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Mark 10:17-31 · The Rich Young Man
When Too Much Can Be Too Little
Mark 10:17-31
Sermon
by Leonard Sweet
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Our parents complained that "the world is going to hell in a hand basket."
It's closer to the truth to say that "the world is going to hell in a shopping cart."

Your soul not to mention your budget is in mortal danger as you approach the grocery store checkout lane.

You say, "How?"

You've carefully filled your cart with the needed items outlined on your list. You patiently wait in line, always seeming to pick the one that's slowest. Yet somehow, by the time the checker begins tallying up the items in your cart, it has suddenly filled up with a pack of gum, a box of Tic-Tacs, a new TV Guide, a four-pack of AA batteries, three candy bars and a magazine for enquiring minds.

If your 5-year-old is along, you may also have accumulated a new Pez dispenser, a mylar balloon with a Disney character on it and a plastic "cellular" telephone filled with tiny bubble-gum pieces. Stores purposefully pack this kind of junky, funky, consumer gunk into the narrow gauntlet we must run to get to the checkout counter. Things we would never intentionally have gone in search of now languish under our fingertips inviting, no insisting, that we grab them.

Although impulsively buying a pack of gum or a candy bar hardly seems earth-shattering or soul-threatening, the truth is that the increasingly voracious appetites of this consumer culture are being methodically nurtured and stimulated by a crass and crushing consumerism. The worldwide ramifications of such little things as a checkout gauntlet are ominous.

After a bad day, our parents sighed, "The world is going to hell in a hand basket." Today we can sigh even more deeply on a daily basis that the whole world is "going to hell in a shopping cart." For an increasing number of people, self-identity and life-purpose are summed up by the mantra "I shop, therefore I am." Raging consumerism has left Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" far behind. Consumer culture has never even heard of, much less considered, God's revelation to Moses, "I am who I am; therefore, you are."

Like the rich young man in today's gospel text, we know ourselves, we identify ourselves, we define ourselves, by our possessions, our things, our "stuff." This young man was so possessed by his "stuff" that he could unstuff himself neither for the sake of the poor, nor for his own sake and his quest for eternal life. Faced with the choice between his old secure, in-control, in-charge self and the unknown possibilities of life as a disciple of Jesus, the rich man clung to his human illusions of power and control.

Who or what controls your life?

* You don't think it's more than ironic that a culture that shifts uneasily at the prospect of "letting the Spirit lead" has no qualms at all about endlessly net-surfing or channel-surfing in search of something newer, fresher and more appealing?

* You think it's just irony that a culture that supposedly values freedom and independence above all is slavishly committed to endlessly upgrading software and stereo components, upscaling addresses and automobiles, and clambering up social and economic ladders of "success"?

* You don't think it's more than ironic that a culture that finds its greatest security in "things" threatens to destroy the most basic needs of all life on Earth clean air, clean water and enough food for all to eat?

* You don't think it's ironic that just when the two-career (or two-job) marriage has become the primary economic form of marriage (even Blondie of comic strip fame has taken an outside job in the catering business after 61 years as a housewife), the #1 status symbol in America is not a Porsche, not a second home, but a one-income home where one spouse stays home and raises the children?

* You don't think it's more than ironic that a culture of plenty is one of the most pinched and painful environments imaginable?

There are many problems facing our world today: poverty, environmental pollution, world famines, world plagues, nuclear terrorism, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, global warming, global cooling, economic crashes, desertification, exhaustion of natural resources, dearth of leaders, energy shortages, asteroids, humankind's immunological deterioration, overpopulation. But the most vicious and voracious of all these problems is overconsumption.

"You've got that wrong," you say. "Surely our world's most pressing problem is overpopulation, the nightmare of the Third World, where unchecked population growth results in rampant, crushing poverty and strips away the precious natural resources the land has to offer."

You have a point. The world population is climbing from five to eight billion. Every second, three human beings die and six are born; every year, 100,000,000 humans are added to the planet's population. A billion new people are added to this spaceship Earth every decade, and the pace is increasing. At this rate, there will be get this 694 billion humans by 2150. As is true in the hypertrophy of any single species, this means other life forms are being pushed out of bed and into extinction.

In 1992, two of the major scientific groups in the world the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London issued a joint appeal to the world community. Here's the opening of the statement:

If current predictions of population growth prove accurate, and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent the irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world.

The closing words of the document are even gloomier:

Global policies are urgently needed to promote more rapid economic development throughout the world, more environmentally benign patterns of human activity and a more rapid stabilization of world population. ...Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible gradation of the environment can be halted in time. (As quoted in Christian de Duve, Vital Dust [New York: Basic Books, 1995], 280.)

