true and full and real and connected.

And lest we think this is a new teaching with Jesus, which Christians have done for way too long, let’s look to the prophets of Hebrew scripture. Jesus is pointing to a tradition of teaching within his own faith that is being ignored. 

In Matthew 9, a group of Pharisees asked why Jesus keeps eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus says to the Pharisees, the religious experts of his day, the keepers of law, the protectors of tradition, “Go and learn what this means.”

And he quotes:

Hosea 6:6 “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.”

Can you even imagine it? Hey guys, hey teachers and protectors of the faith, go and learn what this line of your own sacred story means: I desire love and not sacrifices.”

The tradition doesn’t stop there. Take your pick. Study the prophets.

Micah 6:6-8 “‘With what shall I come before the Lord,

    and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,

    with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

    with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

    and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God?”

Isaiah 1

1 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

    says the Lord;

When you come to appear before me,[a]

    who asked this from your hand?

    Trample my courts no more;

bringing offerings is futile;

    incense is an abomination to me.

Your new moons and your appointed festivals

    my soul hates;

they have become a burden to me,

    I am weary of bearing them.

cease to do evil,

    learn to do good;

seek justice,

    rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

    plead for the widow. 

Jesus is not saying something new here, he’s standing firmly, robustly in the line of an old, old story and flicking away all of the performative distractions that have been centralized as the essence of religiosity and spirituality rather than faith as a way of life. 

This encounter appears in each of the synoptic Gospels, which is a pretty big “pay attention” clue for those of us reading translations of these words thousands of years later. In each one, he says he has kept the commandments since his youth. And in each one, Jesus tells him the thing he lacks is separating himself from his wealthy status.

So Jesus is telling this man, “If that’s the life you want, then aren’t part of what I’m doing.”

And Jesus isn’t being a jerk here. He’s simply being very clear. And clear, as Brene Brown says, is kind. Mark writes, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing.”

And with that, the man goes away grieving. Hold this moment with me. The man goes away grieving.

Noting contemporary writings of the 1st century that use the same Greek word translated as “grieving” or “sad, Menendez-Antuna notes, “authors use stugnasas to describe a moral disposition rather than a temporary mood. If we understand the wealthy man’s reaction in terms of morality (virtue) rather than psychology (mood), one could infer that Jesus’ teaching creates a crisis of character. In other words, Jesus’ teaching, rather than creating a temporary emotion, reveals the durable disposition of a man unable to release his belongings (slaves [likely] included).”

The man’s fidelity to his religious tradition doesn’t matter to eternal life (abundant life, expanded life, fullness of life). It doesn’t matter that he’s ticked the right boxes all those years and made all the right sacrifices and kept the letter of all those commandments. None of that has grown him. All of that has been peripheral to his living. His life is not shaped by the ways he professes to believe, and Jesus knows it.

The disciples, watching and hearing all of this, are perplexed. They don’t understand what is happening. They, too, are products of their 1st century culture.

Raquel Lettsome posits, “​​The disciples’ response suggests that they also view wealth as a sign of Divine favor, a blessing from God. Therefore, it is counter-intuitive for those who have wealth to find it hard to enter God’s kingdom. In their society, wealth grants access rather than prohibits it. Wealth is a stepping stone, not a stumbling block.”

So it’s not just the rich, young, ruler. As we have learned to say of whiteness in our conversations about white supremacy and racism, it is the water in which we swim. The disciples and the RYR were swimming in the waters of inequality and injustice. How could they see it if that was the default way of life? 

The economic realities of the disciples’ culture was assumed as normative. They do not have space in their imaginations to fathom a different order of things. And Jesus is telling them all that the order of things in God’s eternal life is radically (rootedly) different than what we have seen and known. If all they have seen is one way, Jesus is offering them a different lens. A different way of experiencing life all the way the point at which it expands exponentially because it’s no longer just about you. It’s no longer just about me.

This is why I ask people who enter the baptismal waters the questions that I do, particularly the question about the fruit of the holy spirit. Do you commit yourself to the path of Jesus? Do you commit yourself to seeing the image of God within yourself and within everyone you encounter? If we are genuinely pursuing the ways of God and the Jesus path, we will be shaped by kindness, goodness, patience, gentleness, love, joy, peace, faithfulness, and self-control. Maybe not all at once. Maybe some days better than others. But our lives will be producing something that brings us closer to reflecting the ways of the Christ. And when we fall short, we should feel the crisis of character that this man felt. Am I the person I really claim to be?

What is this thing we are doing?

What is this particular and peculiar life together we are seeking?

How is it so many different kinds of people can show up in churches across the country, read similar translations of ancient texts, and come to very different conclusions about life and love and neighbor?

What does it actually mean to follow Jesus?