In Nomine etc..
"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" This is a real question, asked by a genuine seeker, to use a modern word, of a well-known traveling teacher. In our time, there are numbers of traveling teachers willing to tell us how to inherit eternal life, or attain enlightenment, or discover wisdom, and most of them expect to be paid for the information. In our story in today's Gospel, a payment is indeed demanded, but the teacher is not the intended beneficiary. Although the focus of the story appears to be money and the attitude of the rich man to it, the details of the story actually lead us elsewhere in a search for what Jesus is telling us here.Notice what Jesus says first. He replies with another question: "Why do you call me good?" He is deflecting the rich man's courteous, respectful approach. Also, it is standard rabbinical technique to answer a question with another question. It returns the questioner to himself, perhaps to seek his answer within, and not necessarily to look for a solution outside himself, to evade having to think for himself. Then Jesus goes on to say, "You know the commandments," and recites six of them. The questioner appears to be looking for the obvious, pat, conventional answer: follow the standard, universal moral code, the Ten Commandments, and everything will be fine. The rich man says, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." No doubt he expects Jesus to say, "Then you will inherit eternal life. No problem. Nothing to worry about. Next question."
But that is not what Jesus does. The Gospel says, "Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said, You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Loved him! Jesus looked at him and loved him. This is a remarkable sentence. There is a lot of meaning, a lot of insight, behind these words, a meaning of which I have had only a glimmer. Perhaps we, at one time or another, have encountered another person who saw us, really saw us, really saw us, knew us, loved us as we were. It is a description of an enlightened spiritual guide. I know that not everyone has this experience, but it is at least possible. Between the seer and the seen there is no filter or barrier or misunderstanding. Between the two there is real awareness, attention, affection, love. That is what is happening here, in a flash, between Jesus and the rich man. Jesus saw him, heard him, knew him, loved him, and knew immediately what was needed.
Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and come, follow me. Now, notice what is happening here. We hear, the rich man hears, nothing in this command of the standard, universal moral code. This is not one of the Ten Commandments. And there is, furthermore, nothing in this of what a good Episcopalian, or anyone else, would regard as prudent, responsible management of money and property. What then can we make of this sudden change of tone, from a plodding repetition of well-known rules, to a radical demand to the rich man that he turn his way of life upside down?
It appears that there is a progression here. Jesus is telling his questioner that his basic work , his preparatory work, is done. He has fulfilled the Commandments. He has done what the moral code has required of him. He has done what God and society have expected, he has successfully completed his rudimentary education in Life, and it is time for him to move on. It is time for him to experience what we may call the paradox of success: that having succeeded in meeting the requirements, the expectations of God, society, family, school, career, and so on, it is now time for him to recognize that he no longer needs them, that he can pass his earthly treasures on to others who do need them, and free himself for new work to which Jesus is calling him. Success has freed him from the need to be successful in this world.
"Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven!" Treasure in heaven. We've heard this phrase many times. What does it mean? Is it just a metaphor for all the good things we do in this world, which God, or St Peter, or angels appointed to the task, remember and record to our credit, which we can draw on when we appear at the gates of heaven, to pay for our admission? I suggest that 'treasure in heaven' is not about heavenly bookkeeping, but about something else entirely, not about quantity, but about freedom from quantity. Treasure on earth is what we keep. Treasure in heaven is what we give away. Treasure in heaven is freedom even from the need to keep track of what we have, and what we have given away. Treasure in heaven is the freedom to accept Jesus's invitation to follow him.
Well, we know what happened next. "When the rich man heard this, he was shocked, and went away grieving, for he had many possessions." Jesus saw that the rich man was ready for the next phase in his life, but the man himself did not see it, or, if he did, the insight was too much for him. Now, we wonder, why was he shocked? What was the shock, exactly? And why was he grieving? For what was he grieving? The obvious suggestion is that he feared losing his possessions, and that would be an understandable fear. But I think the shock was the realization of something else: the realization of the choice before him. He saw himself clearly, perhaps for the first time. Rooted in his identity, his conventional role and success, in his possessions, he had been given a glimpse of eternal life, of the freedom which is the real basis, the real nature of eternal life, and he recoiled from it, not because he didn't want it, but because the choice, the action required, was so sudden, so stark, and so irrevocable. Perhaps we all would be shocked, if we could catch a glimpse of ourselves in the light of eternity.
Now, he went away grieving. We grieve for a loss like death, or for a friendship ruined by misunderstanding, for a career wiped out by economic change or, these days, by the pandemic, and so on. The man in our story went away grieving -- what had he lost? Not his possessions -- he still had them, apparently. Most of them, anyway. I think that there is one possession that he did lose: a certain idea of Jesus and himself, when Jesus did not simply confirm the rich man's understanding of himself and his place in the scheme of salvation. He had lost the assurance of eternal life by obedience to the known, stated rules. The "good teacher" had knocked the supports out from under his self-image, and he could not get it back. As far as our story goes, anyway.
We do not know that the rich man did not eventually follow Jesus's advice. We do know that Jesus emphasized the difficulty that many possessions create for those who want to enter the Kingdom of God. And then the disciples ask a very odd question: "Then who can be saved?" Now, most people, past and present, were not and are not rich. The disciples could not have meant that everyone is so rich that they can't enter the Kingdom. But the disciples are getting at something which we need to pay attention to.
Jesus lists, toward the end of the reading, what the "possessions" are that can get in our way: house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, fields -- only "house" and "fields" come close to the wealth we were thinking of at the beginning of today's Gospel. But, clearly, family relations are "wealth" too. Now we are seeing further in, as it were, to just how radical Jesus is. He wants to replace one family with another, our earthly family with our new family in the Kingdom of God, and our earthly houses and fields with new ones in the Kingdom. No wonder the rich man is grieving -- not only his properties and money, but also his entire family -- the whole works -- everything has to go.
It is the possibility of freedom in God which prompted the rich man to ask his question in the first place. The fact that the answer shocked him means that he understood some truth, at least partially -- the shock and grief were the beginnings of his liberation, not necessarily signs of his retreat from it. The progression in this story from following external commandments in order to obtain a heavenly reward, to renunciation of earthly attachments in order to experience true freedom in God, is a path which we are all invited to follow.
In Nomine etc..
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