October 11, 2015
- The gospel is about wealth – the kind we find in Australia where material values are prominent in personal life.
- We all want to do well; to create opportunities for our kids and live the benefits of a free enterprise economy.
- The stock markets have recently had a downturn but they are improving and usually go back up.
- The young man in the gospel is well off. When confronted by Jesus about his wealth, his face fell, “for he had many possessions.”
- This is not unusual because, some years ago, when OneTel, a telco start up, went bust, neither James Packer or Lachlan Murdoch were at all happy.
- No doubt many wealthy people measure their self-value by their money value and general success.
- Strangely, it seems that the rich young man is presented as a failure: since it would be easier for camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for this man to enter the Kingdom of God.
- This all seems rather exaggerated to me because it contradicts the very hopes we hold out for our children: that they do well at school; get a good education; job; and make plenty of money. Invest or buy property and repeat the pattern with their own children.
- There must be a twist in this story but how to find it?
- Jesus is, at least to some extent, setting up this story to make some rather important points in his teaching.
- One element must be the danger of loving what we have more than who we are.
- This is the perennial problem of wealth. Measuring our personal value in terms of material success.
- On the one hand, money frees people up for other more important social and justice commitments, although it can generate greed and jealousy of those who have more and that is not a good thing.
- Wealth can be a screen for an otherwise empty and hallow life.
- But it can also be an opportunity to develop oneself and enrich the lives of others through generous sharing and gift giving.
- In truth, while it is no guarantee of happiness, it is not, in itself, a bad thing.
- The young man in the gospel may well be too attached to his life in this world; and to his money; but that hardly makes him a bad person.
- More importantly, it seems, what is true of the rich and the poor alike, namely, that we all put too much store in our own efforts in life.
- As if God is on the sidelines, rather than at the center.
- One of the great challenges of modern life has been the strong emphasis on individuals and their efforts to make for a happy and fulfilling life
- We are the new ‘centers’ for effort and success.
- We are all ‘self-made’, so we think.
- Instead, Jesus teaches something different: we are blinded by our efforts and our success to the religious truth that, if God does not provide, in vain do the builders labour.
- This is to enter the Kingdom of God and know, for the first time, that everything has its measure in God.
- Then we will be much freer than money can make us; more confident than an enlarged purchasing power; with a peace that no eastern suburbs mansion can provide and with clarity about what is important in life.
- This is what makes the gospel more telling. All human beings can be saved and it has nothing to do with money.
- The suggestion is that we do not need more than what God gives and he has the power over our addictions, even to money.
- Lastly, the rich are sometimes the poor. People with a low value of themselves often need to look successful and rich because they do now know that in themselves.
- In this sense the gospel bears a deep truth, the RICH young man is really the POOR young man.
- Only God and his grace can make us truly rich.