Sticker Shock

"Sticker Shock"
Mark 10:17-31


Jesus said some hard things.  Hard to hear.  Hard to listen to.  Hard to comprehend, not because they were so difficult to understand, but because they were understood all too well.

One of the reasons Jesus’ sayings were so hard was because they were startling reversals of what was common coin thinking of that day.  In sayings like the one with which we’re faced today, it’s not difficult to see how Jesus’ sayings continue to reverse the “way it is,” and probably the way it was way before Jesus ever opened his mouth for the first time.  The reversal came when Jesus placed what he thought was important in contrast to something the culture of the day thought was important.  The results are opened eyes and quizzical expressions.

Such was the case with the man who had died and went to heaven.  He was being shown around.  An angel gave him a tour of a lovely mansion.  “Whose is this?” he asked.
“This,” said the guide, “is your gardener’s.”  The man grew in his anticipation, thinking that his heavenly accommodations would be beyond imagining if that’s what his gardner got.  Soon, they arrived at a shack, barely holding together.
“Whose is this?” asked the man.
“This is yours,” said the guide.  To an astonished man, the angel explained, “You see, you didn’t send us enough material to prepare anything better.”

Startling reversals. That’s what much of Jesus’ teaching was comprised of.  He reversed traditions.  He reversed values.  He reversed ideas of enemies and friendship, love and hate, first and last, what was important and what was not.  And maybe most importantly, Jesus gave an eternal dimension to our thoughts and actions.  That is, what we do, what we think, what we feel--all that has eternal consequences.  Not just consequences for the here and now.  That in itself was a reversal of a long standing religious conviction and conception.

The encounter of Jesus with the rich man is what we will look at this morning.  What Jesus is about to do is to pull the threads out of a tapestry of theology that had been woven over many centuries, thus altering its design forever after.

Matthew’s story of this encounter tells us that the rich man is young.  Luke adds the information that he was a ruler.  He sounds like a person who, by the world’s standards, had it all:  youth, money, power.  Yet Mark tells us that the man came running up to Jesus and knelt before him, begging him to tell the secret of how to obtain eternal life.  Something clearly was lacking in the life of that man, who from all outside appearances, was so enviable.

What we find out next adds more to our puzzlement concerning the man’s apparent emptiness.  The man was asking for religious fulfillment, but we find out in response to Jesus’ recitation of a few of the commandments, the man has kept them all!  And not just lately, but since he was a kid.  This man was not only wealthy, young, and powerful.  He was deeply religious as well.

What appears to be on the man’s mind is that he’s got all the bases covered for this life.  But somehow, Jesus’ teaching about an afterlife has got him thinking.  “I’ve got myself in a position of security for the rest of my life,” reasons the young man to himself.  “But if there’s another world, another realm, if there’s more as Jesus speaks about it, then I better make sure I’m set for that as well, whenever it comes.”  Thus the question the man asks Jesus: “How do I get this eternal life?  How do I make sure I”m all set up for the hereafter?”

Now I’m assuming, since this was a wealthy young entrepreneur, wise to the ways of the world and its commerce, he must have been prepared to pay something for what he was asking.  This man was not expecting to get something for nothing.  Everything has it’s price.  He knew it was going to cost him, and he many even have been prepared to pay a lot.

But little was the man prepared for the “sticker shock” that Jesus laid on him:  “Go and sell all you possess, and give to the poor…”  Everything the man now leans upon for his security in this life must be given up in order to have that which is eternal.  To gain the one, he loses the other; to keep what he has, makes what he has requested of Jesus slip through his fingers.  Mark tells us the man’s “face fell.”  As the Good News Bible has it, “gloom spread over his face.”

What is interesting to me is that even though his was a bartering society, the man didn’t even make a blink of an attempt to bargain Jesus down.  There must have been something about the look and the tone of Jesus that told the man, no discounts were allowed on the price of eternal life.  No haggling about the price of Kingdom come.

There are a couple of points I find interesting about this familiar and distressing story.  I’ve just alluded to one of them about no bartering when it comes to eternal life.  Why didn’t the man stick around to see how serious Jesus was about his demand?  But he didn’t.  It’s the disciples who take up the bartering with their Master.  One almost gets the feeling that they are so astonished at what Jesus said, and so bewildered they were almost tempted to yell after the man as he walked away, “Come back; Jesus was only kidding.  Weren’t you, Jesus?”

It’s interesting to me that it’s the disciples who mouth and express the astonishment, shock, and amazement that would have been more appropriately expressed by the rich man himself.  The disciples take up the ball, dropped by the rich man, in terms of the price tag on eternal life.

What has happened is that the rich man understands clearly.  He knows exactly what Jesus is doing with him.  He knows what the decision before him is.  He makes his decision and walks away.  It’s the disciples, men who have been with Jesus all along, men who you would think would also understand clearly, but do not. They are still trying to negotiate a better deal.

Maybe that’s why some people are so involved in church.  It’s not that they are lovers of Jesus as much as it is they are still bartering with Jesus, using their activity as coinage to leverage Jesus down from his original demands.

A second point of interest to me is that Jesus accepts the rich young ruler’s evaluation that he has been a religiously faithful person since he was a kid.  He has been faithful to the commandments that Jesus recited out of the list of God’s Top Ten:
Do not murder.
Do not commit adultery.
Do not steal.
Do not bear false witness.
Honor your father and mother.

