Following Jesus – is it worth it?     12^th October 2003  Linda Hood                                                                                          1

Read Mark 10 17-23

I grew up in a family where we struggled to have enough money.  My father worked in a foundry, and he always did overtime to try to make ends meet.  When I was little, he worked 6 days a week.  Sunday was the only day we saw him.  As I became a bit older and we needed school uniform, money for trips and treats, my mother had two jobs – she did knitting for people, often staying up well into the night to finish a job, and she did cleaning.  My two sisters and I never went without something we really needed, but there wasn’t a lot of money for extras.  I daresay many of you have a similar experience to that.

So I find it quite hard to identify with the man in the story.  He was rich – he had great wealth.  If he needed something, it wasn’t a choice between food and clothes – he had both.  He possibly owned land and property.  He had many possessions.

Nowadays, compared to when I was young, I am relatively rich.  I still have to be careful with my money, but I have some savings for a rainy day and I can go on holiday every year.  If I need a new pair of shoes because the others have fallen apart, I can find the money to buy them – even if it means juggling things until next pay day.  And the majority of people you find in church are like that.  If you look around most churches, very few people would be counted as poor.

In fact, we have this idea that God looks after those who look after themselves – if you are careful with your money, God will bless you.  God will provide – isn’t that what the Bible says?  So we work and earn our money and become middle class and respectable.  Some people even look upon it as their right to have possessions and wealth, calling it a sign of God’s blessing.  It has been that way since Old Testament times- the more cattle you had, the more righteous you must be, because wealth was a sign of God’s favour on you.

But Jesus turned people’s ideas upside down.  Jesus broke the mould – he didn’t seem at all interested in money.  This must have seemed very strange to the devout Jews of his day, who equated money with spirituality.  “Blessed are the poor” is not a statement guaranteed to gain you friends among the rich in society.  Jesus lived a life with no property, no bank account and no savings.  And perhaps Jesus’ disciples were a bit upset at having no money, and having to go fishing to find the money to pay their tax bill.  Really, it could be quite uncomfortable being a follower of Jesus.

And when this rich man comes along, seeming very devout, recognising that Jesus was a good teacher who told them a lot about heaven and eternal life, it’s not surprising that he asks Jesus, “Am I doing the right things?  Am I going the right way to inherit eternal life?  I keep all these commandments – is there anything else I should be doing?”

But Jesus’ reply is totally different to what we would expect.  Instead of, as I probably would, telling the man, “Yes, you’re doing what God wants – keep it up!” he looks at the man and knows what is at the centre of his life.  You see, the commandments listed are all to do with observable actions – it can be seen whether we have kept them.  But the key is not what we are like on the outside but on the inside.  Perhaps that’s why the rich man knows even keeping all these commandments isn’t enough – “what more can I do?”  Perhaps he recognises that it is the tenth commandment that causes him trouble – coveting wealth and possessions rather than looking to help his neighbour.

So Jesus points out where the man’s real heart is – what has a hold on his life - his possessions.  Does our search for God, our desire to please him, touch us at the point where we actually are, or where we kid ourselves we are, or we would like others to think we are?  Jesus looked at the man and knew that he did want to please God – but there was something stopping him from following God closely.  He had his possessions in a clenched fist instead of on an open palm.

Now it is not impossible to be rich and a follower of Jesus – in fact, the disciples were dependent on the wealth of some followers.  Jesus never criticised the ownership of wealth as such.  But what is the crux of the matter is our availability to Jesus.  Am I holding on to anything else as well as God?  If God wants me to move somewhere to follow him, am I willing to leave things behind to do that?  If God wants me to give up my lifestyle so that I can help others, will I do that without complaining?  In other words, what do I trust – God alone, or God and my money?  God alone, or God and my possessions?  What do I think of as my treasure?  Is it what I have made of my life, or what God can make of my life?

Many of us want God and something.  God and my financial security.  God and my job.  God and my family.  Now, all those things may be quite legitimate, but if they come before God then they could prevent us from following God wherever he chooses.  The only way we can be sure that we are fully available to God is when we can truthfully say, “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”  If we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all the other things we need will become available to us.  Of course God will provide for his children.  That’s his nature.  But he doesn’t need to provide if we are doing it for ourselves. 

So we need to take stock.  What am I holding on to as well as God?  Is it my relationships?  Is my faith dependent on being surrounded by other people – or will it stand alone?  If everyone else were to let me down, would I still follow God?  If other people hurt me so much that I couldn’t bear to be with them, would I still hold on to Jesus?

Or is it my possessions?  What would happen to my faith if my house burned down and I lost everything?  If my car were written off in an accident, would I blame God?  If the bank went broke and I lost all my savings, would I still trust in God to provide?

Perhaps it is status that I want to preserve.  I want others to think well of me – so I avoid situations where I might be laughed at for having faith.  I desperately need others to approve of me, so I work at moving up some imaginary ladder of success.  I can lose sight of the realisation that my standing is in Christ alone, and no earthly acclaim matters one bit.

Or maybe what I am holding on to is my dreams.  I want to become something different, or I want my life to take a different direction.  I set my attention on my future – and lose sight of God, the great I AM here and now.

Jesus faced the issue of people fearing that they would lose out by following him.  He told the disciples, “You can be sure that anyone who gives up home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or land for me and for the good news will be rewarded.  In this world they will be given a hundred times as many houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and pieces of land.  And in the world to come they will have eternal life.”

Of course there will be a cost in following Jesus.  It’s not only in the pursuit of physical greatness that we are told, “No pain, no gain”!  We have to be ready to hold everything on an outstretched palm, for God to do with it as he wants, because if we keep it clasped tightly to us we will either come to depend on that rather than God or it will be very painful for God to take it away from us.  You remember the story of the man who wanted to catch a monkey?  All he had to do was put some cookies in a jar and wait.  The monkey came along, put his hand in the jar and grabbed some cookies.  His clenched fist was too wide to get back out of the neck of the jar, so because the monkey wasn’t prepared to give up the cookies he was easily caught.  We can get trapped in holding on to our possessions, our status, our dreams, our relationships – and miss out on following God.

We are faced with a choice, just like the rich ruler.  We have to search our hearts to see if we are loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength – or if we are trying to hold on to God AND.