Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 15, 2000, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Job 23:1-5, 8-13, 15-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
-Mark 10:17

     Listen to this. I don't know where it came from, but it sounds like the sort of wisdom tale that a rabbi might have told in the shtetl, the old Jewish enclave villages of eastern Europe, romanticized in "Fiddler on the Roof," which eventually were literally wiped off the face of the earth by their Gentile neighbors.

A rich man came to Jacob, the baker, and asked him, "When others turn to me for help, what should I say?" "Say, 'Thank you,'" Jacob replied, toying with a leaf that had fallen from a tree. "What?" said the rich man. "Why should I say thank you?" His voice grew louder as if to boost his confidence. "What can the poor give me?"
"Have you ever met a man whose success is not also a burden?" said Jacob the baker. "Charity allows you to lessen your load. In this way having less can add to your life!" Now the rich man's voice took a new tone. "I feel like a fool," he said. "No," responded Jacob. "A fool is one who knows too much to learn anything."

     Personally, whenever I hear a story about a wise old villager dispensing advice to all comers, I say a little prayer of thanksgiving that I do not have to live in the same house with such a tiresome person as Jacob the baker. But we must put these personal concerns aside and focus on the rich man who is really the subject of the story. Like this other rich man, the one in Mark's Gospel, he has more than enough stuff but not quite enough good sense, and he gets his nose rubbed in this lack. Among folks who have less stuff but like to think they have more wisdom, it is always open season on the rich. This is particularly true among clergy.

     The rich have typically replied, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Which is widely viewed in our society as a devastating comeback, but it doesn't impress me. I wonder why it is not considered equally devastating, or more so, to say, "If you're so rich, why ain't you smart?"

     "Smart" is probably the wrong word to be using here, but the idea does seem to be that the rich, by virtue of their wealth, are lacking something important, something indispensable even. They are in fact poor, because they do not have . . . what? Eternal life. Blessedness. Happiness. Peace of mind. Something along those lines. Which may be true, or it may be a fiction kept up by the non-rich to make themselves feel better. Sour grapes.

     I think we all have very mixed feelings and attitudes about wealth, and you can demonstrate that just by asking anyone if he or she is rich, or by imagining that someone is asking you that question. Small wonder, then, that the world's religious traditions devote a huge amount of attention to the issue. If you read the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels, what are his favorite subjects of discussion: Love? Salvation? Sex? Nope. His two most frequent topics are (1) the Kingdom or Reign or Rule of God - in other words, what would the world be like if God's will were truly done - and (2) money. And typically he is talking about the Kingdom and about money at the same time, because if you ask Jesus they are very closely connected. But the connection is confusing for us.

     So I've been struggling with the question, how can I contribute anything to the ongoing conversation about money and the reign of God without adding to the confusion? And a revelation came to me, which may or may not be from God. You decide after you hear it.

     Wealth is insulation. Heck, that's not original. We even talk about having a cushion, or shelter for a rainy day, or being comfortable. But maybe "insulation" means more than that. What if wealth cushions you against life itself, against reality?

     Sounds like a drug when you put it that way, doesn't it? Prescription drug, recreational drug, a little snort before dinner, lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag, I'll never forget how well that worked - they all help to take the edge off things. Suppose wealth itself functions that way for people.

     This actually increases my sympathy for the rich young man who came rushing up to Jesus and asked him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus, when he told him to give his wealth to the poor, was telling the poor guy to go cold turkey. No wonder it tore him apart.

     I know you don't think of wealth as a drug, but that's just the point. We live in a culture that doesn't see it that way. It's always illuminating, however, to imagine how our ways would appear to an outsider who isn't already committed to seeing things from our perspective. The story is told of the French Jesuit missionaries who went into the woods to bring Christianity to the Native Americans, and the people of the Huron nation were completely bewildered by them, but after observing them for a while, the Hurons finally figured out that the god whom these palefaces worshiped was a clock, because of the way they kept looking at the thing and they seemed to believe it was telling them what to do, and they totally obeyed it throughout the day and night. And are you prepared to say the Hurons were mistaken? I wonder how either side finally got that straightened out.

     Anyway, wealth is a cushion against reality, against life itself. Does that ring true? Think about it. The rich person is safe from some of the more distressing and painful possibilities of life - from homelessness, starvation, nakedness, for obvious examples. And sometimes from less obvious perils, too - like the rich young men who were able to avoid risking their lives in military service in the Civil War or in Vietnam.

     Ah, but that's a desirable cushion, we say. This is the kind of insulation everybody would like to have! It's not like some crazy, destructive addiction. It's all upside and no downside. Wealth improves the quality of life precisely because it takes off some of the sharp edges.

     And so it does, by any number of criteria. This is unarguable. But you can't say there is no downside, because there is a cost. Chemotherapy and tobacco and alcohol and drugs all have a cost: They can make you very sick, sick unto death, and they are all more dangerous in proportion to one's ignorance or denial of their ability to do harm.

     And we as a people have laid ourselves wide open to that danger, not so much by our wealth itself as by our persistent, delusional denial of the realities from which we suppose that wealth can insulate us. The rich young man in the Gospel could not see how hooked he was on his own wealth until he was challenged to stop clinging to it.

     I doubt that there is anything wrong with living in a state of plenty. The Bible is full of very positive references to milk and honey, a feast of fat things, huge harvests, fruitful yields, freedom from want. Plenty is not trouble. What's trouble is the notion that safety and security come with wealth.

     Job was a good and righteous man, and also rich, but when his prosperity and good fortune were taken away he hollered like a stuck pig, protesting his innocence, as if his goodness were supposed to guarantee his prosperity, but God said no to that, and the Book of Job stands to this day as the most powerful testimony ever against the idea, which is right in the Bible itself and certainly in all our modern wisdom, that prosperity is the just and sure reward of the virtuous.

     And that's just what we need to be liberated from! Those who have wealth are powerfully tempted to believe that life is fair, when it's not! Believing that life is fair is the exact opposite of trusting in God. Believing that life is fair is believing that everything depends on us, not on God.

     The young man wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. But you can't do anything to get an inheritance. It's by definition a gift freely given at the pleasure of the donor. The only choice that the young man has is whether or not to accept the reality that for all his wealth, for all his cushion, insulation, whatever, he is still and always totally, completely, radically dependent on the grace of God, just like every other person on earth, just like the entire Creation.

     We are entitled, I think, to do what we can, short of harming others, to secure ourselves and those whom we love from the chances and changes of this life. But we imperil and impoverish ourselves, and we distance ourselves from life itself, if we suppose that any earthly security we may enjoy is not itself a gift of God's grace, given without having been earned and perfectly capable of vanishing even faster than the Dow and the Nasdaq fell this week.

     I am not trying to make you more anxious than you already are. I am only suggesting that true happiness lies not in finding the best strategy for self-preservation but in celebrating the gift of this life in all its fragile and uncertain loveliness, treasuring every moment in the certain conviction that it truly is a miracle and not in the least to be expected. Do that, and the camel will slip right through the needle's eye.

     Amen