Lectionary Reflections
by Various Authors

What Must I DO to Receive Life?
Sermon Starter

Mark 10:17-31

I heard about an expert in diamonds who happened to be seated on an airplane 
beside a woman with a huge diamond on her finger. Finally, the man introduced himself 
and said, "I couldn't help but notice your beautiful diamond. I am an expert in precious stones. 
Please tell me about that stone." She replied, "That is the famous Klopman diamond, 
one of the largest in the world. But there is a strange curse that comes with it." 
Now the man was really interested. He asked, "What is the curse?" 
As he waited with bated breath, she replied, "It's Mr. Klopman." 

Some of you may wish to re-evaluate your diamonds on that basis. 
But seriously the true curse of any kind of valuable possession is its capacity to steal 
our hearts and souls. The rich young ruler is one of those unique characters from the Bible 
that have come to represent greed. So unwilling was he to part with earthly wealth 
that he sold his soul in order to keep his money. He wanted to be saved 
but not at the expense of losing his possessions. The first thing that impresses me 
when I read this story is that the rich young ruler was so near to the Kingdom. 
He asked all the right questions. He understood the Law and he understood Jesus' teaching. 
But in the end love of money kept him out. We see him as a moral coward. 

But that conclusion is too simple. The fact is there are a lot of good things that can be said of him. 
I'm impressed with the fact, for example, that having talked with him only a few minutes, 
Mark tells us that Jesus looked upon him and loved him. That doesn't sound like a scathing criticism to me. 
And, I think that we also need to remember that to this young boy Jesus was not the Son of God. 
He was simply a new prophet, with an exciting message, a magnetic personality, 
and eyes that gripped you when you spoke to him. He was certainly not the Christ of the Apostles' Creed. 
At this point in his ministry, not even the disciples looked upon Jesus in that regard. 
The stone of Easter had not yet been rolled away. 

And so for a few moments this morning I would like to champion the cause of this underdog 
and reassess his character. And then I want to look at his fatal flaws. First let’s look at the positive. 
These are things that brought him to the master, qualities that made him interested in Jesus' teachings. 

 The first positive thing is: he was courageous. 
 The second positive thing is: he was humble. 
 The third positive thing is: he was religious. 


Now let's look at the negative. These are things that made him turn away form the master. 

 The first negative thing is: he was looking for a rule to keep. 
 The second negative thing is: he loved his money. 
 The third negative thing is: he walked away. 




The following information might be of use, at least of interest. (From Mark in the Hermeneia series)

Jesus then instructs him, “sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, 
and come, follow me.” It is noteworthy that the stated motivation for selling his property 
and giving to the poor is not the neediness of the poor but the accumulation of “treasure in heaven.” 
This motivation suggests that the man is seeking a greater than ordinary level of spiritual achievement.

There is an analogy between the man’s desire for spiritual achievement and Jesus’ advice, 
on the one hand, and Hellenistic texts that speak about self-mastery with regard to money 
and property, on the other. Epictetus, for example, argued that the lover of wisdom ought to be able to say

“If you want my property in the country,” says he, “take it; take my servants, take my office, 
take my paltry body. But you will not make my desire fail to get what I will, nor my aversion fall into what I would avoid”

In another place, he asks his audience:

And how shall I free myself?—Have you not heard over and over again that you ought to eradicate desire utterly, 
direct your aversion towards the things that lie within the sphere of the moral purpose, and these things only, 
that you ought to give up everything, your body, your property, your reputation, your books, turmoil, office, freedom from office?

Crates, the pupil of Aristotle and the teacher of Zeno, was attracted to the Cynic philosophy:

So he turned his property into money,—for he belonged to a distinguished family,—and having thus collected 
about 200 talents, distributed that sum among his fellow citizens. And (it is added) so sturdy a philosopher 
did he become that he is mentioned by the comic poet Philemon 

Although the primary emphasis in Mark 10:21* is on the spiritual quest and achievement of the man, 
his divestment of his property is intended to benefit the poor. The Hellenistic texts lack this concern 
for alleviating the suffering of the needy, but both Mark and the Hellenistic texts call for a radical reorientation of one’s life.58 [1]

[1] Collins, A. Y., & Attridge, H. W. (2007). Mark: A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark (pp. 479–480). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.



