Twenty-first Sunday after
Pentecost (Proper 23B)
October 13, 2024
Text:
Mark 10:17-22
“No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18;
ESV). So if Jesus is good, He must be
more than simply a “Good Teacher” (v. 17). From the rich young man’s own mouth comes the
unwitting confession. Jesus is good. Therefore Jesus is God. Not simply a teacher of ethics and moral
philosophy. Not simply an example of how
to live your life, in every situation asking the question, “What would Jesus
do?” No mere prophet or
religious guru. He is God. Therefore, He alone is good.
But the rich young man thinks he may be a
candidate for the title, as well. When
he asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 17), he is really
looking for an endorsement from Jesus that he is good enough to have merited
his way to heaven and resurrection.
Never mind the absurdity of earning an inheritance. The rich man asks a Law question, so
Jesus gives him a Law answer. You
want to be a good person by your own efforts and merit? You know the Commandments. Let’s start with the so-called “easy” ones,
the Second Table of the Law, the Commandments in relation to the neighbor (v.
19). “Do not murder.” Okay, got it.
Haven’t killed anyone lately. “Do
not commit adultery.” No
problem. Cheating on my wife would be
unthinkable. “Do not steal.” Check.
I always pay for everything. “Do
not bear false witness.” Truth is my
number one virtue. “Do not defraud.” Alright, I expected Him to say “Do not
Covet,” but I suppose defrauding is the outward manifestation of
coveting, and it is important to be honest in all our business dealings. Which I am.
Check. “Honor your father and
mother.” Listed last for
emphasis. No problem. Sure, I had my rebellious thoughts as a
teenager, but I never acted on them. And
yes, when I had a chance to give some corban, money dedicated to God, I
took what I might have given my parents for their support and care, and gave it
instead to a holier cause, but surely they understand, and, after all, God will
take care of them if they, like me, are holy enough, and surely God is more
impressed with my pious offering than He would be with more mundane parental
care. But I always treat Mom and Dad
with deference and respect. Very
important. Check. “Teacher, all these I have kept from my
youth” (10:20), from the time of my bar mitzvah at the beginning of
my teenage years, when I became, literally, a Son of the Commandments,
and God began to hold me responsible for my own holiness.
Now, you Lutherans need to give this young man a break
with your Lutheranism. You’ve
heard Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5), and you’ve attended a
Lutheran Catechism class, so you know the problem with the young man’s
self-righteous assertions. Keeping the
Commandments is not just a matter of outward behavior, but of the
heart. He who even hates
his brother, or wishes or does any harm, is guilty of murder, whether he kills
him or not. He who merely looks at
a woman with lustful intent has committed adultery with her in his heart,
whether he acts on it or not. Thus the
Commandments are broken, and we all do it.
All true enough. You’re
absolutely right. Good job. You pass your Catechism exam.
But the young man does have a point. He has outwardly, and scrupulously,
kept these Commandments of the Second Table.
And that is a good thing.
And as a result, everyone says of him, that he is a good man. We speak the same way about people who live
up to high moral principles. And we should,
humanly speaking, because it encourages people to do what is right, and not do
what is wrong, and that benefits us all.
The young man has every reason to believe, or so he
thinks, that he has also kept the First Table of the Law, the Commandments in
relation to God. He only worships the
God of Israel. Idols are abhorrent to
him. He doesn’t misuse God’s Name,
because he doesn’t even say it. When he
is reading the Scriptures, where the text says “YHWH,” I AM, he substitutes
“Adonai,” LORD. And the Sabbath. Never, ever, for any reason, does he do any
work. He attends synagogue service, and
then goes home and eats what has been prepared the night before.
But Jesus is good, and therefore God, and
therefore knows what the young man does not know about himself. For all his abhorrence for idols fashioned of
wood and stone, the young man has an idol made of silver and gold and the
trappings of comfort and luxury. His
wealth. His possessions. His stuff.
Mammon.
So looking at him with intense, divine, saving love,
Jesus essentially says to him: “If you want to be good by keeping the
Commandments, I’ll grant you that you’ve kept all those we’ve talked about from
the Second Table (though you may want to read my comments in the forthcoming
Gospel of Matthew when that book is released, wherein I will show you that you
really haven’t kept those Commandments to God’s standard, from your
heart). What I really want to get at
now is a matter of the First Commandment.
‘You shall have no other gods.’
You should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. But you, my dear child, love and trust
something else. And it must be
dealt with. The idol must be
toppled and excised from your life. So ‘go,
sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; and come, follow me’ (Mark 10:21).”
The issue is not that the young man hadn’t been generous
to God and to the poor previous to this.
