© 2000 by Grant M. Gallup
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 Justice in the gate (i.e, the court room).
Psalm 90 Domine, refugium
Hebrews 3:1-6 Partners in a heavenly calling
Mark 10: 17-27 (38-31) Who then can be saved?
The Jesus we hear of in today's gosepl could not get a job in the church today. Not if this incident were recorded in his resum‚ or his clergy deployment profile. Under "budget & finance/mission support experience" would appear the entry: "turned away a pious millionaire from the church". Can you imagine a televangelist or a church growth specialist telling an inquirer to give away all assets to the poor as preparation for discipleship? No, their approach is: "Just hand over your assets to us; we're in the midst of a capital funds drive, being handled by Kerioth, Jude Associates, Inc. The fellow here with the smile and the deposit slips. Jesus instead said, "You're carrying too big a load that doesn't belong to you; give it back to the poor.'
I wonder did Judas "pull his coat" after this interview to point out to Jesus that his own community's daily bread fund was low.
The Church, which has been eager since the Constantinian Settlement to get along with the rich, has frequently said about this story that it isn't really about the wickedness of wealth or about its corrupting influence; that what it's about is teaching "detachment". The rich can get into heaven very easily, we have been told, if only they will adopt the attitude of those of "old wealth," to live in confident detachment from their great possessions, and not have their heart set on them. "Spiritual poverty" is what this is all about here. Attitude is all important, but if you have to ask how much the Kingdom of God costs, you can't afford it. Jesus, they say, is only saying that in some select cases like this one, the rich person needs to see that attitude is everything, that their individual spirituality is suffering because of wavering confidence in the market.
But look again. That's not the case here. This rich man is not arrogant, has no particular confidence in his riches to save him; is very concerned indeed about "inheriting" eternal life. He is looking for the quality of life he sees in Jesus and his disciples, all of whom have given up their claims to wealth and privilege to follow him. This is what he sees when he comes to kneel here.
Did you notice that detail in the story? The rich man is kneeling before the poor man of Nazareth. With all his fancy clothes, with his attendants standing about, his litter bearers resting, perhaps a great tall and regal camel patiently waiting there, covered in resplendant turkey carpets. A rich man, kneeling. The powerful engine of his limousine idling. Luke says he was of the ruling class (we pretend we don't have one of those where we live). "Rector" is Latin for "ruler." Matthew says he was a young man. Mark only says he was rich, and that after his talk with Jesus he went away in shock and grief. Clinically depressed.
But he begins with reverence and respect. Not just "rabbi" but "good rabbi", or perhaps "My good rabbi". A decent honorific way of speaking to "a reverend." "Right reverend sir," an Anglican would say, or "Your grace" to a primate or metropolitan. Roman Catholics have more Italianate excess in their titles--"Eminence" or "Excellency", and more Mediterranean uniforms, and flashier colors. We don't go so far as the Oriental "All Holiness", but the rulers of the church have had centuries to think up hundreds of names for themselves. One of my favorites was "The Right Reverend the Lady Abbess of Downside." "Illustrimado", a Spanish title for a bishop here, even if he is a seminary drop-out. "Canon" is now one of those titles without a function, for none of them any longer lives under a canon or rule, but each has his place and name of dignity--as even show horses have stalls.
Jesus says, "Such honorifics belong to God alone. Where are you coming from giving me such a title?" It's interesting that Matthew, a gospel written later than Mark's--and a more churchy gospel--changes this question of Jesus to "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Matthew doesn't want to discourage such comfy titles in church, apparently. Let's not talk cases.
But Mark is closer to Jesus by some years and reports the discussion as being one about Naming The Good: "Why do you call me good?" God is good, and goodness is to be found in doing justice: Do you know how that's done? Keeping God's law: Do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother." Notice that Jesus does not say "Believe in God, and Go To Church." The first four commandments ("our duty to God") are not mentioned, nothing about the theology of God, or sabbath keeping, or Naming God. Just the social justice rules: having to do with right relationshps, justice in property dealings, the right use of the court system (that's what 'not bearing false witness' is about). And making provision for society's elderly. Social security? Old age pensions? Jesus adds one by the way which deoes not appear in our list of the Ten Words.
Why did he add this one? Where does it come from? Could it not in fact come from Jesus' reflection on this rich man's great wealth? Where did all this great wealth come from that he sees before him: the fine robes, the rings, the perfumed and oiled face and hands and hair, the magnificent vehicle, caparisoned in beauteous fabrics adorned with precious metals and semi-precious stones? Where did it come from if not from Fraud? All such great wealth is fraud, all this gain ill-gotten. For it comes from the short-changed wages of the poor, which is why Jesus gave the advice he did.
"I know all the commandments," the affluent young man had said. "I've had the best religious education money could buy. I have OBSERVED (what an interesting word!) I have *observed* these from my youth." Not, "I have struggled to make these my life's project," but "I have observed." I have noticed that they are there, in the book. I've thought of ways I might be able to implement them, given my circumstances. I respect the church and the clergy.
