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Mark 10:17-31 · The Rich Young Man
Love And Money
Mark 10:17-31
Sermon
by William G. Carter
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A seminary professor named Stanley Hauerwas has a novel idea about how churches should receive new members. A teacher of Christian ethics at Duke University, he has written about the church's need for honesty and has called us to tell the truth as a "community of character." To this end, he has a modest proposal. Whenever people join the church, Hauerwas thinks they should stand and answer four questions:

  • Who is your Lord and Savior? The response: "Jesus Christ."
  • Do you trust in him and seek to be his disciple? "I do."
  • Will you be a faithful member of this congregation? The answer: "I will."
  • Finally, one last question: What is your annual income?1

You heard me correctly. When people join the church, Dr. Hauerwas thinks they ought to name their Lord and Savior and tell fellow church members how much money they make. It is obvious Hauerwas does not serve as a pastor of a congregation. His idea just wouldn't work, especially in the American church. Most church members believe salary figures are more sacred than prayer, and would quickly tell an inquisitive minister to snoop around somewhere else. What's more, parish experience tempers the questions a minister asks of church members. 

Most pastors quickly learn how to dance around the issue of money without ever naming it. A young minister went out to serve his first congregation. Early one November, he told the sexton to go out to the bulletin board on the street corner and put up the words, "Stewardship Sunday." He put together a stewardship sermon and preached it to the congregation. Afterwards someone came up and said, "Pastor, thank you for that sermon. When I saw the bulletin board, I was a little anxious. But your sermon calmed my fears." The minister said, "I'm glad to hear it. Did I say something helpful?" "Oh, Reverend, it was better than that," the man said. "Today you said absolutely nothing at all."

It is tempting to keep silent in the church when it comes to money. We dance around the issue with large, general steps. The church talks in generalities about the electric bill, the rising cost of church school curricula, and mission projects worthy of our support. Those are worthy topics of conversation. That's usually where the conversation remains with the list of the good services the church provides. Any actual mention of money seems distasteful.

A few years ago, an interchange of letters appeared in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Dear Abby: We are not overly religious people, but we do like to go to church once in a while. It seems to me that every time we turn around, we are hit for money. I thought religion was free. I realize that churches have to have some money, but I think it is getting to be a racket. Just what do churches do with all their money? Curious in North Jersey.

Abby wrote back, Dear Curious: Even priests, ministers and rabbis must eat. Since they work full-time at their tasks, their churches must support them. Staff and musicians must also be paid. Buildings must be maintained, heated, lighted and beautified . Custodial staff must eat and feed their families. Most churches engage in philanthropic work (aid to the needy, missions, and education); hence, they have their financial obligations. Even orchids, contrary to folklore, do not live on air. Churches can't live on air either. Religions, like water, may be free, but when they pipe it to you, you've got to help pay for the piping. And the piper.2

A lot of stewardship committees probably cheered when they read those words in the newspaper. It's good to hear Abby spell out the expenditures of a typical church budget. Yet she is shortsighted in two ways. First, when we give our money to the church, we are doing more than supporting an institution; we are participating in the work God is doing within these walls. The utility bills, the salaries, the insurance premiums, and the church school supplies are all means to a far greater end. The Holy Spirit has descended upon this church, upon this people, and I, for one, want to support what God is doing through people like you and me.  The second problem is the assumption that religion is "free." The Christian faith is a costly faith. It demands a radical commitment to Jesus Christ. Those who would follow Jesus must pick up their crosses and give their lives as he has given his life for us. Anything less is discounted grace.
That brings us to the heart of the gospel text from the tenth chapter of Mark. It begins as a success story. Jesus is preaching about the kingdom of God, traveling here and there. Somebody runs up, kneels down, and says, "Jesus, what must I do to get whatever you've been talking about? What must I do to claim the life of God's eternal realm?" Obviously that's the kind of question Jesus wants to hear. For seven chapters he has been surrounded by disciples who chase away children, quiver in disbelief, and argue over which of them is the greatest. Finally, here's an honest seeker who wants to know what it takes. What must he do? His conversation with Jesus discusses the ethical demands of the law: don't murder, don't lie, don't steal, and take care of your parents. Do these things and live. The anonymous man said, "I've kept all of those things." He had become a successful seeker.

