The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: B 23-24

Wisdom 7:7-11 | Hebrews 4:12-13 | Mk 10:17-30 or 10:17-27

 May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

I want to start with the images in the first reading about wisdom.  What is it?  It’s something to do with a way of seeing the world, seeing yourself in it and having an amazing ability to make decisions that are going to bring about the thing that you long to see happen.   Wisdom is that mysterious understanding of the way the world is.  It’s a kind of surrendering to reality.  It’s — the best way I can describe it is a person who is filled with wisdom is the most real person in the room.  And if there’s a decision that needs to be made about an end that you’re trying to achieve, the person with wisdom is the one you want to lean on the most, because they have this sense that there is a way to accomplish the goal that you have, but there’s lots of obstacles.  And if you can get to the place where you understand something about the way the world works, then you have this amazing, this amazing quality, and what you’re being told in this first reading is that this kind of insight, this kind of knowledge, that I believe comes to you as a gift from God, is essential if you’re going to be able to find the place that God has created for you and me.  

There’s one thing that I want to teach always and always.  It’s this whole idea that this world that we are called to live in is a world that is supposed to be — how would I say it?  Enjoyable doesn’t quite capture it, but it’s something we should be participating in, and our participation should bring us some kind of enjoyment — enjoyment, meaning there’s some kind of joy in the whole process of growing and evolving and changing and understanding the world that God has given us and the way in which we’re supposed to live in it, and who he is.  All of that I would call wisdom.  And the responsorial Psalm picks it up, and one of the things about the responsorial psalm that I like so much is the way it describes something.  And it says very clearly that the thing that we are asked to understand is that, if we know we’re loved, if we know we’re loved — and love is a way of, I would say, of imagining the effectiveness of God in your life.  When he loves you, it’s not just that he’s looking at you, like he did in the gospel to the rich man and just said he’s just filled with love for you.   That’s a beautiful image of God seeing a goodness in all human beings, where we really do want to do the right thing.  We may not know how to get to the goal that we want, but we do have that desire.   

He loves that in all of us, but the thing that’s so interesting about that love is that, when it’s really directed in exactly the way it’s supposed to be received by us, it gives us a kind of confidence that, in the midst of the work that we have to do in order to grow and evolve — the pain that we have to go through, if you can feel, when you’re in that pain, that somehow this God who’s in charge, who knows how everything goes, who is wanting to make sure that you experience the experiences you need to be able to grow and to change, when you know that that’s basically the way in which God is looking at you, wanting nothing more than for you to evolve and grow, then whatever is painful, whatever is difficult, you can say, “Help me see, when I’m in pain, that this is something that should create in me some kind of gladness.  Make us glad for the days when you afflicted us, for the years when we saw evil.”  What an interesting line, and this is Old Testament.  The Psalms are obviously Old Testament, but think of the struggle that was there for the Israelite people in that long, long journey and how many times they complained and complained and complained and resisted the whole process.  And when you think about it, what is it that causes the most intense pain in our life really?  Is it the experience of something that’s difficult?  But if you add that experience to whatever is painful to resistance to that, you’ve doubled the stress.  You’ve doubled the amount of energy that’s needed to overcome it.  And so how do we enter into the world that the Psalm is inviting us into when we can say, “Lord, if we know you love us, then our song is always going to be a song of some kind of joy”?   

Now, when I say live a joyous life, it doesn’t mean that you’re happy all the time.  It means there’s something deep inside of you that knows that there’s purpose and there’s meaning and everything is moving in the right direction.  And then when you endure pain by accepting it, by surrendering to it, it is an incredibly valuable moment in your own individual evolution as to who God wants you to be.   

So what are we opening ourselves to through suffering?  What is it that, when we surrender to something, we receive?  Well, you might say it makes us stronger.  So we’re more effective and more capable of doing what we’re supposed to do.  Watch out for that, because that’s not exactly what’s going on.  When you surrender to the way the world is, when you give in to the things that aren’t the way you want them to be, what you’re inviting into your life is the truth, the truth.  Wisdom is another word for truth, and what does truth do?  What is it there for?  Well, the reading for the Hebrews gives us a beautiful image of that.  What it is, it is something that comes into you, something that is invited to come in and to break through whatever is hidden.  It penetrates even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  It discerns what’s really going on in your heart.  It’s called being busted.  When something is coming, when something enters into you that exposes some part of you that you don’t really want to see and you don’t really want to acknowledge, when you see that event happening inside of you, you know that you’re being loved by a God who said, “Look, here’s the reason I caused this pain for you: because there’s something in you you’re hanging on to that’s going to keep you from the prudence and the wisdom that you need to live and make decisions in the world — prudence and wisdom, the ability to know the best solution for the problem that you’ve got on your plate.  The prudence is that understanding of there’s a certain way in which you have been given a certain priority, and the priority is, “I want to do whatever is ultimately reality, the truth.”   

