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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our text for this morning is the Gospel lesson. Hear it again: “And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before Jesus and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Amen. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.”
And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. He said to him, “This is our text.” You may be seated.
Have you ever had an argument with someone? Some kind of rift in the relationship? Maybe it was a disagreement that got a bit heated and then later on you came to regret that argument. Perhaps it was you who was in the wrong. Perhaps it was the other person. But whatever the case, you know that the relationship was injured in some way.
A common thing to do in such a situation is to go to the other person and ask them, you know, what can I do to make this right? You’re basically asking what part that you can play in the healing of that relationship. What must I do? Oftentimes I think we can get into that same mindset with God. I think we all want to know what we need to do or not to do to make God happy. We bargain with God, and that seems to be a constant refrain throughout our lives. I suppose it is the most natural, most human, most reasonable approach to deal with one who has power over us.
For those that believe in a God of some kind, they want to know, how do I make God happy? Perhaps it’s a bit of arrogance on our part to think that we can improve our relationship with the almighty, all-knowing, eternal creator by simply doing something nice for him. But whatever the underlying psychology, it’s a very human reaction to attempt to get into God’s good graces by our own actions.
And so it is with this rich man in our text this morning. I don’t know about you, but if for the first time that you met God, I mean really up face-to-face with God, what would you do? Would you fall on your knees and worship him? Would you be fearful? Or would you march right up to him and ask, “Hey God, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a pretty brash question.
And it’s kind of a strange question too when you think about it, because an inheritance— which the man is asking for— is not typically something where you do something to gain it. An inheritance can’t be earned in the traditional sense. Notice also that Jesus immediately perceives that this man does not believe that he, Jesus, is actually God. When the man calls him good, Jesus responds, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
Maybe Jesus was reorienting this man’s perception of what good really is. Or perhaps it’s just an ironic statement, seeing as how Jesus actually is true God, and the one on whom the label good must be placed. But despite this man’s confusion about who Jesus is, or what an inheritance is, or who he’s talking to, Jesus gives him an answer.
“You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.” Jesus is saying, if you want to inherit eternal life, simply do all the things you know you’re supposed to do and don’t do the things you shouldn’t do. Basically, whatever Moses told you in the Ten Commandments, do that.
There you have it. The man wanted to know what he needed to do. He wanted a list of do’s and don’ts. Jesus gives it to him, right? End of story. Problem is, the man has already done all these things. Surely that can’t be it, he’s thinking. I’ve got this licked. “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”
Then comes Jesus’ stunning response. “You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.” Doesn’t seem like a very loving response at first glance. The text says that Jesus, looking at him, loved him. But why, if he really loved him, would he tell him to do something he knew would be impossible for this man? How is that love? Disheartened by the saying, the man went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Oh, the commandments, those were taken care of. But this, this he would not do. Jesus had found something that was just too much. And the man’s response is sorrow. He doesn’t confess his inadequacy to Jesus. He doesn’t cry out, “Woe to me, that is too much to ask,” or “Lord have mercy on me.” He just walks away.
A couple of verses later in the book of Mark, Jesus would tell the people, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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.” And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.”
You see, this rich man had to be convinced that he couldn’t and didn’t keep God’s law perfectly. Of course, he hadn’t perfectly kept the commandments, but he thought he had. So Jesus needed to take him one step further. He needed to give that rich man something that, for him, was an impossible task. This is the law of God. It shows us how imperfect, how inadequate we are. Its goal is to make us completely dependent on God and not on ourselves.
After leaving slavery in Egypt, the Israelites in the book of Exodus were wandering around in the wilderness and they too wanted to know what they needed to do to please God. So Moses goes up on the mountain, and he receives the law from God and gives it to the people. And the people exclaim with great enthusiasm, “All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” But as we read in our epistle lesson from Hebrews this morning, the writer to the Hebrews says, “As it is said, today if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?”
The people said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” But they didn’t, did they? You and I don’t either. We struggle, we strive, we know what we should do, we know what we shouldn’t do. And like the rich man, we maybe make promises to others, promises to God, but we don’t measure up.
And so what is our reaction when confronted with our sinfulness? Do we, like the rich man, simply walk away from Jesus? Do we hang our heads? We throw in the towel? We give up? Or does our own struggle against sin lead us to sorrow and to plead with God, as we do in our Kyrie, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner?”
What we are unable to do, God did. With man, this is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. This rich man didn’t keep the commandments. He certainly wasn’t willing to give away all of his possessions. You and I haven’t either, but Jesus did. The rich man wouldn’t give up everything and follow Jesus, and frankly, neither have we, but Jesus did. He gave up heaven itself. He gave up his life. All things are possible with God.
You see, the question, “What must I do?” It’s the wrong question. Why? It assumes that we have something to bring to God, something to bargain with him. Yet the opposite is true. We have nothing. We come to God as beggars. He is the one that must and has done for us. He is the one that has something to give us. He is the one who shed his blood and gave up his body. He is the one who makes you a member of his family, not because of you and what you’ve done, but in spite of it.
The blessings of God truly are an inheritance which we receive as His beloved children because of what He, Jesus, has done. He is the one who called you by name in your baptism. He is the one that feeds you His very body and blood at this altar. He is the one that provides you with pastors and teachers and God-fearing parents and grandparents who put the Word of God in your ears and put it on your lips.
The right question is, “What must God do for me to inherit eternal life?” To receive an inheritance from God, God has to die, and Jesus did. And in his resurrection, he defeats death, and now you get to share in his inheritance—everything that is Christ’s is yours.
The answer to the question is God has done everything, and in his grace and his mercy, he bestows the gift of eternal life on you. Believe and hold firm to that promise, and not to your own worthiness, not to your own good deeds.
And this grace of God leads us to a change of questions. It changes the question from “What must I do?” to “What can I do?” In response to God’s love for us, the Christian asks, “How can I serve this God? How can I serve the people that God has placed in my life?” Even though we strive to serve this loving God, our lives as Christians are ones of tension.
Tension in knowing what we ought to do and what we should do and what we often fail to do. The unbeliever feels no such tension. According to the new person within us, we want to please God. We want to live up to the inheritance that we’ve been given. We pray that we would do what is right. We strive to do what is right, knowing all the time in this life, we will fall short. So we rely on the forgiveness of God, not just once, but continually throughout our lives.
To the world, we look like hypocrites. But the Christian witness to the world is not that we are perfect. In fact, our witness to the world is that we are flawed and what God says to do in his law is right and perfect, and we don’t measure up. And there is nothing we can do to inherit eternal life. But with God, all things are possible. With God, there is forgiveness and mercy.
That’s the Christian message. Not what must I do, but what has God done in Christ? “It is finished,” Jesus said from the cross. And when we pass from this life, He will be there waiting to say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.”
What must I do? Trust in the one that has done all for you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