The Freedom to Sing

The French have a story about a millionaire in his palace who spent his days counting his gold. 
Beside the palace was a poor cobbler who spent his days singing as he repaired people's shoes. 
The joyful singing irritated the rich man. One day he decided to give some gold coins to the cobbler. 
At first the cobbler was overjoyed, and he took the coins and hid them. But then he would be worried 
and go back to check if the coins were still there. Then he would be worried in case someone had seen him, 
and he would move the coins and hide them in another place. During all this, he ceased to sing. 
Then one day he realized that he had ceased to sing because of the gold coins. 
He took them back to the rich man and said, "take back your coins and give me back my songs."

(by Gerry Pierse from 
Detachment and Freedom)



Shot in the Wallet

The devil was on the prowl one day out to get the Christian. When he saw the Christian 
he shot one of his fiery darts and it struck the Christian in the chest. 
The Christian had on the breastplate of righteousness so he wasn't harmed. 
The devil shot at the Christian's head but that was protected by the helmet of salvation. 
The devil figured everyone has an Achilles' heel, so he shot at the Christian's feet that 
were shod with the gospel of peace so no harm was done. The Christian smirked 
and turned around to walk away. The devil fired an arrow into the Christian's wallet and killed him.

(by Beth Quick from Mission: Impossible)



Do All the Good

Henry Thoreau said, "Be not merely good; be good for something." 
That was Jesus' challenge to the man who wanted to know what he could do to inherit eternal life. 
He had been good at making money, in being morally upright and keeping the commandments; 
but that is not the ultimate good: he must also give of himself and what he has in behalf of others. 
He needed to also realize that, "The gift without the giver is bare." 
John Wesley proposed an excellent guide to goodness. He said, and he practiced what he preached:

Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, 
At all the times you can, As long as ever you can.

Someone else has expressed the ideal of goodness in a wonderful way, saying, 
"I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore, that I can do, 
or any goodness that I can show to my fellow creatures, let me do it now; 
let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

(by Clement E. Lewis from When It’s Twilight Time, CSS Publishing Company)



Real Wealth - Priorities

God creates us with a variety of needs, desires, interests, talents, and opportunities. 
But these things don't define what we'll be. They're like the bricks, lumber, wallboard, shingles, 
and tiles we might see piled on the road near a construction site. It's what we make 
from the raw elements of our personalities that defines who we are; and this is where 
priorities and choices are crucial.

(by Jimmy Carter from Sources of Strength, Random House, p. 230)



The Failure that Looked Like Success

More than forty years ago, I heard a man describe two paintings he said he had at his home. 
I have never forgotten them even though I never saw them. One was of the figure in Jesus' story 
of the rich man whose crops produced so abundantly that he decided to pull down his barns 
and build bigger ones, and he said to his soul, "Soul, eat, drink, and have a great time, 
for tomorrow you die." The caption under this painting said: "The Failure that Looked Like Success." 
The other painting, the companion painting, was of Jesus dying on the cross, 
the crown of thorns on his head, his chin drooping against his chest, the crude nails in his hands, 
and all his friends off somewhere in hiding. The caption under this picture said: 
"The Success that Looked Like Failure."

We would all like to be successful and fulfilled as persons; it is one of the dreams with which 
our culture imbues us. But when we listen to Jesus, we realize that success 
and fulfillment don't really come the way we often expect them to. 
They aren't the direct result of anything we can do to attain them. Instead, 
they're a gift from God and they simply happen when we are doing the right things with our lives. 
In God's eyes it is a whole lot better to be a success that looks like failure than a failure that looks like success.

