Fr. Bill Carroll – The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, October 13, 2024
Looking at the young man, Jesus loved him and said, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s Gospel demands total commitment from us. As some of you know, Tracey and I used to be members of a Franciscan religious community. St. Francis is one of the most popular saints–not just because of his love for animals, but because he lived out the hardest sayings of Jesus. This is one of those.
Here, we find the Word of God to be “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.” Jesus wields the Word like a surgeon’s scalpel. He knows our many distractions, sicknesses, and evasions of the truth. He knows the various ways we turn away from our neighbors, especially when they are weak or little or poor.
Today’s Gospel was an important part of my conversion to the Christian faith. When I was a young man, I heard Jesus saying these words directly to me. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” In some ways, marriage and children have curbed my youthful enthusiasm. I have a lot of bills to pay.
But still, Tracey and I are committed to living relatively simple lives. We still believe that everything we have is held in trust for others. We tithe to the churches we serve, and we strive to give whatever we can to those in need.
Like everyone else, we have a special responsibility for our family and children. But, beyond that, God calls us to live consistently neighborly lives. In the Christian tradition, building on the Sinai covenant, this is a matter of justice, and not just charity. In the Torah, God calls us to move beyond our self-centered behavior. God calls us, always, to respond to the claims of our neighbors, to “live simply, so that others may simply live.”
We may not think of ourselves as rich. But, here in America, even the poorest people among us are rich by global standards. Certainly, we are not among the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. As Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, a priest who worked in the slums of Peru, once said: “The challenge for Christianity today is not the nonbeliever but the non-person.” We cannot evade the claims of children of God.
According to the United Nations, during today’s celebration of the Eucharist (and every hour of every single day), more than a thousand children will die from extreme poverty. Even here in the United States, poverty is a significant driver of premature death. As we consider the impact of the recent storms, you can bet that poor people were disproportionately affected, and that they will struggle the most to put their lives back together again.
As we hear the words of the prophet Amos, we need to reckon with the fact that we live in a world where we often trample on the poor. In our world today, justice is still perverted for a bribe. We need to ask ourselves how we still use money to throw our weight around.
We miss something in the Gospel story, if we focus solely on camels and the eyes of needles. We might try to get the eye of that needle just a little bit wider. Or we might try to get ourselves just a little bit thinner, so that we can fit inside. But that’s not the point. In the story, the young man rejects the call of Jesus for himself, and he goes away grieving. Our Lord wanted to bring him joy and to set him free from many burdens.
Listen again to what it says in the story. This young man is a righteous man, who strives to keep the Torah faithfully And so, Jesus looks at him and loves him. (He really does.) But then he adds just one little thing, “You lack one thing,” he says. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
God may not be calling us to a life of poverty. But God is always calling us to share what we have with our neighbors. Jesus has made us partners in God’s work. He has made us citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus calls us to help him change the world. And his incarnation points us to the fact that our partnership with him is not just spiritual, but physical and material. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
And, yes, it will be hard for us to enter the Kingdom of God. As Jesus says elsewhere, we must “enter by the narrow gate, for the way is wide that leads to destruction.” I think about that every time I enter or leave my house, open my refrigerator, or drive my car. I think about it when I pull the thousand-dollar computer out of my pocket, from which I can buy or sell things. (All the information that flows to me–all the potential for command and control that flows to me through that one little device.) I hope you think about it too. How hard it will be for people like you and me to enter the Kingdom of God!
But the Gospel is Good News. It’s not just a scolding. The words of Jesus need not paralyze us with guilt or drive us to despair. “With God, all things are possible.” The words of Jesus should challenge us to make different choices and turn our lives around. When he takes out the Word of God and uses it like a scalpel, he’s not trying to wound us. He is trying to heal us.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Amen.