I don't know why it’s so hard for us to do that.  Maybe it’s because we grow up in a world that’s so filled with lies, and we see all these images around us of people achieving things that we think is good, and yet they’re doing things to other people, hurting them, destroying them or doing whatever.  It’s confusing, but think about it.  It is God gives us this gift, this living, effective gift that penetrates into this, the heart of everything, and gets us to see the truth.  Okay, so we’re set for the gospel, the one that we’re invited into by the hallelujah verse.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Who are the poor in spirit?  What does it mean to be poor in spirit?  Well, we could say that one of the things that poverty is, is the opposite of being rich, being filled with what I would say would be an amazing amount of power and control.  So let’s look at Jesus in this gospel passage, but before I go into this, I want to give you a little bit of background about rich.  Why is it the disciples are so confused when Jesus is criticizing a man who is rich?  You have to understand, in the Old Testament, there was something going on that was radically shifted in the New Testament.  And in the Old Testament, God was the one who gave favor to those who did what was good, and he gave evil to those who were bad.  He punished those who failed to live according to the way he invites us to live.  That’s not the New Testament.  That’s not the God that we understand, that we’re engaged in in a relationship now.  It’s very, very different.  There’s a passage in the Old Testament where it says, if anyone slaps another man on the face, they should be executed.  Take that line from the Old Testament and compare it to the New Testament, and we see Jesus who says, if somebody slaps you on your face, you should turn and offer him the other side of your face so he can slap it.  What the — what does that mean?  It means there’s a radical, radical difference in the New Testament from the Old Testament.   

So let’s go back to this gospel passage and realize why the disciples are so confused over this man who seems to have done everything.  He followed all the commandments, did everything he was invited to do, by his mind, by the commandments, and he didn’t — he missed it.  He missed it.  So let’s look at the dialogue between Jesus and this man.  First of all, he comes up and says to Jesus, “You are so good.”  Jesus is setting the tone.  “No.  No, only God is good.”  So he describes himself.  “I’m a good man.  I do everything that I’m told I should do.  I’m in control of my life.  I possess my life.  I have chosen to follow the commandments.  I do it perfectly, so I am basically, I know pleased — I know you are pleased with me.  So I’m coming to you,” and in a way, you have to say that this guy that’s coming is actually trying to say, “I know you’re going to give me some really kind of wonderful response of saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.  You’re amazing.’”  And Jesus looks at him, knowing that he’s wanting so badly to do everything he’s called to do but subtly says, “You’re lacking one thing.  Go let go of everything you hold on to.  Let go of the treasure that you’re holding on to.”  What is his treasure?  Performance, perfection.  It’s the most subtle evil that slips into our spiritual life when we think that the gospel is calling you and me to do exactly what we’re told to do and to absolutely control our behavior and avoid all sin, all evil thoughts.  It means that we’re going to have to use our will and our mind to control who we are and make us into something that is pleasing to God, and nothing could be further from what God longs for.  He’s not interested in your perfection, not interested in your performance.  So when he tells the young man, “Here’s what I want you to do.  Get rid of all of your possessions.”  What are his possessions?  It doesn’t say anything about the things he owns.  What does it mean to have a possession, or what does possessiveness mean?  Possessive means that you have control over something.   

Isn’t it interesting that we use — in our religion, we use an image of evil possession or the devil possessed someone, or evil possessed them.  What does that mean?  It means they had control over them.  So when a person has a possession, it’s something that they own that gives them a sense of their value, and that’s different than ownership.  Ownership is, “This belongs to me, but it’s not me.”  But the possession this young man held on to so tightly was his performance and his perfection, knowing that’s the way you get to heaven.  That’s the wide gate that we’re going to hear about in just a moment, the wide gate.  It’s the easiest thing for the ego to understand that your relationship with God is based on performance.  I don't know what your background is in your family of origin.  I know what mine was like, but I know that, in my life, I was always under the pressure of pleasing people in order to be accepted.  And the way I learned to please people was to do whatever I think they wanted me to do.  So if your image of God is that he wants you to avoid all these negative actions, all these negative feelings, if you feel that he’s asking you to live this kind of perfect life, and you think that that’s going to get you into heaven, you’re making two mistakes.  You’re missing the goal he’s really giving you, and you’re putting yourself in the position of earning salvation.  We don’t earn salvation.  It’s a gift.   