(by John Killinger from The Real Way to Personal Fulfillment)



The Success Syndrome

Harvard Medical School psychologist Steven Berglas has written a book called The Success Syndrome. 
He has found that individuals who in his word "suffer" from success have arrogance 
and a sense of aloneness. Insider trader Dennis Levine was asked by his wife why he needed the money 
from insider trading and he really had no answer. Levine says that when his income was $100,000, 
he hungered for $200,000, and when he was making $1 million, he hungered for $3 million. 
Berglas says that oddly enough people who find that $200,000 did not make them happy 
never asked themselves why they thought $300,000 would make them happy. 
Asked to prescribe a cure for the success syndrome, Berglas said, "What's missing in these people 
(Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Leona Helmsley) is deep commitment or religious activity 
that goes far beyond just writing a check to a charity."

(by King Duncan from Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com)



Marketing Gone Mad

At the Coca-Cola Company, we have built and grown for more than 110 years. 
Remaining disciplined to our mission has brought us to remarkable places. 
Not long ago, we did some research and came up with an interesting set of facts.

A billion hours ago, human life appeared on Earth.
A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged.
A billion seconds ago, the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.
A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning.
And the question we are asking ourselves now is: What must we do to make a billion Coca-Colas ago be this morning?

(Address by Roberto C. Goizueta, Chairman, CEO, Coca-Cola, delivered to the Executive Club of Chicago, 
Chicago, Illinois, November 20, 1996. Taken from Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1997, p. 201.)



We Want It Our Way

The story of Faust by Goethe has become part of our heritage. Faust was a man who longed for romance, 
academic success, and wealth. Unable to find these on his own, he made a pact with the devil. 
If he could be granted his wishes, have his true worth made public and enjoy its fruits, 
then he would give his soul to the devil. Sure enough, he enjoyed marvelous romances, 
fabulous successes, and much wealth. Oddly enough, when the time came, he was unwilling 
to keep his part of the bargain. I wonder if there is a parallel here. We put Jesus off, promising, 
“Just one more of this and one more of that -- then I will be willing to go with you, Jesus.” 
Are we not like little Fausts, wanting to have it our way? After all, we say, we deserve it! 
And what do we say to Jesus when he comes to claim us?

(by Thomas Peterson from The Needle's Eye, CSS Publishing Company)



Humor: Losing Ourselves in our Possessions

There was a man who loved gold. Then he inherited a fortune. With joy he redecorated his bedroom. 
He put gold parchment wallpaper up, hung yellow curtains, had a golden colored rug and a yellow bedspread. 
He even bought some yellow pajamas. But then he got sick and came down with, of all things, yellow jaundice. 
His wife called the doctor who made a house call and went up to that bedroom for an examination. 
The doctor stayed up there a long while. When he came down, the wife asked, "How is he?"

"Don't know," said the doctor. "I couldn't find him."

Indeed many people today are absolutely absorbed in and lost in a world of greed and materialism.

(by Adrian Rogers)



Four Questions for Church Membership

A seminary professor named Stanley Hauerwas has a novel idea about how churches 
should receive new members. A teacher of Christian ethics at Duke University, 
he has written about the church's need for honesty and has called us 
to tell the truth as a "community of character."

To this end, he has a modest proposal. Whenever people join the church, 
Hauerwas thinks they should stand and answer four questions: 
* Who is your Lord and Savior? The response: "Jesus Christ." 
* Do you trust in him and seek to be his disciple? "I do." 
* Will you be a faithful member of this congregation? The answer: "I will." 
* Finally, one last question: What is your annual income?

You heard me correctly. When people join the church, Dr. Hauerwas thinks 
they ought to name their Lord and Savior and tell fellow church members 
how much money they make. It is obvious Hauerwas does not serve as a pastor of a congregation. 
His idea just wouldn't work, especially in the American church. 
Most church members believe salary figures are more sacred than prayer, 
and would quickly tell an inquisitive minister to snoop around somewhere else. 
What's more, parish experience tempers the questions a minister asks of church members. 
Most pastors quickly learn how to dance around the issue of money without ever naming it.

(by William G. Carter from No Box Seats in the Kingdom, CSS Publishing)



Are We Rich?

