October 15, 2006

Elaine Wainwright

19th Sunday after Pentecost     Hebrews 4:12-16    
 Mark 10:17-31

What must I do to inherit eternal life? … [Mark 10:17]

…There is no one who has left house or brother or sister or mother or father or children…who will not receive a hundredfold in this age…and in the age to come eternal life.

These two verses with their reference to eternal life, frame the reading of today's gospel – inheriting eternal life, in the age to come eternal life [Mark 10:30].

When we think of eternal life we imagine it in the future according to our linear view of time: past…to present…to future. In the Israel of the first century, a future reference like 'eternal life' was imaginary. In a culture, however, whose time process was cyclical rather than linear with the main focus being on the present rather than a linear long-term future, the future imaginary, “eternal life”, reflected back into the present on how one ought to live now. In other words, the reference to 'eternal life' was about ethics in the present rather than about an unknown future.

The man who questions Jesus is asking the same question which each one of us asks of ourselves time and time again: how must I live a good life? Am I living a good life? In response to the man's question, Jesus lists some of the commandments and his questioner says: I've kept all these since my youth. Let's listen for the familiar in this conversation. I suspect it is very descriptive of most of us who are generally 'good' Christians. We attend church regularly, we pray regularly, we live a 'good' life – we generally don't murder, commit adultery, steal or bear false witness, or defraud and I suspect most of us not only honour but love and care for our parents. And so like the rich young man we could very readily say: I generally live a good life [and in parentheses, I'll probably go to heaven].

The challenge in today's gospel, however, is that Jesus does not limit his invitation to the commandments. He sees the potential in this good man to take up an invitation beyond listed commandments: he looks at him and loves the potential he sees. And he invites him to examine his life carefully in a “limited good” society in which it was believed that anyone who had “many possessions” had generally obtained them fraudulently at the expense of others. Jesus even spells out what he might do to be truly and fully ethical: sell what you own and give to the poor and join the community around me - this is the way in which the future vision of “eternal life” reflects back into your present. But the man was shocked and went away sad because he had many possessions.

What is the invitation to us today? What do we have at the expense of others that could be given to/returned to them? First, as in the gospel, we can look to our material possessions. How do we live simply in a material-rich culture so that everyone has what they need to live? Or will we too go away sad because we have many possessions.

And what of time? How do we give of our time in an activity rich culture in which there is such demand to be here, to be there, to do any number of activities. How will we make time available for those in need of another? Or do we go away sad because we have and hold our time to ourselves and for ourselves?

And what of our very person? How will we give of ourselves in love, in relationship in a world that is supposedly communication rich but often connection and love poor – a world in which every moment thousands of people are texting or on mobile phones but often are lonely and sad. Do we really give of our person to others in relationships with a quality that generates love? Or do we go away sad because our giving of ourselves lacks depth?

Jesus invitation is to leave and to follow, to live the gospel as he lived it, to do the work of bringing in God's kingdom, God's transformative dream for the human community. This transformative dream is for right relationship – right relationship around material realities, right relationship around time, right relationship about our very person. Such ethical living turns our world upside down as the second part of the gospel suggests: people leave their family which was their source of relationship, of resources, of identity in the first century; Jesus pronounces the last will be first and first last; and says that a camel can go through the 'eye of the needle', the small gate into the city of Jerusalem through which only people could enter on foot. To do the extra beyond the keeping of the commandments will change our lives, will turn our world upside down.

In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, Andrea has her simple but value-rich or ethical life turned upside down when she takes a job in the fashion industry. She acquires exquisite material resources, has all her time eaten up by a demanding job so that she has no time with her family or friends, and loses her very self so that there is none of herself available to give in loving relationship. When she claims that she has no choice but to live this lifestyle, her boyfriend challenges her with the claim that everyone has choices. Andrea, like the man in today's gospel, comes to a turning point when the two lifestyles are held up before her and she has to choose – will she allow her new high-flying life to be turned upside down! Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth which I saw at the same time as The Devil Wears Prada on a very recent plane trip from San Francisco, places before the human community a much more radical ethical choice in relation to God's transformative dream. Can we, will we live in right relationship with the human and other-than-human communities of being for the survival of the very planet itself.

Today's gospel takes us, therefore, to the core of our being – what does it mean to live not just a good but a responsible and an ethical life, to allow our present life to be turned upside down. This is the challenge of the living and active word of God which goes to the very heart of our being, as the Letter to the Hebrews suggests, to the place where soul is divided from spirit, joints from marrow, places within ourselves too deep, too fine to see. It is there that we cannot escape ourselves nor the word of invitation. It is there to that hidden place within that we are invited today. We take with us to that place the invitation, the challenge of Jesus, the vision of the basileia or kingdom as God's transformative dream, the hard data and images and metaphors from our culture, and the very stuff of our day to day lives. In that quiet inner place, we cannot escape. We are naked and laid bare the Letter says and it is there that we will be invited like the man who questions Jesus, like Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada, and like the world community in An Inconvenient Truth to render an account. Impossible we are tempted to say but the gospel says no: with God all things are possible – you can live a truly ethical life and you can live it now and you can imagine the future of inheriting eternal life! With God all things are possible!