The running man is eager and respectful. He is a true seeker. He calls Jesus ‘Good Teacher’ and he is right! But Jesus needs him to shift his focus elsewhere – to the goodness of God. Eternal life is God’s gift to us. It flows from the heart of love. In this Sunday’s Gospel, both seeker and disciple will receive a masterclass in how to understand God and the goodness of God.
The seeker has a problem or two! He is focused on being good in order to get the best. He lives in a world of action and reward. He has kept the commandments from his youth. He has a young person’s spirituality, all eagerness, energy and EGO! Before Jesus takes him to the next level, He looks at him and loves him. All he has done has brought him to Jesus. He has completed step one and now step two beckons him. What Jesus is about to say is not a criticism but a leg up to the answer to his question. How does someone receive the life that flows from the goodness of God?
Suddenly Jesus starts talking about ‘treasure in heaven’ v.21. The thing we must prize more than anything else is our relationship with God. The path to this ‘God centredness’ is to let go of all that now possesses him and give it to the poor. The seeker understands but cannot believe what he is hearing! In shock and grief he turns away. Jesus sweeps a penetrating gaze towards his disciples and suggests that all who are weighed down by wealth will find it difficult to enter the kingdom of God. His disciples are first puzzled and then astonished by this. Then Jesus escalates the situation from ‘difficult’ to ‘impossible’. Now His disciples are in shock. The Teacher waits, then makes His final thrust. He must lift them out of conventional consciousness to illumination. What is impossible for human beings is possible for God! This is the karate chop which will dismantle the obstruction and open their hearts to another Way.
The good God wants to give them eternal life and they must look to Heaven as Jesus does so often. Humans are addicted to looking everywhere else. No earthly treasure will be a ticket to eternal life. Owning and accumulating does not work in the world of the Spirit. If the heart longs for ‘eternal life’ it is wrongheaded in the extreme if the heart thinks it can do this by accumulating good deeds.
Peter jumps in. “Okay, let’s not talk about this guy or other rich people. We haven’t walked away. What’s in it for us?” Peter is still playing ‘quid pro quo’ with God. In return for his sacrifice he expects a reward. Peter is fearful of being cheated. He may have left everything but his mind has not. Jesus addresses his fear with comic exaggeration. All you have given will be returned with interest – the good God is not stingy. But the spiritual law still applies – If you want to be first, you will be last. But if you are last, thereby opening yourself to the goodness of God, you will be first. Every blessing has to be received as a free gift.
The drive to assuage insecurity can be ruthless. It can make us extremely self-absorbed and, worse still, it leads to terrible injustices. Even worse, we may tolerate injustice and cruelty as long as we benefit from them! Couple the moral defects which come with the drive to accumulate, with spiritual ignorance, and the whole project is doomed to failure. Accumulation is futile in the face of death. Temporal life is insecure by its very nature. No strategy within time will ever change that.
In Anthony de Mellos’ ‘The Song of the Bird’, there is a great little Parable about holding onto life with an open hand.
In the 19th century an American tourist visited the famous Polish Rabbi Hafez Hayyim. He was astonished to see that the Rabbis’ home was only a simple room filled with books. The only furniture, a table and a bench. ‘Rabbi, where is your furniture?’ asked the tourist. ‘Where is yours?’ Replied Hafez. ‘Mine? But I’m only a visitor here’.
‘So am I,” said the Rabbi.
As someone who dances to the rhythms of time and eternity, we must live in time but have our eyes fixed on heaven. This will turn our lives around, we will instantly cure ourselves of anxiety and the desire to have power over others. We must not delude ourselves. Even while we have possessions, we must disown them. We cannot allow them to own us in such a way that they close our hearts to the suffering of others or to the astonishing generosity and goodness of God.
