October 12, 2003
By Jack Price

Series: Life's Detours

            Dead ends!  No way out!  If you're driving, "dead end" means don't go that way unless that way is where you want to be.  If you're trying to solve a problem, find some other, more promising, path to search.  In life, "dead end" means no future and no hope.  If you're hopeless, perhaps you're a "dead end" kid and people avoid you.  You are sorely tempted just to, give up.  In our lives "dead ends" are where hope fails and hopelessness prevails.

It was a time of dead ends.  It was the worst of times; hardly the best of times.  When Jesus lived, there was occupation and oppression.  Privilege and wealth were signs of God's favor.  Poverty was a dead end, avoided even by God. 

There's always a dual reality in the gospels.  There's Jesus' world, the one presented.  There is also the world of the gospel writer.  In Mark's world, the Romans were in the process of destroying Jerusalem and the Temple (70CE).  In Mark's world, the Christians were in their second generation and had lost the founding Apostles.  In Mark's world, there was a growing schism between Jews and the Christian outgrowth of Judaism who were losing their Jewish roots, their guidance.  Mark's gospel is actually a response to a dead end, a world without hope, without a future.  Jesus shares an amazing truth with the disciples, that the "Kingdom of God" begins with dead ends"

Today's Gospel lesson is taken from the Gospel of Mark (10: 17f.).  It begins with a conversation Jesus has with a man who approaches him.  Mark doesn't tell us much about this guy, but there are lots of clues that first-century readers would not have missed.  The man addresses Jesus:  "Good teacher." In an effort to get Jesus to buy into the status "game," the man compliments Jesus with a seldom-used and therefore unique salutation.  He expects Jesus to respond reciprocally, thereby setting the two of them apart from the crowd and even the disciples, but Jesus gives him no satisfaction, no ego stroke and actually challenges him to be clear as to who he thinks Jesus really is.  "Why do you call me good?  There is none good but God." 

"Good teacher.  What must I do to inherit eternal life?"  This is a good question.  It's important to ask good questions.  Whatever the man's motivation, his question was right on target.  And Jesus replies with the expected answer, "Keep the commandments."  Then, Jesus names several.  Don't kill, commit adultery, steal, defraud, or bear false witness.  Honor your mother and father.  Except, one of the commandments he lists is not one of the Ten!   "Defraud" is not one of the 10 commandments.  It refers to an employer keeping back wages of hired worker, to default.  We have found out more about this man.  He is a wealthy land owner, a member of the privileged class of Jesus' culture.

Oh, yes.  I have obeyed all the commandments since my youth.  I've got this church thing down.  According to the Talmud, only Abraham, Moses & Aaron could be said to have obeyed the Law fully. 

Jesus' addresses this man with four directive statements that reveal to us his particular sin, his "addiction" to his status.  "Get up!" Jesus says, just as he would speak to one who needs physical or emotional healing.  "Sell what you have!"  Let go of what is making you sick.  Jesus was speaking to every member of the wealthy class of his day.  "Give it to the poor" and you will have riches in heaven.  Severe inequities in wealth that result in some having an overabundance while others lack basic necessities can only be resolved by those with too much giving it to those without.  Addiction to wealth and status can only be healed by releasing the sources of that addiction.  "Give it to the poor" and you will have riches in heaven.  Then, "Come follow me."  Jesus extends to this man the same call the disciples answered, a call to leave home, family, and property to follow.

The rich young man, bound by the foibles of his socio-economic class, hits a dead end.  There was no way out.  He couldn't give up his possessions.  He loved them and what they signified to him.  His status as wealthy, influential, and powerful was essential to his self-identity.  He couldn't let go of that.  What would be left of him?  So, he walked away sadly and Jesus, looking after him, loved him.  How tragic for that man.  How tragic for us when the resources for life become the chains that bind us and keep us from the source of life.

Jesus was a good teacher.  After the man had left, he turned to his own disciples and asked, "So, what have you learned today?"  He looked at them, saw their state of shock, and must have thought, "Well, might as well deal with this now."  He said, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"  And the disciples were perplexed at these words.  Jesus, everyone knows that wealth and prosperity are sure signs of God's blessing.  If they can't get in, what about the rest of us? 