All of the above is a profound half-truth. And the problem with every half-truth is the other half. The other half of the truth of "overpopulation" is the truth of "overconsumption," which is the truth of our Scripture lesson this morning. Scientists calculate that 80 percent of the world's environmental damage is caused by the world's 1.1 billion overconsumers, not by the overpopulators. It is the 20 percent of the world's people who organize their lives around cars, meat-based diets and disposable products that are the primary reason that another 20 percent of the world's population lives in absolute deprivation (Alan Durning, How Much Is Enough? [New York: Norton, 1992]). If there is one segment of society that should refuse ever to decouple overpopulation and overconsumption, it is the church.

In this week's gospel interchange, Jesus struck a fatal blow to a young man's disease of addiction and suicidal mania. In Colossians 3:1-17, verse 5 specifies four sins of sensuality followed by "avarice" or "covetousness" or the drive to get and get, which is best defined as idolatry (cf. Ephesians 5:5). The consumerist lifestyle is as fatal to the soul as it is to the environment. One of the biggest beguilers of the Christian mind, even bigger than secularism or sex, is consumerism and its "shabby little gospel of greed and gain" (as Dennis Potter calls it).

Economists like to call consumerism "The Jones Effect" (as in "keeping up with the Joneses"). Others, like Pope John Paul II, call consumerism one of those "structures of sin" named "superdevelopment," which the pope defines as "an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups" ("Pope John Paul II Addresses Overconsumption," Green Cross, 2, Summer 1996, 4). In his 1990 World Day of Peace statement, "The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility," the pope tied "superdevelopment" to our polluting and pillaging of the environment, and stated most emphatically, "The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

Instead of glaring accusingly at those countries struggling to control their population growth, we must squarely attack the monster we ourselves have let ravage the world. On average, a U.S. citizen causes over 100 times more damage to the global environment than a person in a poor country. The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person and 30 times more than a person in India. The richest 25 percent of the world's population use 86 percent of all forest products, 75 percent of energy, 72 percent of steel production. The poorest use only two percent of the world's resources.

Workers in the developed world (North America, Western Europe and Japan) represent about 20 percent of the world's population. They use over 67 percent of natural resources consumed each year and generate over 80 percent of its pollutants. For added perspective, the poorest 20 percent consume about two percent of resources. (Editorial by Director of Green Cross Fred Krueger in Green Cross, 1, Fall 1995.)

Jesus taught all would-be followers to relinquish the love of "things," the desire for "stuff" that fills our hearts with an insatiable desire for more and controls the mainsprings of our lives. In his concluding remarks on overconsumption, John Paul II warned:

Simplicity, moderation and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few. ("Pope John Paul II Addresses Overconsumption," Green Cross, 2, Summer 1996, 5.)

But even attempting to curb our own consumerism is not the final answer. The heart of all the planetary problems we face is the heart. The whole human race is suffering from a virulent, deadly form of heart disease. It is sin and deception and separation from God that have eaten into the vital structures of our hearts and caused the appearance of these life-threatening symptoms.

Jesus revealed to the rich young man the heart of his shortcomings. His "stuff" blocked the staff of life. His love of stuff blocked his way to genuine discipleship, to the kingdom of God. Jesus challenged the man to give up his trust in things, to relinquish his hold on what he held, to give up his control, to take up God's security.

In exchange, Jesus offered the rich man a place as one of his disciples. Here was an offer from the Messiah to travel with him, live and walk with him on an intimate, daily basis. That Jesus' words hit directly at the center of this rich man's most damaged, separated self is evident by the pain those words caused him. The rich man does not scoff or jeer at Jesus' suggestion. He is "shocked," and goes away "grieving," in obvious pain. He feels the truth of Jesus' diagnosis. But he is not able to reach out and take the offered cure.

Can you? Do you know what you're missing if you don't?

Whales are some of the most amazing creatures God made. Fin whales can easily hear the bleeps of other fin whales 4,000 miles away, some scientists argue 13,000 miles away. Humpbacks like to sing in rhyme, and the songs they sing are always changing while at the same time, they are passed from male to male, so that in any one season all the whales of a single ocean will be singing the same song.

In February 1928, a female blue whale who roamed freely throughout the Antarctic for decades was killed. From measurements taken at the time, some scientists are convinced that she was the largest creature ever to have lived on Earth bigger than any known dinosaur or leviathan.

But the people who had the privilege of seeing her never saw her. They were in such a hurry to harvest her blubber and find other family members of her huge species that they salvaged nothing not a single picture, not a single bone. Nothing (Stephen Mills, "The Rhyming Whale," Review of Roger Payne's Among Whales [1996], Times Literary Supplement, September 6, 1996, 36).

What are you missing in life because of the blubber? What part of God's kingdom are you not experiencing because of the rush to kill or make a killing? What good is "stuff" without the staff of life? Will you give up the chaff for the staff ... of life?

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Works, by Leonard Sweet