He has obeyed all these.  It was as if Jesus were asking a present day person,

Have you taught Sunday School?
Have you sung in the choir?
Have you attended church services more Sundays than you’ve missed?
Have you gone to all the potluck suppers?
Have you involved yourself in a small group?
Have you ever served as Elder or Deacon?

The modern person would reply, “Yeah, Jesus; I’ve been doing all that since I was a kid.  We never had a choice when I was growing up.  Whenever the church doors were open, we were there.”  And Jesus replies, to all of us who are so rich in church activity, “That’s great.  Uhh, (pause) but there’s one other thing.”  You should know that when Jesus says, “But…” you better duck, because one of his great reversals is on its way at you.  Let’s see if we can ease ourselves into this reversal a little more gently than the rich man was.

First, Jesus recited some of the 10 Commandments.  Can anyone tell me what the other ones were that Jesus left off his list?  If you can’t remember specifically, tell me what they dealt with.  Anyone remember?

You shall have no other gods besides me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol…
You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God am a jealous God…

Jesus had left off the first part of the list of commandments that deal with relationship with and faithfulness to God above all other things.  That’s what Jesus was hitting at when he asked the young man to sell everything.  In effect, Jesus was telling the man, “You’re doing OK on the last seven.  But you’re falling on your face with the first three.  And they’re the most important.”

Jesus didn’t have to recite the first three commandments to the man, or ask him to recite them.  Instead, Jesus craftily came in the back door and exposed that which was getting in the way of the first three commandments.  That way, Jesus didn’t have to speak one word of the first three commandments for the man to understand clearly where Jesus was headed.

What the rich young ruler had done was to substitute his relationship with his possessions for his relationship with God.  And he had used his religiosity as a smoke screen to cover up the fact that, though he appeared faithful, he didn’t know God at all.

There was an actor who was at a reception.  He was asked by the host to recite the 23rd Psalm with all the thespian talent at his command.  He agreed to do so on the condition that a minister, who was also present, would recite the Psalm after he was finished.

It was agreed upon by the minister, so the actor stood up and slowly, effectively, and dramatically began to recite the psalm everyone knows so well.  When he lay down beside the still waters, the audience could almost see a pond.  His walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death was a chilling, sobering journey for the rapt listeners.  The table prepared in the presence of his enemies was almost visible, and they could almost smell the food, so powerful was his tone of voice.

When the actor concluded there was a slight pause, and then tremendous applause, whistles and cries of “bravo!”

Then the minister stood up.  He began quietly, somberly, but powerfully.  There fell a hush over the room.  As if such a thing were possible, the hush grew even deeper as he continued.  Then, softly, the rustle of tissues was heard as the people were moved to wet eyes and sniffling noses.

The actor rose beside the minister and said, “I’ve reached your senses, for I know the 23rd Psalm.  But he has reached your hearts, because he knows the Shepherd.”

Likewise, so many can recite the words of religiosity, and throw up smoke screen after smoke screen, hiding the shallowness of their relationship to the living Lord who stands behind those words.  Instead of knowing God, they know something else.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be money, as it was with the young man.  It can be anything else that has taken that spot of ultimate concern in our lives.

Jesus may honor our smoke screens to a point, as he did with the rich young man.  But (and there’s that word again) at some point the Lord is going to also say to each one of us, “One thing you lack:  go and…”  How will the Lord finish that sentence for you?  Go and do what?  Go and sacrifice what--that which we’ve been on a more intimate basis than we have with God?

And let’s ask ourselves one more question about this man’s encounter with Jesus.  What would have happened if he sold his possessions?  Personalize it.  What would happen if we eliminated that which captivates our ultimate concern and attention?  What would happen is that there would be a huge hole in our lives.  What would happen is that there would be a vacuum, an empty space, that would need to be filled.

What we decide to put in that empty place is the bigger of the decisions.  The decision to “Go and sell” is a big one.  But the decision of greater import is what we will fill the empty space with.  Or more appropriately, with whom will we fill our void?  The best decision, according to the first three commandments, this encounter of Jesus and the rich man, and the witness of the whole Bible is God.

The rich man was looking for eternal life.  But Jesus was trying to get him to see that what he really needed was nothing less and nothing more than God.  To have God would be having eternal life.  To have God means having it all; but the converse is not true:  having it all doesn’t mean you have God.

A man told about the time he was riding a trolley in San Francisco.  He noticed the driver could easily make the car go slowly or fast.  When they came to a crossing street, the driver could touch the handle and make the trolley creep along like a snail.  But touching the handle again, the driver could make it speed up the hills.

The rider became curious and spoke to the trolley driver about it.  The driver said, “When I squeeze this handle I open the mouth that grips the tracks, and it barely touches them.  When I want it to go fast, it grips the tracks fully and gets all the power from the overhead wires.  We call going slowly, ‘skinning the wire.’

It’s my prayer that each person here would let go of those things which only allows you to barely grasp the power of God; that you would keep from just skinning the wire with God and God’s power.  Instead, let us grip God, and God alone, so that we can know him fully, powerfully, and eternally.