I
preach on this story so often when it is not the reading of the day that I
hardly know what to do with it when it is. So, I figured that I would use the
opportunity today to talk about why I find this story so applicable to so many
situations.
First of all, it’s about wealth,
which is a subject everybody can relate to. The scene sets us up for the kind
of hierarchical stratification in which we live most of our lives, judging who
is wealthier, who is poorer, and trying to tease out what is a comfortable
level of wealth for us to have and live our lives. Everybody does this;
everybody has an idea of what is ‘good enough’ for them to feel like they are
getting by, and everybody has an ideal of what is ‘wealthy.’
This is when Jesus drops the bomb,
“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.”
With the rug pulled out from
underneath us, there is an obvious next question, “So what does it mean to be
rich?”
And I think this is one of the most
important questions implied anywhere in scripture. It’s a question that will
betray our motivations up-front, because anybody can argue that they aren’t really rich, not compared to so-and-so,
or such and such. After all, if you make $100,000 a year, sure you are in the
top tenth of one percent in the world in terms of income, but still you would
have to put that much away for 10,000 years to become a billionaire. Since
billionaires exist, how wealthy are you, really, in comparison?
At first blush, Jesus leaves the
door open. Perhaps to earn our place in the kingdom of God we just need to be
really good lawyers, arguing that wealth is relative and how can I get snubbed
in the kingdom of God when that pro athlete, who has only been blessed with
being big, is so much wealthier than me? Or how I can be rich—really—when that other person got all
their money from inheritance?
It’s real easy to not be rich if we
compare ourselves with others, but comparison is exactly the problem. The standard
Jesus sets for us is not the rich and not the poor; he is not saying that you
are wealthy because you have more than the people who use the food shelf, and
he’s not saying you aren’t rich because you don’t have as much as a
billionaire. The Jesus sets is whether you have given it all away. Verse 21: “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.’”
Give it all
away, says Jesus, every last bit of it. At first, this seems like a command
just to follow Jesus. Perhaps that is what we can argue before God when we meet
up in heaven. We can say, “Sure, God, I had many things, but I followed you too!”
The problem is that Jesus doesn’t give you that out. First comes the sacrifice
then the following. This is why the disciples have a freak-out moment. “Then
who can be saved?” they ask. Who, honestly? Because nobody gives it all away—even the disciples who did
exactly as Jesus commanded, leaving behind even their families to follow, even
these guys realize they haven’t bought in 100%.
This is where the Christian faith takes a very different
tack from the rest of our human life on this planet. When we read about wealth,
we expect it to be a tale about morality. That is what our national
conversation around wealth entails—he earned
that wealth; she should give some of it away. That’s what the heroes do in
the fairy tales. We are so accustomed to this story that I think a lot of
people believe that is exactly what Jesus is saying: Do your best, give away a lot, and you’ll receive riches in the kingdom
of God! But that’s not where we are left, and we know this because of
Jesus’ response to the disciples. He says, “For mortals it is impossible, but
not for God; for God all things are possible.”
Instead of doing your
best and God will do the rest, Jesus introduces us to the incomparable
power of grace. It is by God’s actions we are saved and not our own. Of course,
Jesus could have just said that. Instead, we get a long question about good
behavior and wealth that takes us there, which is important too, because most
of use our best moments and our best intentions to believe we will stand before
God proudly in judgment. The young man comes before Jesus similarly, bragging
about how he has kept the commandments so well, but how could he keep all of
them all the time? When Jesus digs a little deeper we discover that the man’s
bravado is not matched with an integrated understanding of the faith. It’s not
enough to be a follower of Christ on weekends; it’s not enough to be one just
in public or only in private; it’s not enough to be or to do anything but to
walk the road that Jesus walked, and that requires giving up not just a little
and not just a lot but everything.
It is the difference between cheap grace and free grace.
