21 Pentecost

October 14, 2018

Amos 5.6-7,10-15;  Mark 10.17-31

+ For those of you who might not know, I am in the process of moving out of the rectory and into my late mother’s twin home. Now, most of you would think this would be fairly easy. He’s a priest, you’re no doubt thinking. He lives a simple life. Why is it taking so long for him to move?

Well, I really don’t live that simple of life. I like “things.” I have lots of “things.” Like LOTS of books. LOTS and LOTS of books.  And midcentury furniture And, weirdly, lots of midcentury dishware. That’s weird because I don’t cook or really over use my kitchen. But when I have guests over, let me tell you: they eat and drink from the finest dishware they could make in the 1950s and early 1960s!  And I have a lot of things I accumulated from my parents after their deaths. So I’m sorting and donating and throwing and truly, I hope, simplifying my life.

There’s a word I’ve been using quite a bit lately.

Pare.

 P-A-R-E.

As in shaving away, as in paring down the “things” in my life.

It’s daunting and exhausting and good and frustrating all at once. And I’m making major headway.

And just when I think I’m doing really well, I come across this morning’s Gospel reading?  Were you uncomfortable with it?  I was uncomfortable with it. We should be uncomfortable.  We all should be uncomfortable when we hear it.  Jesus is, quite simply, telling it like it is.  It is a disturbing message—at least, on the surface.

I stress that: on the surface.

He makes three hard-hitting points.

First, he tells the rich man who calls Jesus “good” to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor.

Second, he compares wealthy people getting into heaven to a camel going through the eye of a needle—a great image really when you think about it.

Finally, he tells his disciples that only those who give up their families and their possessions will gain heaven, summarizing it in that all-too-famous maxim: “the first will be last and the last will be first.”

For those who have—who have possessions, who have “things,” who have loved ones, who have nice cars and houses and safety deposit boxes and bank accounts and investments and stock AND bonds,--these words of Jesus should disturb us and should make us look long and hard at what we have and, more importantly, why we have them.

But…is Jesus really telling us we should give up these things that give us a sense of security? Does it mean that we should rid ourselves of those things?  Should we really sell our cars and our houses, empty out our bank accounts and our safety deposit boxes and our savings and cash in our stocks and bonds give all of that money to the poor?  Should we pare our lives down to nothing?  Does it mean, we should turn our backs on our families, on our spouses and partners, on our children and our parents?  Does it mean that we should go around poor and naked in the world?

Well, we need to look at it a little more rationally. Because, when Jesus talks about “riches” and giving up our loved ones, he’s not really talking what he seems to be talking about.

Do you remember the Gospel from last week, in which he was talking about Moses and the Law and divorce and remarriage? Now, that was a difficult scripture as well. He was saying that if one gets a divorce and remarries, they are committing adultery.

As I said last week, both of my parents had been divorced from their previous spouses before they married each other. Were my parents committing adultery in their marriage? Of course not.

But you can see how people DO have issues with the literal interpretation of this scripture.  In fact, I had an uncle, who was divorced and remarried, who heard that scripture one morning in church in the 1970s. He got up and left the church and never stepped foot in a church again in his life.   I wish I could’ve told him then, what I’m going to say right now. (Though I suppose where he is right now he’s already figured this out)

When Jesus talks of these things, he’s not really talking about what we think he talking about.  He’s not really talking about the securities we have built up for ourselves.  What Jesus is talking in today’s Gospel is about attachments.  Or more specifically, unhealthy attachments.

Having “things” in and of themselves are, for the most part, fine, as long as we are not attached to them in an unhealthy way.   Jesus knew full well that we need certain things to help us live our lives.  But being attached to those “things” is a problem.  It is our attachments in this life that bind us—that tie us down and prevent us from growing, from moving closer to God and to one another.  Unhealthy attachments are what Jesus is getting at here.  And this is why we should be disturbed by this reading.

Let’s face, at times, we’re all attached to some things we have. We are attached to our cars and our homes. We are attached to our televisions and computers and our telephones. Some of us are attached to our books, and to the art that hangs on our walls, and on midcentury furniture.

And, even in our relationships, we have formed unhealthy attachments as well.  Co-dependence in a relationship is a prime example of that unhealthy kind of attachment that develops between people.  We see co-dependent relationships that are violent or abusive or manipulative. People, in a sense, become attached to each other and simply cannot see what life can be like outside of that relationship.  

And as much as we love our children, we all know that there comes a point when we have to let them go. We have to break whatever attachments we have to them so they can live their lives fully.

The same is true, in a different way, with our parents. You’ve heard me say many times over this past year that, taking care of my mother in these last years meant that my world sort of revolved around her. And when she died, I felt lost and aimless. I still do.

It is seems to be part of our nature to form binding relationships with others and with things at times.  Especially in this day and age, we hear so often of people who are afraid to be alone.

The question we need to ask ourselves in response to this morning’s Gospel is this: if Jesus came to us today and told us to abandon our attachments—whatever it is in our own lives that might separate us from God—what would it be? And could we do it?  Because Jesus is telling us to do that again and again.  

What the Gospel for today hopefully shows us that we need to be aware of our attachments.  We need to be aware of anything in our lives that separates us from God. Jesus today is preparing us for the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot enter the Kingdom of God and still be attached to those unhealthy things in our lives.  Because we can’t take them with us into the Kingdom.

The message is clear—don’t allow your unhealthy attachments to come between God and you.  Don’t allow anything to come between God and you.

If Jesus came to us here and now and asked us to give up those attachments in our lives, most of us couldn’t to do it.  I don’t think I could do it.  And when we realize that, we suddenly realize how hard it is to gain heaven.  It truly is like a camel passing through the eye of the needle.

For us, in this moment, this might be a reason to despair.  But we really don’t need to. We just need to be honest. Honest with ourselves. And honest with God.

Yes, we have attachments. But we need to understand that our attachments are only, in the end, temporary. They will pass away. But our relationship with God is eternal.  This is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel.

So, we can enjoy those “things” we have.  We can take pleasure in them.  But we need to recognize them for what they are.  They are only temporary joys.  They come into in our lives and they will go out of our lives, like clouds. All those things we hold dear, will pass away from us.  

That is driven home to anyone who has to clean out a loved one’s home following their death. One of the true low points in this past year since my mother died was cleaning out her closet. I avoided it. I was tempted to ask someone to do it for me. But finally, one day, I just couldn’t stand seeing all those clothes, still on their hangers and folded neatly on their shelves. I realized that my mother would never wear those clothes again. My mother specifically requested that all her clothes go the New Life Center. And there, all her things, hopefully, are now being used by someone else who can wear them, who needs them. Hopefully several people are warmed on this bitterly cold day by the coats and sweaters my mother once wore. 

One day this will happen to us as well. All our clothes, all our possessions, all the money we worked so hard to save will no longer be ours. They will all be divided and distributed and given to others. It’s important to remind ourselves of this fact, even if it’s depressing. 

But that is essentially what Jesus is telling us today.  He is saying to us, “don’t cling to these ‘things.’” Let us cling instead to God and to the healthy bonds that we’ve formed with God and with our loved ones—with our spouses or partners, our children, our family and our friends.  Let us serve those whom we are called to serve. And let us serve them fully and completely, without hindrance.  Let us make the attempt to see that what we have is temporary.  Let us be prepared to shed every attachment we have if we need to.  And when that day comes when  we are called by name by our God, on that day we can simply not think about these “things” we cling to here, but we can  simply run forward and meet our God face to face.