Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Two critical points about this morning’s Gospel really struck me for the first time this week. These were not insights gained through my normal means of sermon preparation–I typically first consult patristic commentaries (that is, the reflections of the Church Fathers of the first few centuries of Christian history); perhaps the most well-used books in my office aside from the bible itself and the prayerbook would be my twenty-eight volume set of Patristic bible commentaries. There’s also a lectionary podcast from a couple of priests and a lectionary blog from a seminary dean I subscribe to that regularly help me look at the lessons in a different way. This week, though, it was in discussing the lesson with Annie, who pointed out a couple of things that had not really occurred to me, and which I was shocked to find had not occurred to the Church Fathers in my books either.

First, before his hard commandment to the rich young ruler to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor, we are told that “Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.” While wealth can certainly create moral and spiritual difficulties, Jesus is not playing into an “eat the rich” mentality. As a preacher I’m often frustrated with some of my colleagues who came up during a period in which the modus operandi was to preach more about social and political issues than about the heart of the Gospel (which is about universal grace and the mercy offered to all).

This frustration isn’t because I necessarily disagree with the positions these colleagues take (I frequently do!) but because this approach elides the central point of the Gospel for what I take to be its moral implications, and whenever it becomes all about how good I am at being good, I’m in trouble. The love Jesus has for the rich man and his subsequent statement that salvation is impossible if dependent on human effort but all things are possible with God, is a necessary antidote to the sort of moralism which will always make us see ourselves as inadequate.

Second, Annie reminded me that while the rich young ruler left Jesus in sorrow because of what his mandate would mean, we never find out what he actually ends up doing. Like I said, the Church Fathers I consulted assumed that his was a hopeless case–he was too tied to his own wealth to be obedient to Jesus’ command and was thus unjustified. But we just don’t know if that’s the case or not. It is entirely possible that he did end up selling all his possessions and giving the money to the poor. His initial reaction does not necessarily imply what he’s going to do next. I am not proud to admit this, but sometimes when I know I have to do something that I don’t want to do I get pretty irritable and even sulky, but then I “do the thing” and ninety-nine times out of a hundred I actually end up enjoying it and feeling gratified for having done it. Perhaps as a hopeful people we should also hope that this happened with the rich young ruler.

There is an important caveat to all this. No, we do not earn our way into heaven, no matter how charitable we are. That said, sometimes things like wealth can shield one from appreciating his or her need to rely on Jesus. Sometimes we can adopt what I’ve termed in sermons here before a “false soteriology”–that is, a belief (whether explicit or, more often, implicit and functional) that something else is going to save us. Maybe it’s wealth. Maybe it’s esteem. Maybe it’s even our own good works, which might fool us into thinking that we’ve reached perfection.

In any event all these things can become what pop-psychology might call “baggage”, and carrying that stuff around with us may cause us some sorrow, too, when we behold the narrow gate and recognize we are a heavily laden camel who must be unloaded to have any chance of getting through the needle’s eye. (Forgive the mixed metaphor!)

I am frequently reminded (because I need a lot of reminders!) that I carry around some baggage, just like the rich young ruler, and I need to be ready to hold onto all of it loosely enough that I can let it go if Jesus ever asked me to do so. We all do, though what we happen to be carrying around might be radically different from person to person. So, this is just my own uncomfortable, personal confession. (I seem to have been doing that a lot lately, perhaps because after eight years here you more 0r less know me and I more or less trust all of you.) Perhaps you can relate and perhaps you can’t but I’d encourage you to consider what the equivalent is in your life.

So, I am comfortable (for which I’m very grateful) but I’m not wealthy. God called me to a vocation in which that really doesn’t happen. I might sometimes be surprised by how much some of my colleagues in fancy, endowed, historic parishes are paid, but (thank God!) we don’t have the problem in our system that nondenominational mega-churches with celebrity pastors often face. My colleagues and I are all sort of varying degrees of middle class, the only exceptions being those who inherit generational wealth. I am reminded, though, of a point sociologists have been making for a long time, which is that class has a lot to do with things other than money: education, manners, literary and artistic taste, civic engagement, &c. &c. &c.

That being the case, I am sometimes reminded that I went to a fancy private East Coast liberal arts college, I read literary fiction and the New Yorker, I don’t have a distinctive regional accent, I buy organic food. I could go on. I went to Toledo twice last week. The first time was for a lecture by a New York Times columnist, David Brooks, whom I’ve been reading for decades. The second was to hear our favorite opera singer, Renee Fleming, at the Peristyle accompanied by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. The last time we heard Ms. Fleming was on our honeymoon, it was at Carnegie Hall and she was accompanied by the New York Philharmonic. So, to use language which has become popular in certain circles, I recognize my privilege.

So what if life and circumstances meant I had to give some or all of that up in some tangible way? What if the Holy Spirit drove me into some wilderness where the benefits of the sort of life to which I’ve become accustomed were either unavailable or alienating? I’m sure at first my countenance would fall and I’d go off sorrowing just like the rich young ruler. But what would I do next? I hope I am holding onto all of those things loosely enough that I could let them go for the sake of the Gospel if I had to, but the proof of the pudding being in the eating, I won’t really know until I’m actually confronted with such a reality.

So, I think I have to rely on that first surprising insight about Jesus and the rich young ruler–that Jesus, looking on him, loved him. I need to place my hope entirely on the fact that the Lord God didn’t come in the flesh in order to trick or to test us, but to love us and ask only that we try to love him in return. Eventually we will lose all that baggage, because (spoiler alert) we’re all going to die, and then what will great wealth or the esteem of our fellows or the fact that one has refined enough tastes to have a “favorite opera singer” be worth? At that moment, the only thing we’ll have is Jesus, but how wonderful it would be if we were prepared to have nothing but Jesus to get by before that final moment.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.