Cheap grace fills in where you make little mistakes. Cheat on your taxes? Cheap
grace! Cheat on your spouse? Cheap grace! Steal a little, covet a little, hold
a little wealth? Cheap grace is for you! It’s what most Christians do in the
public eye when they make mistakes: They ask for forgiveness and fall back on cheap grace. They act as if that makes
it all right—and who are we to deny grace?—when it not only cheapens
victimhood, it also cheapens the cross. Cheap grace is great for the
perpetrator, terrible for victims, and, most importantly, it isn’t real. With
cheap grace, if you do something really terrible—or if you look deeper within
yourself and realize you are capable of being far worse than you will ever
admit aloud—then cheap grace has nothing for you.
We are often allured by cheap grace given to us by a
cheap grace world. We see ourselves as temporarily embarrassed, and if we just
turn around and ask Jesus into our hearts he will make us act better, but you
aren’t just a little off, you are fundamentally broken. The young man comes to
Jesus expecting cheap grace, but what he gets instead is a level of judgment
that feels insurmountable. “Give away everything” is a command that cheap grace
cannot abide.
Jesus dries the pool of cheap grace in which the
disciples themselves are bathing, and says instead, “Come, follow me. I will
show you a better way.”
Not cheap grace but free.
And when I say, “Free,” I mean it in a sense that nothing
is in this world. They say there is no such thing as a free lunch, because
somebody has to pay for it and ultimately you owe somebody for it. This is the
way of the cheap grace world; there is, in fact, nothing that is free. Nothing
is more evident of this than our births, owed to parents we can never remotely
repay. How would you go about repaying a person for giving you life?
Try to repay it and you will end up doing calculus that
doesn’t add up. Free grace is like this. You can’t earn it, and you can’t
accept it any more than you could have accepted being born. Of course, that
means you might despise it; you may even feel contempt for the gift-giver, but
that is only because we realize it is a thing over which we have no power. Both
life and eternal life are beyond our control.
Free grace is perhaps the most offensive thing in scripture.
Free grace suggests firstly that nothing you do will matter for your salvation.
Well, what do you mean, Jesus? Shouldn’t there be some criteria? Shouldn’t the
good be rewarded and the bad punished? Free grace is so offensive because it
answers that question with a resounding, “No.” Free grace is also offensive
because it does not allow for comparison. What do you mean I’m no better than
that person who we know is absolutely terrible? By any objective criteria
surely I’m better at being human than him! Free grace again answers this resoundingly,
“No, you’re not.”
We can’t repay it, we can’t earn it, and it comes to
those we deem less worthy, but free grace is also the one sure way to break
free from a world that is forever telling you that you are not enough. A person
living in the freedom of grace can hear the world’s objections and nod along,
saying, “Yep, I agree, I’m not good enough, but what of it?” What of my
imperfection? What of my hypocrisy? What of my deeply flawed humanity? What of
my sins? What of my insincerity?
Our sin is not a badge of honor, but it is the simple
reality of being human east of Eden. We try to do better not to earn grace
cheaply, but because we have this free grace that we cannot begin to
comprehend. All we can do is dedicate our lives to the service of it. Rather
than trying to repay a thing we never could, we hope beyond hope that others
will discover that freedom for themselves. After all, none of us are any more
worthy of it.
For all the talk about freedom and liberty in this
country, we sure operate under cheap grace models. Freedom is only freedom when
we remove ourselves from the world of stratification, the tendency to assign a
ladder rung to others, some above and some below us, and instead we take
ourselves off the ladder entirety, following Christ toward true freedom, free
from comparison
That’s true freedom and liberty, because all other
freedom can be taken from you. Your life is vulnerable. The freedom of walking
after Christ is that you know it and you don’t need to protect it, because
grace is yours freely, you know what you deserve, nonetheless Christ has
prepared a better way ahead. We get there with the young, rich man and
disciples who never get it. Free grace is like that—so good we won’t believe
it.
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