“First
Steps”
Mark
10: 17-31
October 11, 2009
Along with Bible
commentaries, works of theology, church history and worship resources on my shelves sits
an equally challenging and poignant book titled “Affluenza: the All-Consuming
Epidemic.” With wit and charm the authors
address how we all interact with and are influenced by all of our stuff. They, like Jesus in this morning’s New
Testament passage, point to our attachment to our many possessions as a hindrance to
living fully.
The authors of “Affluenza”
define it as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload,
debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. This definition along with the accompanying book,
like Jesus’ words to the rich man in today’s gospel challenge us to get-off of
our backsides and take some first steps toward a more abundant life of less.
Please listen for how the
Spirit is speaking through God’s word found on pages 43-44 of the New Testament
section of your pew Bibles from the Gospel of mark chapter ten verses seventeen through
thirty-one….
As [Jesus] was setting out
on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what
must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus
said to him, “Why do you call me good? No
one is good but God alone. You know the
commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not
steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and
mother.’” He said to [Jesus], “Teacher,
I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus,
looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and
give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away
grieving, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus looked around and
said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the
Kingdom of God!” And the disciples were
perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to
them again, “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.” They were greatly astounded and said to one
another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus
looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all
things are possible.”
Peter began to say to him,
“Look, we have left everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, 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—and in the
age to come eternal life. But many who are
first will be last, and the last will be first.”
This is God’s word to us…
One of the 20th
century’s most famous spiritually motivated poems is “Footprints in the Sand.” Many of you know the basic gist of this poem, about
someone who had a dream and saw two sets of footprints in the sand of a beach; how the two
sets sometimes merged into one and when it was just the one set that is where God and
Jesus told the dreamer that he carried them through the difficult moments of life. That this poem has become so beloved is probably
due to the fact that so many of us have gone through so many different difficult times in
life.
And so it is with some
trepidation that I included a much less sentimental version of this much-beloved poem in
your morning’s bulletin; that is the more farcical entitled poem “Butt Prints in
the Sand.” I’ve included it not to
anger any of you, but to make a point that I believe relates to the story of the rich man
who had done so much to follow God, but was stunned when Jesus told him, “You lack
one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
With those words the Markan
Jesus puts the faith-filled, commandment-keeping, rich man on his heels, if not
figuratively flat on his backside. It is in
this spirit, the spirit of Jesus who says challenging things to drive home the point that
I felt it appropriate to challenge all of you with this poem that is included in your
bulleting inserts, follow along if you would like:
One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.
But then some stranger prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”
Those prints are large and round and neat,
But Lord they are too big for feet.”
“My child,” He said in somber tones,
“For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait.
You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know.
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt.
Because in life, there comes a time,
When one must fight, and one must climb.
When one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in the sand.”
Even though this poem may
bring a smile to our faces or perhaps a scowl for using such words in a sanctuary of God,
it raises some important questions; how is God calling us to rise and take a stand leaving
our butt prints in the sand? Do we, like the
religious man, even see our many possessions anymore?
Are we so focused on being “good” that we fail to see what we can
do to help others? As a culture and
individually how trapped are we in the idea that the only way to find happiness is through
shopping or eating-out or attaining more stuff?
Just as there are different
ways of understanding much beloved poetry, so too are there different ways of approaching
the scriptures. Both of our passages this
morning can be viewed from a purely spiritual perspective.
We could read them and think about how to be good people, how to treat
others nicely, by following the rules. Then
again, if that wasn’t quite good enough for Jesus when looking at the wealthy man,
why should it be good enough for us? Much of
the Bible dealt with issues that are very familiar to us in the 21st century.
Take this morning’s
readings, many biblical commentators believe that large swaths of the prophets are about
God’s disappointment at how the kings of Israel and the leading elite of that society
treated the poorest most marginalized among them. And
so chapter five of Amos is labeled by our pew Bibles as “A Lament for Israel’s
Sins.”
So what were those sins for
which Israel was guilty? Amos says to the
elite of Israel “Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies
of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have
planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” In other words, since the wealthy—since the
upper-crust o f8th century B.C. Israel oppressed the poor Amos warns them that all they
possessed would be taken away by the hand of God if they did not amend their ways.
In a similar way, this
morning’s passage from Mark even as the vast majority of Jews living in Roman
occupied Palestine lived a hand-to-mouth existence there were those who had wealth enough
and then some. But unlike the Jews of Amos’
day, in Jesus’ day the only ones who were wealthy were those who cooperated fully
with the occupying Roman forces: the temple officials, tax collectors and those who did
business with and for Rome.
The reason I bring up this
different perspective is that the message of this passage is not so much that we are all
to sell all we own and give it to the poor; that was Jesus’ assessment of just one
man and his particular circumstances. After
all there are relatively few of us who feel rich in these days of recession with rumors of
recovery off in the undetermined future. But
that we have many possessions that weigh us down is far less debatable than how well off
we may be in relation to our neighbors.
That we like the righteous
man who asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” that we too have
so many possessions should make us pause and wonder how much happiness, how much joy, how
much peace does so much stuff really bring us? And
if we begin to realize that our response to those questions is “not much” then
the next question has to be, “Why are we still so possessed by our possessions and
the pursuit of more?”
Now I realize that there are
probably some here who doubt this whole idea of our society being properly diagnosed with
Affluenza; that we don’t need to worry about taking a stand and not leaving our butt
prints in the sand, but I’d say we all need to look a little closer at what we really
have and how much time and energy we dedicated to the process of acquiring more stuff—be
it good or bad stuff.
In preparing for this
morning’s sermon I came across an article from the British newspaper “The
Guardian.” In this article the book and
media critic talks about how he had reached the point where he had more unread books and
unwatched DVDs than he had time left on this planet to read or view what he had already
purchased. Silly as it sounds it raises an
interesting point that seems to be true for most people; that is, the more stuff we have
the less happy we become.
The author of the article
really brought home his point for me when he said: “Last week I watched the first
part of ‘Electric Dreams,’ the reality TV show where a family lives with old
technology for several weeks. For episode
number one, they were stranded in the 1970s, with no internet, no DVDs or videos, and only
three channels on TV. It’s fair to say”
the author went on “that the kids weren’t massively impressed. But to me the limited options looked blissful”
he said. “You couldn’t lose yourself
online, so if you didn’t watch Summertime Special or World in Action, you had to read
a book, go for a walk, or in extreme circumstances, strike up a conversation with a fellow
human being.”
Isn’t it time too for
us to acknowledge all of our many possessions? Don’t
we need to look around and take stock of the fact that even as we have been dealt a
terrible blow economically we still have so much? Should
we not begin to come to terms with the idea that if we can’t be happy with all we do
have will we ever be pleased?
Isn’t it time we all
started to take some first steps toward a healthier way of living where we trust “for
God all things are possible” and be aware that “many who are first will be last,
and the last will be first” in God’s economy?
What if we let these words of Jesus guide our thoughts and actions more than
the grief and pall that our possessions so often place on our heart and mind?
Isn’t it time for us
all to become consumed with worshipping God, of delving deeply into God’s word and
developing richer relationships with our sisters and brothers in faith instead of being
consumed by earning more so we can spend more so we have to work harder so we can buy more
so we can be happy? How is God calling us to
step away from the decay of affluenza? Where
in our lives is Christ calling us to take a stand and not leave our butt prints in the
sand foundation of relying on so much materialism? In
what ways will you take some first steps toward entering a fuller more abundant life
within the Kingdom of God?
Amen.
