The Kingdom of God is like a treasure
Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, year B
Bible reading: Mark 10:17-31
The kingdom of God is like a treasure, and it comes to us right in the midst of this world of treasures, and treasure hunters, and people who have lost all sense of value.
Some boys once broke into the corner store to play a prank. They didn’t steal anything. They did something worse. They changed the price tags on everything. The next morning customers found that radios were selling for ten cents and safety pins for ten dollars. What was valuable had been made cheap, and what was cheap had been made valuable.
Somebody has broken into our society and changed the price tags. We pay footballers a million dollars, and nurses fifty thousand dollars. We pay business executives ten million dollars, and prime ministers $300,000. Our values are all screwed up. We bring in laws to stop the poor from begging, while it is quite legal for the rich to demand ever more. Chesterton once said: It is not nearly so repulsive to see the poor asking for money, as to see the rich asking for more money.
In our text a rich young man ran up to Jesus, knelt before him, and asked: Good Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?
This self made man had everything – money, morality and confidence. He lived life in the fast lane. He ran to Jesus, just as he’d run after and obtained everything else in life. Yet he was not satisfied. He wanted more. He hungered for more. He pleaded for more. He was prepared to do more, to fill the hollow in his heart, to be sure he had secured his eternal future. Keep the commandments, said Jesus. Done all that since I was a kid, he replied.
Do you notice the confidence of this young man? Most of us don’t come up so well, when we compare our lives with the Ten Commandments. But not this man. He is one of the moral minority. Despite all this, Jesus looking at him, loved him.
Take note of that. Jesus looked him in the eye and loved him, and then went on to say: You lack one thing.
The man’s eyes opened wide in expectation as to what that one thing was that he was lacking. And how shocked he was when he heard it. Go… sell what you have… give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven… and follow me.
Four simple words: go… sell… give… follow. Four simple, revolutionary, life transforming words. Four words that change all the values of life. Suddenly the rich young man is challenged to show where his true values are – with the values of the kingdom of this earth, or with the values of the kingdom of God.
And isn’t that the challenge we face every day: to be conformed to the ways of this world, or to be transformed by the ways of Jesus Christ? To hold onto the material things we can see and touch, or to trust in Jesus Christ and follow him in the ways of his kingdom. It’s one way or the other. It’s God or Gold. Where is your treasure?
As Jim Elliot said: the man is no fool who gives up what he can’t keep, to gain what he can’t lose.
A choice must be made. And the rich young man makes it, and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
He hung on to what he couldn’t keep, and gave up what he couldn’t lose.
How sad. How silly. How like this world. How unlike Jesus, who gave his life for us all.
Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.’
We need to hear that word. We 20% in the Western world who gobble up 80% of the world’s resources need to hear that.
Jesus doesn’t run after the rich young man to cut a deal with him. He didn’t suggest to him to just give half of his wealth away, or to start with 10%. He simply lets the man choose his wealth and go away with it. It is hard for rich people to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t soften the hard word. He repeats it. Now it’s the disciples’ turn to be shocked, and Jesus repeats how hard it is a third time. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
Let’s not try to water this down, but join with the disciples in utter shock, and with their despairing cry: Then who can be saved?
Our material riches in the midst of a poor world convict us all. The ten commandments in the midst of an immoral world convict us all. The confused set of values we have in our affluent society convict us all. This text always stands to convict us, as it did the rich young ruler, and the disciples. Then who can be saved? … All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
And in our hopeless state Jesus says to us: for humans this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
We are not saved by keeping the commandments. We don’t enter the kingdom of God by giving away 10%, or even all our money to the poor. We don’t receive eternal life by anything that we do, or believe or treasure. We are saved by grace…
by what God does for us through the death of Christ on the cross. Eternal life is an absolutely free gift for all no hopers who cry out to receive mercy and grace in their time of need.
The Kingdom of God is given to all the least, and the last, and the lost, who are drowned in the waters of Baptism, and raised up to live a new life with Christ.
But there is more. That we are saved entirely by what God does, does not mean there is nothing for us to do. Far from it. The disciples say: we have left everything and followed you.
Jesus does not lament with them. He says that’s par for the course.
We enter the Kingdom of God as pure gift of God. But that doesn’t mean that keeping the commandments no longer matters, that letting go of everything no longer applies, that following Jesus in the way of the Kingdom is no longer necessary. Young man, there’s nothing you can do to enter the Kingdom. Just treasure the Kingdom so much, that you’ll let go everything for it, and do everything as a member of it.
C.S. Lewis once said:
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased.
In the midst of this passing world, God has given us a Kingdom that lasts forever. Let us not be content to live as mere citizens of this passing world. In the midst of this self-seeking world, God has given us a Kingdom that captures our souls even more than all the best things of this life – than even our families and our fortunes – and promises that he will give us one hundred times more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.
The Kingdom is so precious that it’s like a treasure hidden in a field, that a man will sell everything to obtain. It’s like a seed that dies in the soil, and yet springs up to produce one hundred fold. It’s like you, treasuring Jesus and his kingdom so much, that you give your whole life to living like Jesus. Amen.