Diagnosis: Wealth

 Mark 10:17-31  October 10, 2021

 
When my Aunt was about 24

Camel
Ryan Fox

years old she went to the

doctor for a routine physical.

 

Like any 24 year old, she thought that she

was perfectly healthy.

She suspected that doctor would merely 

suggest that she lose the extra 15 pounds that she

gained in college and let her go.

 

But in that visit, the doctor had

found a suspicious number in

one of the blood tests.

After a couple of follow ups

She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

 

At 24, she had a mastectomy

and was told that she should not

ever attempt to have children.

 

Because she was 24 years old,

I’m sure that my aunt went in believing that she was perfectly healthy.

She entered into that office secure in her health

but she ended up getting some very bad news

that would change her life entirely.

I’m sure some of you have been there.

  

The same thing happens

in the gospel story today.

It begins with a man running up to Jesus.

Usually when we see someone

running up to Jesus in the gospels,

they want to be healed.

and Jesus heals most people very quickly.

 

But in this case, it will take a little longer,

because this man does not even realize that he is sick.

 

In fact, it is just the opposite.

This man feels perfectly healthy.

This man is secure.

His life in this world is so secure in fact,

that he has checked it off his list.

He has moved onto eternal life

and he wants to know what he

needs to do to secure that part as well.

 

When he is asked about the commandments,

he answers Jesus with a cocky confidence.

Yes, all that is taken care of.

He believes that he is in great shape

And it is obvious that he is well

because God has rewarded him

with wealth and possessions.

 

Like my aunt, the rich man

came to Jesus for a routine physical.

But he received a terrible diagnosis.

His wealth and security had made him awfully sick.

 

The man interpreted his riches to be an asset,

but Jesus thought that they were a detriment.

 

Jesus tells the man that if he were really well,

that he should be willing to give away everything that he owns.

Give everything away.  Not just some. That will cure you.

 

When posed with this proposition,

the man understands that maybe

everything is not as ship shape as

he thought it was in his life.

 

Jesus words cut this man to the bone

and sent him away grieving and no longer proud.

 

Jesus words sometimes do that to us.

It’s been said that the gospel words of Jesus

“comfort the afflicted and

afflict the comfortable.”

 

When we become too complacent and comfortable

with our own accomplishments,

too sure of our own well-being,

then Jesus words come in to

remind us that all is not as it appears.

 

Like this man,

our possessions and accomplishments

can make us feel like we have achieved so much.

And we accumulate more and more

security, land, savings, investments

to stave off the feeling of reliance on any one.

 

But actually, our own accomplishments and our own

possessions and security can lie to us.

They tell us that we are fine and everyone else

that’s not in our position has the problem.

We’re sick and we don’t even know it.

 

The world, especially this world in the US

forces us to grasp for whatever we can get.

We call it independence and self-sufficiency,

but it’s really forced us to  be self-centered.

It’s isolated us into these independent kingdoms of personal wealth.

 

Some of us have been fortunate enough

to get what we need to live comfortably,

and some of us even have more

But many other people have not been so lucky.

 

And what happens is when we use the world’s

standards, we diagnose ourselves as healthy,

and we diagnose those others as sick.

The world has drilled this into our heads

so much that it is hard to see any other reality.

 

But those aren’t God’s standards.

God doesn’t look at the rich person and say,

“Great job, you have done well”

any more than God looks at the poor

and says, “Well, you’ve really made some

bad choices in your life.”

That’s the world talking.

  

The man saw those who were

flocked around Jesus who were

ill and possessed by demons

and the rich man assumed that

he was not like those people.

 

But Jesus is not fooled by this man’s

wealth or his confidence.

When Jesus looks at him,

he doesn’t see his outside trappings.

Jesus sees right through his wealth.

 

Jesus could see that this man

was addicted to the security

that his riches had given him.

This man was possessed by demons just like the others.

He was possessed by his possessions.

 

The bottom line is, all of our assets mean nothing to God.

They are not God’s blessing,

And their absence isn’t God’s curse.

Our wealth can actually be a detriment because

those assets can fool us into thinking all is well.

 

Our money, security, self-sufficiency mean nothing to God.

 

- Unless it is shared with others.

That’s the only way that money is an asset in God’s eyes.

That’s what can cure this illness.

Take what you have and give it away.

  

Now it’s stewardship month,

And yes, it would be easy now to say

“Share it with the church” – problem solved, the end.

The church is one way to share and it’s

one way that I choose to share

and I of course I hope you do too.

But it’s not the only way.

 

We can share with agencies and organizations

with people we know in need,

with people we don’t know and just met.

We know many of the ways we can share.

 

That’s not the important thing though,

the important thing for us to remember,

is that what we share is the only thing

that counts in God’s Kingdom.

What we give away is our only asset.

 

My aunt lived well into her 70’s.

The cancer returned in her 50’s,

but she survived that round too.

And although she was just a public school

teacher and my uncle was disabled,

And they didn’t have much money,

they gave most of it away.

They paid for my apartment all through college

which I am forever grateful for.

She learned early on that what she had

was not her own and everything was a gift.

  

I read that in Jerusalem

there was a city gate.

called the eye of the needle.

That might have been what Jesus was talking about in this gospel.

It was built narrow and small to keep

out hostile outsiders.

 

The space is just enough to get a camel through,

but it is too small to get it through with any of the baggage

that they would carry on the camel.

To get through it, the driver has to

remove all of the stuff from the camel.

 

Coming before God is like that too.

We will be divested of our things.

We will be stripped of our own abilities

and all of the façades, and confidence we have.

We will not have the wealth and power and privilege

we have in this world.

We will be stripped of the lies that we tell ourselves

to make us believe that everything is okay.

 

When we come before God,

we will be without all the things that we

have so long relied on.

When our baggage has been taken off

we come to God the same as those

who came to Jesus with demons and leprosy,

the same as prisoners and those with no home.

  

We come to God the same as the ones

that we have looked down on with pity.

We all come before God as beggars.

 

And God will see right through us.

Just like Jesus looked through the rich man.

God will see us for exactly who we really are.

And like Jesus, God will look on us with love.

 

So what do we need to do get eternal life?

If it was up to us, it would be impossible.

But nothing is impossible for God.