Proper 23 Year B 2024: Mark 10:17-31

In the 90s, I was a Sunday School student here at St. Matthew’s. As some of you may remember, Sunday School was during the 10:30 service. Come the offertory, all of us Sunday School kids would be brought in for communion but then we wouldn’t go back to our parents. We would walk in, single-file by class, file into a pew, receive communion, and sprint from the rail back to our classrooms to await our parents. Now the first day we got ready to join the rest of the congregation, we did what kids do: clamored to be first in line. To be fair, this is what grown-ups do too. If you need an example, next time you’re at the airport look at boarding group 3 when boarding group 1 is called. But as we filed into the pew, the person at the front of the line and the person at the end of the line realized something: if you were first in line and first in the pew, you were last out of the pew and last to get back to the classroom to play. All of a sudden, we had a very real application of “the first will be last”, and the next week we became a very deferential group of kids, each offering one another to go ahead of us in line.

Jesus, today, really tells three different stories about the first becoming last, sometimes voluntarily. We begin with the story of the man who asks him “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” This story is commonly known as “the rich young man”, although Mark identifies him as neither “rich” nor “young”. Matthew calls him “young” and Luke says “a certain ruler”, so we kind of mash those together to get “rich young man”, assuming that if he is a ruler he is also rich. According to the Mark text, at most, we might be able to assume he’s rich because of Jesus’ comments following their interaction, but I think that’s going a little far in assuming Jesus is using this man - who is no longer in front of him - as a negative example. The man in this story wants affirmation that following the Law of Moses will result in his inheritance of eternal life. As Jesus said, “you know the commandments”, including “you shall not defraud,” which is not one of the 10 Commandments but is included in the Law in Deuteronomy. The man’s response “I have kept all these since my youth” is reminiscent of asking a teacher a leading question because you think you have the right answer. I had a classmate who did this in high school. She’d ask questions that we all knew the teacher would address eventually, for the reward of the teacher saying, “yes you’re right”. The man in this story is expecting a “good work, eternal life for you” from Jesus and instead he gets additional tasks. Jesus instructs him to “sell what you own, and give (the money) to the poor...then come, follow me.” The Greek actually lacks the word “the money”. It reads “sell what you own and give to the poor.” What exactly are we to give to the poor? Clearly the man thinks it is his possessions, for that is what he is sad about. We tend to interpret it as money or possessions too, for we spend a lot of time trying to get out of it, arguing that Jesus didn’t really mean to give away our stuff because we, like the man, really like our stuff.

We try to worm our way out of the second part of the reading, too, where “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” I’ve heard an interpretation that there was actually some sort of gateway into Jerusalem that was a good defense tactic called “the needle” that was really narrow but camels could go through if they tried really hard. There is no evidence for this. We just really want to be able to be rich and have no consequence for hoarding our wealth. Therefore we try to explain away things we don’t want to do; hence the focus on a legend of the needle leading to Jerusalem instead of our needing to acknowledge our wealth .

Both of these stories are about power. Wealth just happens to be one of the most prevalent and easiest ways to measure power. We can count it. We have lists of who the wealthiest people in the world are. We equate wealth with success, happiness, and above all: power. Wealth is how we gain political power, social power, and professional power. We use our wealth to get more wealth. There’s a reason we say “you’ve got to spend money to make money.” And when we’re not extravagantly wealthy, we forget the power that the money we do have has. Just because we don’t have millions to put in a super PAC doesn’t mean we don’t have power to control our lives in ways in which those who are struggling do not. It’s expensive to be powerless. To be poor. You can’t buy things that are on sale and hold on to them, because you need that money for this week. You can’t get a higher paying job because you can’t afford to take unpaid time off of the job you have now and go to an interview. You have to keep repairing your car because its value isn’t enough to make even a down payment on a newer one. 56% of Americans can’t afford a $1000 emergency expense. And the response too often by those for whom $1000 is merely an inconvenience is “budgeting”. And sure, maybe that is a realistic solution for some. But you can’t budget yourself out of poverty. And suggesting budgeting is the solution instead of taking care of one another is antithetical to the Gospel. Jesus says we are to give away our power. One way in which we do that is to part with some of our many possessions, although it may grieve us like it did the man in today’s gospel. But living our values oftentimes requires that we loosen our grip on our own power to give to those with less.

Even Peter’s remarks to Jesus in the third part of today’s lesson hint at an attempt to gain some recognition and power. “We have left everything and followed you” is another attempt to get a gold star from Jesus. Peter gets as close as he’s going to get to receiving one, but with enough uncertainty to know that leaving home and following Jesus wasn’t the end of their work.

Thursdays are usually my sermon-writing days. This is particularly hard during football season. My college football fantasy league’s text chain tends to explode just as I’m about a quarter of the way through. I once told them what a distraction they are and they responded with ways in which one might preach on college football. The arrogance of early celebration. Pride really just in general. My favorite: UConn as Job, except they couldn’t remember anything good that UConn had and lost. And I realized that “the first will be last” is possibly the most appropriate way to describe my life as a Nebraska fan. We had three national titles before I turned 10. It was all I knew, and I had no idea that 25 years later things would be so different. But as much as I would like for Nebraska to still be the powerhouse it was in the 90’s, one team having all the power is boring. The only people who love Alabama being in the college football playoff every year are Alabama fans, and even they will acknowledge, albeit quietly, that it might not be the best thing for the sport. If you are the worst team in the National Football League, you get the first pick in the following year’s draft. That’s right: a world based entirely on power recognizes that power dynamics never changing is bad.

We struggle with that. It’s hard to recognize the things in our lives that are power grabs, or to recognize things we have done in the past that in retrospect were really about clinging onto power. To control. To our desire to be first. Even after Jesus says, “for mortals it is impossible, but not for God: for God all things are possible,” in the same chapter James and John are asking to “sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” It’s a wonder Jesus was so patient with us. This whole chapter has been about giving power away, and the first chance the disciples get they’re asking for power! Jesus tells us, give it away. Give our power away, because it isn’t ours anyway. God has all the power - as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours”. Not being first isn’t all that scary when the one who is actually first is Jesus. In fact, it’s rather freeing, knowing that the one who is first is the one who loves us all boundlessly and through whom all things are possible. To Jesus, none are last and it is our job to make sure that, as we strive to bring the kingdom of heaven to the earth, that we are giving away our own power and lifting up those who might be “last”, for we have nothing to fear. Amen.