Pentecost 19, Year B
The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew
“Jesus, looking at him, loved him….” This is the highlight of today’s Gospel reading that gives me hope, for I believe it is how Jesus responds to each of us when we turn to him with sincerity. Jesus sees each one of us for who we are and speaks to us the truth of what we need to be made both whole and holy. If we dare to ask for this truth we are likely to find it at once gift and challenge. The difficulty lies in the fact that what we need and what we want are often not the same, and we are left with a choice. Do we listen to Jesus or another voice?
In the Gospel a man runs up and kneels before Jesus, asking “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He places himself in a posture of humility, he addresses Jesus in a manner of praise, and he focuses upon one of the really big questions of spiritual life. He appears earnest in his seeking. Jesus deflects the praise, pointing as always beyond himself to God the Father. Jesus also speaks not from his own opinion but turns to the Law to answer the question. Interestingly, he speaks only of the commandments that address relationships between people. To these the man responds “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Here is a man who takes his faith seriously. He has actively sought to live rightly and in accordance with the Law. He is, from all we know, a good man. But there is more to faith than being a good person. The man is in right relationship with other people. What about God? There is something that stands in the way from God being first in his life. That’s where those other commandments come in, particularly the Great Commandment: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Jesus loves him and tells him the truth: the man needs to let go of what is keeping him from trusting fully in God and follow Jesus. The man’s response shows that Jesus has indeed identified the core issue, for he walked away grieving.
In
our service of Baptism the candidates are asked six questions. Three are renunciations and three are
affirmations. Those questions begin
broadly and hone in ever more personally in addressing our need to give up
whatever and whomever we might place before God in our lives. The most direct question is: “Do
you renounce all sinful desires that draw
you from the love of God?” We,
like the earnestly seeking man, must address whatever challenges us and always
seek to live into our vow to follow Jesus and put our “whole trust in his grace and love.”
In
the movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, four siblings in wartime
England are sent to live in the country to keep them safe from the bombings in London. They find themselves in a rambling country
mansion and during a game of hide and seek find a mysterious doorway into
another world called Narnia. While the
creatures that inhabit Narnia look very different from Lucy, Edmund, Susan and
Peter, they behave in very human ways.
The children find themselves in the middle of a power struggle between
the White Witch, who holds power and wields it cruelly, and Aslan, a lion who
has come to redeem Narnia from captivity to evil. Edmund finds himself drawn in by the power
and intimidation of the White Witch. The
other three are the well behaved children, and they each respond differently to
the choice between good and evil. Susan
repeatedly wants to turn away from dealing with the struggle at all and focus
on being safe. Lucy trusts
wholeheartedly in Aslan and insists that they not only follow him, but also do
what they can to save Edmund. Peter
wobbles between wanting to follow and wanting to be responsible and safe. Throughout the movie each child is challenged
to move beyond what holds them back from trusting in Aslan and to grow into
what he calls them to be as faithful followers.
Lucy leads the way. Choosing to
follow does not mean all happiness and light, as is clear when Susan finds out
that the famed Aslan is a lion and asks, “Is
he safe?” She is told: “Safe? Of course he’s not safe! But he’s good.”
What makes us feel safe, or important, or powerful, or loved? What is it that we seek, treasure, feel we couldn’t live without? Would we have the courage to ask Jesus what it is we need to do to inherit eternal life? Do we want to know the answer?
When St. Francis really listened to the Gospel for the first time and took it literally, he did just as this young man was asked to do. His family thought that he had lost his mind. No one was supposed to take the Gospel that literally! But Francis found the word of Jesus that spoke to what he needed to do to follow Jesus faithfully. From a worldly perspective it may well look like a form of insanity. But from a heavenly perspective our striving after what is less than eternal life probably looks just as crazy, if not more.
When
St. Teresa of Avila struggled with a call to deeper faithfulness, she found
that even being in a convent was not enough to help her focus on what was
important. She was attractive, vibrant,
and very popular, and the convent encouraged her to spend a lot of time
entertaining visitors to keep the donations coming. She found the attention kept her from being
able to develop her faith and wrestled with it for quite a while. Teresa found a comment from St. John of the
Cross very helpful in giving her the insight to move beyond this stumbling
block. He wrote , “It makes little difference whether a bird be held by a slender thread
or by a rope; the bird is bound, and cannot fly until the cord that holds it is
broken.” She left that convent and
established a stricter one. Not all who
ask the question choose to follow where Jesus calls. One spiritual director tells of a directee
who found the challenge too much and was honest about it. She was wealthy and educated and was spending
her free time seeking to grow in her spiritual life. The director was delighted to watch her learn
and dare to try new things. One week he
felt she was on the threshold of making a big change to a new level of
commitment, when she told him something that saddened him greatly. “I
won’t be back. This is costing too
much. I’m going to have to change, and I
don’t want to change. I like my life the
way it is.”
Dare we ask the question? What must I do to inherit eternal life? What draws me from the love of God? Could we even hope to be like Lucy, who looked beyond herself to see what might be needed to save her brother as well? What are we at St. Paul’s called to do and be as we seek to follow Jesus? How might we offer ourselves for God to work through us? The question is not whether we want to change, nor whether we like our lives or our parish the way they are. The question is seeking God’s perspective rather than our own, and then seeking to reconcile our lives with God’s vision. I pray that we might all have the courage not only to ask, but to follow.
Amen