Do you remember what Jesus taught about children being the model for God's way of thinking, children who in that culture were the lowest of the low.  This teaching is the economic version of his teaching about children & status.  To emphasize this, Jesus addresses them, "Children!"  "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  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."  This means it's impossible.  Efforts to "soften" this image by saying that it means "only with great difficulty" actually distort the true meaning.  In the Babylonian version of the Talmud, there is a similar saying only using the image of an "elephant through a needle's eye."  The largest animal people knew could get through about the smallest space people could imagine more easily than a rich person could enter the Kingdom of God.  A 20^th century version read, it is easier for Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the National City Bank.

Like the seed that fell in among weeds in Jesus' parable of the sower, the weeds of wealth and its companions - comfort, influence, deference, and security - will choke that person.  He will wither spiritually and die.  Wait a minute, Jesus!  From what you're saying, nobody can get in.  And Jesus agreed, it is impossible for people - only God's action brings salvation. 

Wait a minute, Jesus!  How about us?  We've left everything to follow you.  We have walked away from home, family, and land.  What about us?  Here voice of Mark most clearly heard - There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age-houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions.  House, family, and land were foundations of life for anyone in Jesus' culture and time, also for Mark's.  If you leave the foundations of your life to be Jesus' disciple, your investment will pay off "big time" in this life, with what is 100 times more valuable than houses, family, or land.  The benefits of discipleship are present and tangible and different.  It's like that commercial.  If you suffer from heartburn, there is good news!  There is a new medicine for you.  If you don't suffer from heartburn, well actually then, there's no good news for you.  If you are desperate to follow Jesus, then there's good news.  If you're not, then well actually, there's no good news for you.  But if you are, there is good news now and in the age to come eternal life.  And Jesus looked at the disciples, perhaps sadly, certainly with love, "Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." As Ken Medema has said, "Things are different from heavenly perspective.  Things look different to you when you're flying upside down."

            This Gospel lesson is filled with strange teachings about  God's nature and what God values.  It is kind of radical and challenging to our way of thinking.  I've always been taught to keep my options open.  Basically, this is a good strategy.  It helps in making good choices and avoiding bad ones.  It lowers stress.  Jesus has a different "take."  True discipleship begins when you no options left. 

            We have been following Life's Detours through a series of series examining the often unexpected pathways of our lives.  Wayne Oates has written the book on Life's Detours and proposes some laws for Life Detours.  We have looked at the laws of compensation, of realism and of perspective.  Today, the fourth Law of Life's Detours is the Law of Resurrection.

The detours of life are begun by a dead end.  We literally back out and start all over again.  The death of a direction is the birth of a new one.  The Law of Resurrection is the law of life and it is written into the scarred tissue of humanity.  Old things must pass away in order that all things may be made new.  Much of our kicking, screaming, complaining, depression, and projection of blame is little more than our desire to hang on to a patently dead past.  We die a little or a lot when our way of life no longer moves us into a fuller relationship to God, to ourselves, and to others.  The self that dies through such faith will be raised to a new life through the revealing power of God.

                  Using traditional Christian language, we talk about being lost in sin.  Our hopeless condition is a dead end.  You and I find ourselves in dead ends from time to time in our work, in the primary committed relationships of our lives, in our family relationships, and in our spiritual journeys.  Dead ends are when things seem hopeless.  Quite honestly, if you look around at the world, there is plenty to feel hopeless about.  The key, you see, is not recognizing that there are dead ends, or knowing when we are at them.  The key lies in what happens when we find ourselves at a dead end.  The natural reaction is to give up and walk away.  The response of faith is to wait there.  Dead ends can be the very door to life itself.  The mistake of the rich, young ruler was to leave when he reached his "dead end."  He felt hopeless and walked away from the source of life and meaning. The entrance to heaven is found at the point of impossible.  For people, finding ultimate meaning (salvation) is impossible.  All things are possible for God.

            The spiritual exercise suggested for this past week has been to ask yourself two questions.  First, what is it that enlivens you?  What is it that brings you to life?  Second, what has a deadening effect on you?  As you ask yourselves these questions, I ask you, "What did you learn?"

"Gracious God, thank-you for all that brings us to life, individually and as a church.  Help us find faith to ourselves in life-giving activities and to let go of what we do that deadens.  Thank-you also for the dead ends of our lives, for faith not to walk away from them too quickly, for the courage to wait for You in our dead ends.  You are the Word of eternal life.  Where else shall we turn?"  Amen.