So the story becomes a love story. Mark says Jesus "loved" this man. In the Gospel of Mark, there's no other place where it says Jesus loved anybody. Usually the Lord is too busy, going immediately here and immediately there. He heals one sick person after another. He shouts at wind storms and screams at demons. He never slows down to love anybody, especially his disciples. In Mark's book, the twelve disciples appear as blockheads who stood around and scratched their heads whenever Jesus said or did anything significant. Mark never says Jesus loved Peter, James, John, or the others. But he insists Jesus loved this man. Maybe that's because (a) the man sought the kingdom of God and (b) he did what God commanded. But something was wrong. Not only is this the only occasion where Mark says Jesus loved somebody. This is the only time in Mark's gospel when Jesus invited someone to follow him and the person could not do it. The reason for the refusal is given: "He went away grieving, for he had many possessions" (Mark 10:22).

Maybe Stanley Hauerwas is right. Perhaps we can't truly join the ranks of those who follow Jesus until we can come clean about the role of money in our lives. Money can become an organizing center of our lives, a human-made deity that competes with the God of Abraham and Sarah. As someone notes, "Money has no material force except as people attribute force to it. Money as an object is not the master of states, of armies, of the masses, or of the mind except by humanity's consent to its authority. Money would be absolutely nothing, materially speaking, without human consent."3 The bad news in our gospel story is there are occasions when the desire for money for having it, holding it, keeping it becomes more important than anything else.

D.H. Lawrence tells a story about a family with a boy and two little girls. They lived in a nice house with a garden. Yet the family felt an anxiety: there was never enough money. Both mother and father had small incomes, but they didn't have enough to reach the social position they desired. The father pursued business leads that never materialized. The mother tried to earn more money, but her failures etched deep lines into her face. In time, their home became haunted with the unspoken phrase, "There must be more money." No one ever said it aloud, least of all the children. But the words filled the home, especially when expensive toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money. There must be more money." The children could hear it all the time, though nobody said it aloud. And the children would stop playing, to listen, for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money. There must be more money." Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says, "We are breathing," in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.4 That haunting whisper can be heard in a lot of homes. A quiet voice says, "There must be more money," even though money is coming and going all the time.

Two kinds of people want more money those who don't have it and those who do. Either way, the gospel calls our priorities into question. Jesus loved a rich man as he loved nobody else. When he invited him to follow as a disciple, the man turned and walked away. Jesus said, "You lack something." What was he talking about? The man had money. Mark doesn't say how much, but we can assume he had a lot of things that others enjoy. He had a nice house with a sturdy roof over his head. He had somebody to dust the furniture and someone to mow the lawn. He put food on the table every night, and nobody in his home ever wanted for anything. He could afford attractive clothes for his family. He paid his mortgage on time. He always covered the monthly minimum on his credit cards, with room to spare some. He had everything money could buy. But the one thing he lacked was freedom. Jesus did not command the man to become destitute, nor to take on the burden of voluntary poverty. Neither did he compel him to empty his pockets. Rather he summoned the man to cut all ties to the things of the world which enslave and tangle. He invited the man to become free:

  • free from having to possess things;
  • free from determining his importance by the size of his bank account;
  • free from the invisible entanglements of wealth;
  • free from the quiet, deadly grip of materialism. What does it mean to become free in this way?

Ask a family who dumped some possessions at a recent garage sale. After discovering how much junk they had accumulated over the last few years, they put an ad in the newspaper and announced a garage sale. The dust cleared by noon on Saturday. The family made a bit of money, which allowed them to buy some more junk. Now they have a house full of new junk, which is better than old junk. Of course, they can't yet tell the difference.

To sum up, the gospel lesson proclaims good news and bad news this morning. The good news is nobody who clings to his riches can get into the kingdom of God. Or is that bad news? The good news is anything is possible with God; God can purge us of all our possessiveness. Or is that bad news? Each of us must decide. One thing is for sure. If we want to follow Jesus, we had better brace ourselves. He calls us to serve a God who loves us, a God who will keep disturbing us until we finally relinquish our grip on money and possessions. Once we say yes to God, we can expect holy disruptions in our lives until the day when God alone shall purge and possess our hearts.

1. Stanley Hauerwas, Center for Continuing Education, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, 1 May 1992.

2. Abigail Van Buren, "Religions need money too, for heaven's sake," The Scranton Tribune 30 March 1994: C-2.

3. Jacques Ellul, Money and Power (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1984), p. 81.

4. As quoted in Elizabeth O Connor, Letters to Scattered Pilgrims (San Francisco: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1979), pp. 17-18. "

CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio, No Box Seats In The King, by William G. Carter