Living as Those Who have No Inheritance?

19  Pentecost b P.23  October 11, 2015

Job 23:1-9, 16-17, 10-15  Ps. 90

Hebrews 4:12-16  Mark 10:17-27

Lectionary Link

 The rich young, law abiding man came to Jesus and asked, "Good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

  And in this question resides perhaps the greatest dilemma of life.  Do we live in our lives as children who think that we've been disinherited or who have no inheritance at all?  Do we live believing that our heavenly Daddy has left us out of the will of eternal life?  Perhaps we do have major "daddy" issues then.  Am I good enough for Daddy? Am I good enough so that Daddy's eternal legacy will always be in my life?  Or maybe the issue is that we do not feel as though we have any heavenly “Daddy” at all?  Maybe we live as “divine orphans” being passed around by the foster parents whom we have a hard time pleasing?

  Perhaps this feeling of being disinherited people expresses the feeling of alienation from God.  Perhaps it expresses the very essence of what motivates our lives.  I want to be recognized eternally by someone.  I want to have an inheritance which lasts beyond my earthly days.  In this life eventually everyone dies out who would remember us except in the case of the few who make the history books but even the heroes are remembered for for but a handful of deeds which they did. It may be a real dilemma to live as those who are not memorable enough beyond a few years in the great passage of time.  What can we do to inherit eternal life? 

   How did the early Christian communities struggling for existence instruct their members about the lasting significance of their lives?  They presented the teaching narratives of the life of Jesus.  In one of these narratives, the Socratic Jesus began to question the rich young man.  "You say you want to Inherit eternal life?  What does your experience of Judaism tell you?  Doesn't it say that you have to keep the ten commandments?"  The young rich man answered, "But Jesus I have kept all of the commandments and can you tell me that I have now inherited eternal life?" 

  Jesus answered this rich young man by essentially saying, "But have you kept the next commandment?"  The rich man was wondering what his next commandment was and so Jesus told him, "Your next commandment is to sell all that you have and give it to the poor."  And the rich young man went away with sadness because he had many possessions.

  Every one of us has a next commandment just like the rich young man.  It may not be wealth or possessions for us; it may be something else which we are holding onto which is hindering us from being better.  If you and I are brave, we will ask God about the next commandment for our own lives.  And we may walk away for awhile because next thingmay be something which is too hard for us to do given our history and our habits.

  So, may God give us the courage to discover and take on the next commandment of each of our lives.  Mine will be different from yours.

  This Gospel story is a teaching unit of the early church about the inheritance of God and the issue of success and wealth in our lives.

  There is a long tradition in Judaism and in religious thinking that by doing and keeping the law and fulfilling religious behaviors we will be guaranteed blessing, success, recognition and attain a good afterlife.  But Job, the prophets and Jesus and many other martyrs are proof that really bad things can happen to really good people.  So the disciples of Jesus expressed their doubts and this doubt was expressive of the kind of blessing theology which which is often held in life.   "Well, if rich people whose success is expressive of God's blessing cannot enter the kingdom of God, who can enter the kingdom of God?"  The belief of blessing theology is the belief that success and wealth are proof of God’s blessing.

    And so we have the speaking in riddles by Jesus, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

  What are the implications of the riddle of Jesus for us?  Should we look for the development of nano-camels to pass through the eyes of needles?

  I think the implication of the riddle of Jesus is this: one cannot do anything to receive an inheritance except be a son or a daughter.  Probate laws states that what belongs to parents belongs to children.  If we believe in God, our heavenly parent, and believe and accept that we are sons and daughters of God, then we have already inherited the kingdom of God.  God created the world.  The world and life has always been a part of the all-encompassing kingdom, realm and presence of God.   God as parent has shared everything with us as God's children.   Sin is the state of alienation of losing our identity of knowing ourselves as God's children and therefore thinking that we need to seek an inheritance.  Since we don't accept ourselves as children of God and we may have "daddy" issues in thinking that we have do things and commit good religious behaviors in order to please "daddy" and be written into daddy's eternal will.

  But with God all things are possible, always have been.  We were made as children of God and made for God's kingdom.  It is only the alienation of sin that has created the sense of separation within our own minds and hearts.  Rich, poor, black, white, male, female, gay, straight.....we all have to have the humility to accept ourselves as God's children in God's kingdom.  Being Episcopalian or Roman Catholic or Lutheran or Muslim or Jew will not make us more or less a child of God with an eternal inheritance.  Being a member of God’s family is a gift of God's grace in Creation and a gift of poignant re-coverery in the witness of Jesus.

  Friends we never were kicked out of God's family; we never were disinherited; we have always lived in the kingdom of God.  Now let's  just accept it!

  But Jesus we want to have the pride of earning it ourselves.  We want to have the pride of saying that my way of earning it is better than others.  We want to say that being Episcopalian is better than being Lutheran, Roman Catholic or Baptists.  Yes, we want to make it about our works or family or religious group identity.   God's grace is an impossible human work.  Do not reduce the inheritance of God’s grace to a human work.

  But you say, "If this is the case, what is the point of trying to be good?  What is the point of being Episcopalian or Christian?"  The rules and the laws and the disciplines in life have their own preventive effect in our lives.  If we live by good rules actuarial probability theory will tell us that things are more likely go in our favor, as in, "if we never drink and drive, we will have the guaranteed blessing of not being arrested for a DUI."   That's how rules and disciplines create the probability of preventing what is bad and guaranteeing the probability of goodness for us.  We get rewarded by living good lives.  But we do not live good lives in order to be children of God or to receive the inheritance of eternal life.

  Eternal life is the life of knowing that one is a child of God and committing the preservation of one's life to the greatness of God's memory to reconstitute us forever.

  God does not need our money or our life styles to make us children of God; God only needs our humility to accept our status as children of God.  As we recognize our status as children of God, then we will live our lives in the way of generosity.

  God does not need our money nor does God need us to live the lives of good Episcopal Christians.  However, St. John the Divine does need our money and our community needs us to live the lives of good Episcopal Christians.  We give and we share as a celebration of knowing that we are already children of God who have been given an eternal inheritance.  So let us live our lives generously today, knowing that our "Daddy and Mommy God" has included us in the will of eternal life.  Amen.

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.