Eternal Life
by Anne Le BasA man runs up to Jesus in the Gospel reading we just heard and kneels down in the dust before him. We dont know much about him. We dont know his name. We dont know where hes from, or how old he is, or what he does for a living, but one thing is pretty obvious. He is desperate. He REALLY wants an answer to his question. He comes running, not walking. He throws himself on the ground. Hes begging for help. Which makes it all the more surprising that when he gets his answer he refuses to accept it and walks away. He is shocked and grieving, the story says, but he doesnt even give Jesus a chance to explain. Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor he says, and you will have treasure in heaven, then come, follow me. However desperate he was for an answer, it wasnt this answer he wanted. Many people in the Gospels find hope, healing, love and joy when they meet Jesus, but this man isnt one of them. Its a poignant story. Jesus looks at this man and loves him, we are told. He doesnt condemn. He doesnt judge. But he seems to know from the outset that he wont be able to help him, and the reason for that is actually there in the very question the man asks him. Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Its that word inherit that gives it away. The Greek word Mark uses klero - is the word you use of something that comes into your possession a piece of land, for example. It doesnt necessarily mean that youve inherited it in our modern sense, from someone who has died. It could have been given to you in payment for something, or allotted to you for some other reason. The thing is, it is yours and once youve got it thats that. You might build a house on it, or grow something on it, but if you wanted to you could ignore it completely and leave it to the weeds. Its up to you. You might never set foot on it at all in fact, but it would still be yours. You could treat it as an investment, something to cash in when the need arises. It is yours, just sitting there for you to do with as you wish. Its a bit like people who buy works of art not because they actually think they are beautiful, not because they want to hang them on the wall and look at them, but simply because they think they will one day be able to sell them for more than they bought them. They lock them in a vault somewhere, and there they sit, in the dark, waiting to be sold on again. That is how this man views eternal life, as a particularly valuable and sought after possession which he can store alongside all his other possessions for a rainy day a divine insurance policy if you like. When Jesus suggests that eternal life might actually involve a radical change to the way he lives here and now, he takes fright. That wasnt what he had in mind at all. I dont think he is alone in thinking of eternal life in this way, as a thing to possess, a golden ticket to get you into heaven one day. In fact Id go so far as to say that is a very common for people to regard it that way. Pay your dues and all will be well when the day of judgement comes. That might mean saying the right prayers, or going through the right rituals, or believing the right things or acting in the right ways, but the principle is the same. In return you get something which you can bank against the time you need it. Sadly, its a view that has often been promoted by both secular and religious leaders. If peoples eyes are fixed on a distant vision of heaven it is less likely that they will start asking awkward questions about this world and its injustices. Never mind that you are oppressed, hungry, poor now behave yourself properly, guard that golden ticket, and all will be well one day. But the point Jesus is making here is that eternal life is not a thing that can be possessed or stored, it has to be lived. Its obvious when you think of it. Life, the ordinary life that you and I and all creatures live, isnt a possession, it is a process. It is one moment after another, made up of a succession of actions, thoughts, words. Its a journey, not a destination. It is all the things that happen to us, all the things we do. We shape it, and it shapes us. Life is not a static lump of stuff that you can store somewhere until you need it in the bank, on the shelf, in a file somewhere. When the Bible talks about eternal life it isnt talking about something which is different in nature from that ordinary life, but something that is different in quality. Jesus calls it life in all its fullness in Johns Gospel. It is life, if you like, lived in colour rather than black and white, life filled with love, life lived with an awareness of ourselves, of one another and of God. Life that nothing can extinguish, not even death. But above all it is life that is lived. This man who comes to Jesus is making what philosophers call a category error. Its like him asking how big is yellow? a question that has no meaning. He is so used to thinking of everything as a possession that he assumes eternal life is just another one. But eternal life isnt something that comes in a box from Argos. Thats why Jesus cant tell him how to get it, where to buy it, what the catalogue number is, which is what he was hoping for. All he can tell him is how to live in a way that will draw him closer to God, in a way that has that eternal quality to it. The trouble is that living this way will involve change. In particular, in his case, hell have to get rid of those possessions in which he has put so much of his trust, and start to trust God instead. If he can do that, Jesus says, he will find he is living the life he longed for he will have eternal life, treasure in heaven. But somehow is it all just too difficult, so he turns and walks away.
- One of my favourite childrens stories is Rudyard Kiplings Just-So Story, the Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo. This man reminds me very much of Old Man Kangaroo. The kangaroo, says the story, was once a very ordinary looking creature, with short legs, and a thin tail, like a rat. But the kangaroo wasnt happy with this. He went to the gods and asked them, make me different from all other animals, and wonderfully run after. He was asking to be a celebrity, but the gods took him literally. They summoned the dingo, and set him to chase after the kangaroo he wanted to be sought after, didnt he? Kangaroo ran as fast as he could to escape, all across Australia, and as he did his back legs got stronger and stronger, until eventually he was hopping on them, and his tail thickened, so that it stuck out like a milking stool behind him. By the time the chase ended, back at the salt pans where the gods were bathing, the kangaroo was the shape we see today. But it wasnt what he had had in mind at all, he complained. This wasnt what I had in mind, he protested, the dingo has altered my shape so I'll never get it back; and he's played Old Scratch with my legs. (1)
- For more info, see http://www.readprint.com/work-948/The-Sing-Song-of-Old-Man-Kangaroo-Rudyard-Kipling