I’m sure he had. He’s just the
kind of person who would put large sums of money into the Temple treasury
(Luke 21:1), and toss a few more spare coins to the beggars on the street
(Matt. 6:1 ff). The issue isn’t what
he’s given. The issue is what
he’s kept. And why he’s
kept it. Because he loves it for
what it does for him. He trusts it
to provide for all his needs and desires.
And above all, he fears losing it. Because then he would be destitute. And that is why he goes away sad. He cannot do it. He cannot give up his god. As it turns out, he is not good. So when it comes to his own doing, he has no
hope of gaining eternal life.
So also with your doing. You know you cannot gain eternal life by
it. You know the Commandments. And you know that, even if you have kept them
outwardly, keeping them really is a matter of the heart, and you know the
disposition of your heart in light of all those Commandments. And really, the Word of Christ in our text
hits you, also, right where it hit the young man. It is not that it is wrong to have money or
possessions (more on wealth next week).
But for now, suffice it to say, Abraham and David were both rich men for
their time and place, and yet Abraham was a friend of God, and David was
a man after God’s own heart.
Money, itself, is a good gift of God, as are many of the things
money can buy, and more importantly, the good things money can do for your
neighbor. It is the love of money
that is the root of all kinds of evils (1 Tim. 6:10). In any case, Jesus has not commanded you to
sell all you have and give it all away to the poor. But then, what if he did? Could you do it? And if you did, isn’t it true that you would
still walk away sad, like the rich young man? You love and trust your money, too, the
pernicious idol, Mammon. And you fear
losing it as much as the rich young man did.
So you, also, are not good.
And even if you keep a pristine outward moral life, you will never
inherit eternal life by your doing of the Law.
But the Gospel has been implicit from Jesus’ first words
in this text. Let’s make it
explicit. “No one is good except God
alone.” Jesus is God. Jesus is good. And it is by His goodness that you
inherit eternal life. He knows the
Commandments. He never murdered, never
hurt or harmed his neighbor in his body, but helped and supported him in every
physical need, healing the sick and injured, feeding the hungry, raising the
dead. He never committed adultery, but
lived a sexually pure and decent life in all that He said and did. And ever faithful to His Bride, the Church,
He restored adulterers and prostitutes, sinners and the unclean to Communion
with God, eating and drinking with them, as He does to this very day at the
holy Altar. He did not steal. As a carpenter, He would have always been at
the improving and protecting His neighbor’s possessions and income. And He is the gracious Giver of all that you
have. He did not bear false witness, but
always spoke truthfully. He did not
defraud anyone. And as to His parents,
we know that the Boy Jesus was submissive to them as He increased in wisdom and
in stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:51-52).
With regard to the First Table, Jesus feared, loved, and
trusted His Father above all things, ever seeking to fulfill the Father’s will
to save us. He did not misuse the Name
of God. He bore it and revealed it for
our salvation. And He not only fulfilled
the Sabbath, He is the Sabbath’s fulfillment. He is our Sabbath rest from the
endless striving to win salvation and eternal life by our goodness, by our
fulfilling the Law. He is our
forgiveness and redemption.
And all of His keeping of God’s Law, He did not for His
own benefit. He who gave us the Law,
was made subject to the Law, for our sakes, and for our salvation. He fulfilled it. He did it for us. We are baptized into Christ. And all His perfect keeping of the Law,
outwardly and inwardly, is credited to our account. And all of our breaking of the Law, outwardly
and inwardly, has been atoned for in His flesh, in His blood and death on the
cross. And all of His perfect
righteousness is given to us as a gift in the Gospel and Sacraments. Our sins are forgiven.
And that is how we inherit eternal life. Not by our doing, but by His. Ask a Law question, and you get a Law
answer. This is what you must do,
and do perfectly, to merit eternal life.
And you haven’t, so you can’t.
You’re doomed. But Jesus has a
better way, the Gospel way, His way.
As Martin Luther wrote, “The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never
done. Grace,” that is, the Gospel,
“says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done” (Heidelberg
Disputation, Thesis 26, LW 31:41).
We have a good God, who became man, taking on our flesh,
conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus is the One who gave up all He had and
bestowed it on us poor, miserable sinners, who have nothing of our own. He looks upon us with intense, divine, saving
love. He has done all in our place, and
given us His goodness, His righteousness, as a gift. He died for our sins. He is risen from the dead. This is grace, God’s unmerited favor bestowed
upon us for Christ’s sake. Believe in
this, and you will not only inherit eternal life… you have it already. Now, resting in this, that Jesus has done all
for you, for your forgiveness, life, and salvation, go love your neighbor by
keeping the Commandments, because that is what your neighbor needs. And look not to Mammon, to your works, or to
any other god to provide for you. Jesus
is good. He is the one true God, with
the Father, and the Holy Spirit. And He
alone will do it. In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