And so the narrow gate that is so beautifully described by Jesus to his disciples is this way in which he’s saying, “Look, it’s difficult for you all to understand exactly who I am and what I’m doing.  It’s hard for you to understand that, in a short time, I am going to surrender my goal of being everything that I believe that the gospel wants me to be, being successful, changing the world.  All those things I’m going to be asked by my Father to surrender to something that makes no sense to my ego, and when I do that, I’m going to save the world, and I’m going to show you what it means to enter into the kingdom of God.  It’s not what you think.  It’s not about being perfect.  It’s not about doing everything right.  It’s about somehow surrendering to a process of being loved and listening carefully to the image that comes through, that loving, beautiful face of God looking at you and saying, “I’m not interested in you doing the right thing over and over again.  I’m interested in you becoming who I call you to be, who I want you to be.” 

If wisdom is something that we learn, if it’s something that is required for us to achieve, and yet the way in which it seems these set of readings is making very clear that wisdom comes through suffering — suffering comes through acceptance, accepting the relationship we have with God.  He’s not asking you to control your life.  He’s asking you to surrender to the life that he will show you that is yours.  And I don't know how exactly you’ve experienced this, but I know the thing that is in my life and my experience is I resist more than anything else those events, those times in my life where I’m being told by God, through an experience, that I’m not enough.  Isn’t it interesting to think there’s something wrong with not being enough, enough for the people around me, enough for my God, who I think is demanding certain things of me, enough for the church that asks me to do all these other things?  What a terrible evil to get caught up in when we don’t even realize what we’re doing.   

So what is it that’s at the heart of this beautiful relationship we have with God the Father?  He is my brother.   He’s my lover.  He’s my creator.  He’s all three of those things, and in terms of you understanding his creative qualities, understand that he created you exactly as he intended you to be.  You are, with your weaknesses, with your strengths, exactly the person he’s created you to be.  He even talks about knowing you before you were created.  So you are exactly, with your strengths and weaknesses, who God has created you to be.  And then his lover, he loves exactly who you are.  It’s a reflection of him.  It’s a unique reflection of him, and what he’s inviting you to do is to celebrate that, to create an environment in which you embrace it, surrendering to it.  It means — and I know this is hard for me, so I hope it touches something inside of you, but there’s something about that image of liking yourself in your imperfection, looking at it the way Jesus in the gospel looked at that young man.  And I’m feeling that what you’re doing, when you’re looking at yourself and you’re seeing it not as perfect, the fact that you want it to be perfect is endearing to the God who created you.  Yes, you want to be everything you want to be, called to be, but it’s not perfection.  It’s not performance.  So then there’s this wonderful, creative God, the loving God, and then this brother, this spirit that lives inside of you.  What a beautiful image of a comforting advocate called the Holy Spirit.  He’s always there pleading your case.  Imagine this part of you that’s — well, the part of God that’s in you, that is there saying almost, if you had this image of a strong and powerful God demanding so much, he’s the one who’s saying, “Hey, hey, this image of this God that isn’t really there, that’s demanding, here is your advocate, the same God answering that image that you have of God and answering this God with, ‘Hey, you created this person exactly as they are.  You love them.  I know you won’t hold anything against them.’”  That’s the beauty of this Trinitarian, loving God that we have. 

So what we’re called to be then, through this set of readings, is a beautiful image of the God — we have this beautiful image of the God who is and the God who is calling us to be who we’re called to be.  So my challenge for you in these readings, my longing for you in these, in my heart, is that you will understand more and more fully the truth of who you are, the truth of who God is and somehow allow that to penetrate into every part of your life that is clouded by some kind of misunderstanding, some kind of need for control, some kind of need for autonomy, all those things that are there that get in our way.  Our challenge is to embrace this new life.   

I don't know if it feels the same for you as it does for me right at this moment, but what I can feel in my life, if I can understand this mystery that I’m trying to share with you, I can feel something relaxing inside of me, something that relieves the tension, relieves the pressure.  For anyone that’s listening to me that feels the pressure of their God asking them to be more than they are at this very moment, please let go of that and embrace the God who is and the truth that is and the wisdom that is there for you and me to drink of and to allow it to enlighten us, and see the goodness that’s all around us.     

God, your gift is our life exactly as it is, exactly as you allowed it to be, and whenever we find ourselves judging it, whenever we find ourselves not happy with it, remind us of who you really are and what you’re about and what you call us to enter into. And it’s a journey that is not expected to be so stressful but rather enlightening, experiencing something, growing, changing. It’s different when we know that the events that we go through that are difficult are there for a purpose, and there’s a meaning, and there is a gift in it all. Bless us with that awareness so that we can find the peace that is our inheritance. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.