But Jesus looking at him (and perhaps looking through him) LOVED HIM, says Mark. And in his great love for him, Jesus says, "Your praxis is way behind your theology." Try acting on your observance--and the first thing necessary for you is to get something else you haven't got. Get something more. You thought you had one of each and two of most? But you have come up short in your saddle bags -- Go away and GET A LIFE. Liquidate your assets, and give all of it to the poor. Notice that Jesus does not say, "Give it away to the POOR IN SPIRIT." That concept comes later than Mark, and from a different mindset than that of Luke, but Matthew, "the ecclesiastical gospel," uses it in the Beatitudes, to the great comfort of those who think attitude is all. All you need is a Be-Attitude! (The POOR IN SPIRIT, after all, would be able to manage the rich young ruler's wealth, without let or hindrance from a bad conscience, unlike the merely poor, who wouldn't have a clue.)
Michael Grant writes in his "Jesus: A Historian's Review of the Gospels" that Jesus' message "was not the product of any urge towards social reform" -- and that it "involves a misunderstanding both of his own ways of thinking and of those he inherited to regard him, as if often done, as a social revolutionary. . . this was not his primary motive."
All of that may be true, but it is irrelevant; Jesus is not now challenged to make sense of his gospel in our circumstances. We are. And if we can't find an "urge to social reform", if we cannot see his message as calling us to be "social revolutionaries", as calling us to more than "attitude adjustment hour" on Sunday mornings, then we have missed the gospel train, and settled for a privatization of the enterprise of our heavenly calling, which the author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us is a partnership. Partnership has no provision for limited liability. We're in it up to the crucifix.
This is the spiritual direction Jesus has for each of us as well. He is not asking us to become paupers or to make ourselves charges of the State and get on welfare; but he is asking us to redistribute our wealth--which is the extra money we have that we don't need for our own survival--to the poor. Don't know any poor? They're not that hard to locate. Your money which is not in use, which is lying fallow, or earning interest--which is beyond what you could forseeably need for your supper or your arthritic momma or your own old age-- give it up. When Jesus invites the young person to a radical rearrangement of self, of wealth, of priorities, Mark says the young man was shocked. His face fell, his countenance collapsed. We've all seen faces fall. There isn't much of the countenance left, but the teeth, still smiling in a fade-out, like the Cheshire cat in the tree, like George Dubya Bush might look after a debate with Nader, or for that matter, with Buchanan.
He must have got up rather slowly and painfully, even as embarrassed, and turned away his fallen face and got help in restoring his dignity from his manservant who got him onto the camel's back and turned then a few yards hence to try to get his grand dromedary out through the gate of the city. Maybe it was this that happened, and Jesus saw him and his servants trying to manouevre this beast back to its knees, as his master had been on his own, to get him through the small port-cullis in the city gate, called "the needle's eye." Was Jesus looking at that moment? "It shall be easier for the camel."
But the disciples are alarmed. Mark says "exceedingly astonished" at this teaching. "Who then can be saved? Who can make it into the revolutionary provisional government that you propose, if that's to be the test?"
The disciples, through Simon Peter, claim tht they have done it all. "We have met the test. We have left all our property and family ties to follow you." And Jesus pronounces here the rewards of commitment and discipleship: that they will not go unrewarded. "We're not asking anybody to do this because poverty is lovely, and Stoic virtues of detachment are the best thing, and there'll be spiritual bouquets instead of bonuses." This is not Marshall Applewhite's invitation to a clean mass suicide, disguised in wacko religious terms as a space cadet program. Heaven's Gate on hinges.
Jesus promises quite clearly that renunciation is solidarity with the future--in which there is to be a turning upside down of society, in which those who are Me First World are going to be Last World when the Revolution happens. Everyone who has today made the Revolution their own project, who has abandoned the goal of being a millionaire, will not go unrewarded in the Great Perestroika, the Reaggiornamiento to come, in the restructuring which the Rule of Heaven is bringing. There will be incredible communal wealth and material satisfaction for all. In the first reading, 8th Century BCE Amos joins his message to that of Jesus. He denounces the rich (one wonders did the rich young ruler ever hear these words in synagogue?):
"Trouble for those who turn justice into a toxic beverage, into a poisoned drink, with wormwood, who hate an honest judge, who detest honest reporting."
"You have trampled on poor people,
extorted from the poor farmer,
built yourselves luxurious mansions
(but you won't live out your lives there!)
you have precious vineyards
(but you won't drink their wine!)
for your crimes are many, your sins enormities,
you persecute decent folks,
you are extortionists,
you subvert the courts
when the poor come for justice."
These are precisely the ways in which the rich "observe all the laws of God from their youth up." They don't even see the land-grabbing, the bribery, the klout, the luxury, which are the gravest of sins, which keep them from seeing the Rule of God, which keep them from God.
So Jesus' pronouncement is a prophetic one, like that of Amos. It is goodness to the poor, and bad news to the rich. It is class struggle. Many that are now FIRST WORLD will be LAST WORLD. The World will be turned UPSIDE DOWN.
May this Kindgom come, this Rule of God begin on earth, as it is in heaven.
MARANATHA!
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