The curse of any kind of valuable possession is its capacity to steal our hearts and souls. 
The heavier the purse, the tighter the strings. Is it fair to call most of us rich? 
According to our Methodist founder John Wesley, it is. He said that the word "rich" in the Bible 
means to have the necessities of life (food, shelter, and clothing) and then something left over. 
But here is part of the problem of us rich folks. We have increased the number of things 
we regard as necessities. We want three cars, two DVD players, four computers, a house at the lake, 
country club membership, and private school education. There are hundreds of things 
that we call necessities that our parents referred to as luxuries. The Bible says that shelter, 
food, and clothing are necessities. To have these and something left over, as almost all of us do, is to be rich.



Semper Fi
by C. David McKirachan

I had a friend in one of my former congregations who spent two tours in Vietnam. 
Marines are tough guys. Semper Fi isn't a football cheer. It's a statement of stubborn willingness 
to walk into hell because that's their job. That's why my friend did two tours.

He will never recover. He has a lovely wife and great kids and a good job and a beautiful house 
and a deep faith. But the horror that he witnessed and shared will never leave him. It stalks him. 
It breathes its fetid stink on him, and he struggles to be something other than crushed every day. 
When the children get in an argument, he walks out the door into rain or snow or sunshine 
and makes his way to a rock in the woods behind his house. He sits there until the screams 
of the wounded and the whistle of shrapnel recede.

He called me "Coach" and told me he had my back. He and I were bound by a relationship 
that did not include agreeing with each other about much of anything. 
Other than both being Giants fans, our politics and our demeanor and our interpretations 
of our calls from God seemed worlds apart to most who saw us together.

I respected him -- and I still do. I didn't care how many medals he won or much else 
of the measurable bits and pieces of achievement he accumulated. I didn't even care 
about his preferences in music. Country just doesn't do it for me. What mattered to me 
was his willingness to grapple with his demons without using others as excuses for his pain. 
He shared it with me, and I will always count that a great privilege. 
But he never turned it on me or anyone else. Semper Fi.

Jesus had little in common with the rich young ruler. The guy was a blueblood, 
part of the class that hated the inclusive and forgiving grace our Lord preached. 
Jesus knew the poor guy was trapped in traditions and life situations that were ironclad. 
But the text says simply, "Jesus loved him".

Too often I find myself being faithful to destructive patterns. Too often when asked to become 
a new being I can do little but make it out into the backyard and find a quiet place to calm down. 
Too often I'm terrified by that which has been, rather than being drawn to what could be.

There are so many lessons to be learned in this passage and in the whole Bible. 
But perhaps this simple phrase is the center and crux of them all. In the midst of our hells, 
our Lord loves us with understanding built on acceptance and compassion -- 
not because we're good or even able to take necessary steps to get better. 
He loves us as we are, broken and chronically trapped in the warfare of our broken lives.

He didn't go to the cross because of our medals or our successes. 
He went there because he loves us even in our hells. Even there he will not desert us.

[C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. 
He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of 
I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox)]



On February 5, 2006, Superbowl Sunday, Seattle Seahawk coach Mike Holmgren was in Detroit 
to coach his team. His wife Kathy and his daughter Calla didn't go to the game, 
they went to Africa to take part in a 17-day medical training humanitarian mission 
to the West African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kathy, a trained nurse, and Calla, an obstetrician, wouldn't miss this trip for the world. 
Coach Holmgren agrees. "I think it's a lot more important, frankly, than what I'm doing this week,'' 
he said of Kathy and Calla's trip, which was planned four months before the Superbowl. 
"I'm very proud of and she works very hard at a lot of things that are a lot more important 
than coaching a football game. She has her life.''

The story behind the story to this saga is Calla, 32, decided last fall to make this trip in part 
because her mom, fresh out of college as a nurse, went to this exact part of Congo 
(then called Zaire) on a 10-month medical missionary in 1970, the year before Kathy married Mike Holmgren.

When the Seahawks head coach discovered the symmetry involved, he decided to pay for his wife 
to make the trip as well, giving her an early birthday gift. The date of the Super Bowl was not a consideration.

Kathy Holmgren spends most Fridays working in a Seattle-area shelter for battered women, 
and also volunteers her time in many efforts related to her surviving breast cancer a few years ago. 
She has an active faith, and she's putting it into practice by going to Africa and helping 
her fellow human beings. Even if it is Super Bowl week and there's a shiny trophy and a glitzy ring on the line.