The "Next" Commandment

19  Pentecost bP.23  October 14, 2012

Job 23:1-9, 16-17, 10-15  Ps. 90

Hebrews 4:12-16  Mark 10:17-27

Lectionary Link

  In history of religion most religious people have tried to make theological explanations for both prosperity and suffering.  In the Hebrew Scripture tradition and the history of people who have practiced the faith we find various theologies or explanations for why God’s people sometimes experience prosperity and why they experience suffering.  And sometimes these competing explanations come into conflict within a community; sometimes some of God’s people are successful and some apparently are not.  So why do some people prosper and some do not?

  The story of Job was written by a wisdom writer who wanted to oppose the sort of Pollyanna theology of prosperity which said, “If you keep the law and obey God, then God will bless you with success and prosperity.”  So we have Job, a righteous man who suffered the loss of everything by God’s permissive hand behind the scenes.  Job challenged all of the theologies of prosperities of his friends and the writer of Job was saying, “Bad things do happen to good people, even righteous people, even people who keep the law.”

  We also have theories of suffering and prosperity within our own modern culture of secular individualism.  We can naively think that people in any society rise and fall solely due to their individual merit while we deny that lots of people have a larger safety net than others in whether  they are successful or not.  I also have noticed that entertainment figures use New Age religions to give a justification as to why they are successful and why they are justified or destined to receive a disproportionate amount of the fame and wealth in our world.

  In our appointed Gospel we have presented to us an encounter between Jesus the wisdom teacher and a wealthy young man who was very interested in the law.  One might say that this wealthy young man was someone who wanted to use Jesus to verify why he was so successful.  This young man was one who was proud of his accomplishments.  This was a young man who believed in success through his individual merit.   This is a man who wanted to use the law as a check list and a resume of his success.  “The ten commandments?  I’ve done them, piece of cake now can I have a real challenge?  Rabbi Jesus please give me a real challenge.”  Be careful what you ask for?

  If I were to characterize this Gospel paragraph, I would call it a theology of the “next commandment.”  What is the most important commandment for any person?  It is the “next commandment.”  Jesus was not going to let the young man rest on the laurels of his success with the past commandments, he challenged and gave him a very hard next commandment.  “Sell all that you have and give to the poor.”  How many of us would like to have that as our next commandment?  Maybe we’re thinking, “I’m not too proud of my performance of the other commandments, give me some time Jesus, before you give me that commandment.  And surely on my death bed all of my material possessions will be given up by me.”

  What I would assert to each of us is that we need to always be working on the next commandment.  And what is the next commandment?  It is something different for each of us based upon our own circumstances.  For people like Job who don’t know the rhyme or reason of their suffering even when his friends are trying to give the easy answers, the next commandment in suffering is to just hold on in faith in knowing that one is not exempt from some of the probabilities of genuine freedom in this world.  It can be a great challenge to be working on the next commandment because the next commandment involves applying excellent response to the specifics of our situation now.  And excellence will means something different for every person.

  What is the next commandment for you and me now?  What is the next commandment for your family and for our parish?  We can rely upon our past good records as providing us with the character to keep on keeping on, but we still have to work and accomplish the next commandment.

  So what is the next commandment for you?  For someone in a skilled nursing center, the next commandment may involve an acceptance of the limitation of the body and not letting the past criteria for successful living be the current standards that one places upon oneself.  The next commandment for each of us involves an honest assessment of what we need to do next to progress in excellence.  What do I need to do next to be better in the art of Christian living?  I really cannot tell you what you need to do next.  I cannot tell you what your next commandment is; all I can tell you is to look for it and don’t avoid it.

  What is the next commandment for St. John the Divine parish?  What do we need to do to be the very best parish now?  We have some challenges facing us because of the ever changing circumstances in our demographics.  We have challenges for ministry and for financing and for outreach.  No, our conditions do not exhibit the conditions of the suffering Job but we can only embrace the conditions that face us now.

  Why is it that the wealthy cannot enter the kingdom of God?  I think it is because the kingdom of God has to be inherited as a son or daughter of God.  Wealthy people, whether in the wealth of their own money or the wealth of their own merit believe that they deserve the kingdom of God.  They completely miss the “state of mind and the state of spirit” for recognizing the way in which Jesus saw God’s graceful kingdom.

  This should also tell us about our next commandment.  We cannot make ourselves enter the kingdom of God by performance.  We can open our hearts to accept the grace of being in God’s kingdom and act accordingly.  We do not perform our next commandment in order to get into the kingdom; we do so through the grace of already being God’s sons and daughters and by letting others know that they too share in the God’s graceful kingdom.  We cannot deserve something that we already have and that has been given by God.  The wealthy young man was trying to earn something he already had and therefore he and all who were similarly wealthy were isolated from its benefit.

  The Gospel of Jesus proclaims to us the inheritance of God’s kingdom; we’re doing nothing to deserve it, however with our actions we can expand our appreciation of the grace of God that is always and already a part of our lives.  It is through grace that we take up the next commandment of our lives towards excellence, not to get into the kingdom of God but as proof of the God of love.

  Let us acknowledge the wealth of God’s grace and love today and accept our inheritance in God’s kingdom of love.  And let us work on our next commandment in life as good stewards of God’s grace.  Amen.