In today’s gospel (Mark 10:17-30) we hear of the incident where Jesus encounters the rich man who asks what he must do to “inherit eternal life”. Through this encounter Jesus helps us understand how we must live in order to be true and faithful disciples.
To me the encounter provides a progression that brings out three “conditions” in our call to discipleship. The first condition is to honor and worship God, and to acknowledge Him as the source of all goodness and love. At the onset of the encounter, we see the rich man kneel down in homage and address Jesus as “good teacher”. Jesus’ response implies that the rich man has satisfied this first condition of our faith – living out the command to love, respect, and honor God. Then Jesus moves on to the next condition. Jesus pronounces the commandments having to do with love of neighbor. The implication is that the rich man who “knows these commandments” has been faithful to these commandments as well. So we see that this man has indeed been a very faithful and religious person, living a life of devotion to God and respect for his fellow man. And his faithfulness is not going unnoticed by Jesus. We hear that Jesus “loves” this man and we sense that Jesus is very happy with his faithfulness to God’s law. In fact, Jesus loves him so much that he offers him the greatest of opportunities – a way for the rich man to perfect himself. And this brings us to the third condition – Jesus instructs the man to give away all of his possessions and come follow after him. Essentially Jesus is asking the rich man to give up his life for a new and better life, to turn away from one way of living and embrace another.
It can be the same for us. We strive to be faithful to God’s commandments. We strive to live our lives with love for God and neighbor. And by doing this we are good and faithful disciples. But out of great love, Jesus offers us the same opportunity that he offered the rich man. He offers us the way to perfection. Just like the rich man, Jesus asks us to give up our lives – or maybe putting it differently – Jesus asks us to give our lives up to God. Maybe giving our lives up to God means, not so much giving away all our possessions, but rather, making sure that our possessions don’t possess us and that pursuit of material things does not take priority over pursuing good and loving relationships, or cause us to neglect the needs of others. Maybe giving our lives up to God means putting our trust in God, acknowledging that God is in control, putting our troubles and anxieties in his hands rather than letting these burdens weigh us down, and dealing better with life’s unexpected twists and turns. Maybe giving our lives up to God means adopting an attitude of selflessness and sacrifice, putting others before ourselves, and performing acts of service and charity for those less fortunate than us. Maybe giving our lives up to God means humbling ourselves, letting go of our inflated egos, realizing that we are not the center of the universe, and giving others the benefit of the doubt rather than being quick to judgment.
Jesus calls us to give our lives up to Him. This is not always easy. In fact it’s downright hard. Our human nature, our egos, our insecurities, and the lure of this world make this very difficult. But we do not need to be troubled. You see Jesus gives us reason for great optimism. In this very same gospel, Jesus reassures us that what might seem impossible for us is very possible for God. So with great hope we ask Him, for whom all things are possible, to help us turn to Him, give our lives up to Him, and follow Him.
Amen.