"Sell All You Own and Follow Me" - Sermon October 11, 2015.

“Sell All You Own and Follow Me”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 23, October 11, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: Mark 10:17-31, Amos 5:6-7,10-15

It says in here, “Sell all you own and give the money to the poor and then you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me.”

Sell all you have and give it to the poor and then follow me.

There is a part of me that has always liked these words, when I came across them in high school. I thought, “Ha! There’s a prophetic voice! Tell those rich people. Yeah! Give it to ‘em!” Always liked those words, “Sell all you have and give it to the poor and then follow me.”

But these words also haunt me, because I know they are being spoken to me. Not just to the “rich”, whoever that might be, but to me as well. They haunt me because I know I am not living them. I have not at any point in my life sold all that I have and given the money to the poor. I’ve given to the poor, and to charities, and to many good causes, but I’ve yet to sell everything on their behalf.

So I like these words, but they are also a challenge and a haunting because I know that I cannot live up to them. Or I haven’t lived up to them, anyway. What Jesus does here is what he often does: he offers an extreme vision of God’s realm. We can say the words are hyperbolic, but that might let us off the hook too easily. Jesus is offering this extreme vision of God’s realm, and that’s what Jesus does. He likes to push and push and push the boundaries and expand the margins to push us out of our comfortable places to at least get us to think differently about how we live, how we relate to the world.

So Jesus is pushing on the commandments here. The Commandments, that list of ten that God gave to Moses. They are certainly important. He doesn’t say that they aren’t important or that we should forget about the ten commandments. Following and keeping them is a good thing. The commandments are very much a way to keep society intact and functioning. They offer us a way to show love to our neighbors by at least not negatively affecting them. When they were given to Moses, they were a people who had just escaped hundreds of years of slavery. They were in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land, ready to form a new society, a new way of living together, so the commandments very important in forming that community about not negatively affecting your neighbors. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t covet. And don’t bear false witness. That’s one we don’t often talk about, bearing false witness, but I have thought a lot about it the past couple years. Don’t bear false witness. I’m thinking about it because I see it all over. It seems to be a commandment forgotten far too often, especially by people of faith. I see it in online dialogues and political discourse. Attacking the person instead of an idea, or attributing false motives to a person’s thoughts. Building strawmen. strawmen. Taking things to an extreme. Basically lying about each other, or even themselves, to make a point. I would like to see us stop that. A lot less bearing false witness. We’d be a lot more polite and more gentle.

The Commandments are very important, and we don’t want to let them go. But Jesus is also telling this man who comes to him, who says that he has kept all the commandments, Jesus says, basically, “that’s not enough. It’s good, but not quite enough.” The man says “I have kept them from my youth” to which jesus says, “But you lack one thing.” You may have kept the commandments, but you have missed something. The commandments are a beginning, a minimum, but not enough,. “You have to go beyond”, Jesus is saying. “Don’t just not hurt your neighbor, but go out and help and heal. Be a positive force for your neighbor. Show them love and mercy and gratitude.”

And maybe Jesus is also telling this young man that however much he feels that he has kept the commandments since his youth, that maybe at some level his wealth is a sign that he hasn’t kept to them at the level he thinks, or at the level that Jesus would prefer. That maybe this man’s wealth, at least at some level, a theft of some sorts from the poor, from his neighbors, and it ought to be given back.

We had in the reading from the prophet Amos, “Don’t just avoid evil, but seek what is good.” Seek what is good. “And let the first be last, and let the last be first”, Jesus says. “Leave all behind for the sake of the good news,” he says.

That is easier said than done, I know. I’ve not done it. I’ve not left everything behind to follow Jesus. I still have possessions. A place to live. I do, however, find some consolation in my failures in Jesus’ statement that no one is good but God alone. There is no expectation that we have to god-like. We should strive for God’s realm, and strive to be better followers of Jesus. But God knows we’re not perfect. So God offers us grace to rely on, to fall back on. To know that in our imperfection, God doesn’t stop loving us. Even if we don’t fulfill everything the way we should, God still loves us. God is still there for us.

So we are not going to hear Jesus’ words and sell all we own and follow him. At least, I don’t think most normal people would. I’ve not known many, probably none, who have done that. Maybe the men and women who join monasteries or other religious orders with vows of poverty do that. But we’re not going to sell all we own. Especially here in Wisconsin. You can feel the change in the weather already here. How do you sell all you own and yet still survive the winter? Do we all also have to move to the desert or a tropical place where we don’t have to worry about winter cold? You can see how truly difficult it is to survive winter without a place to live if you join us in the street ministry during the winter. Without clothing, shelter, food, it’s really difficult to survive. It is life-draining to be homeless. So I don’t think Jesus is saying to make ourselves homeless. You can also come Saturday to make the meal with us at Community Table, and be in contact with people who aren’t necessarily homeless, but who do have a lack of food. Jesus is not saying that we should go hungry. Join us and see how difficult it is to go on in life when you have a shortage of food, even if you do have a place to live.

So Jesus isn’t saying be homeless, or go hungry, or put yourself into financial bindings. But he does like to push us out of our comfort zone, and to think about what it might look like if we were closer to what he asks, if we were more generous. What would it look like to sell all we own? What would it look like to sell half of what we own, and give it to the poor? What would it look like to reduce your lifestyle at some level, by a quarter, say, or maybe even to just buy less and get out of the consumption ratrace and have more left to give away.

Or maybe wealth and riches are not your issues. I know you all in this congregation, and I don’t know of anyone in this church who suffers from too much wealth. As a church we don’t, and as individuals we don’t, not as we normally think of “the rich”. So maybe this is not a problem in this congregation. And we can hear Jesus’ words and then question not about money, but “What is it that I cling to that keeps me from following Jesus more fully?” My sense of self, my ideas about how things ought to be. It could be ideas, things, people, fear. What is it that I cling to that keeps me from fully following Jesus? That’s a good question to ask. And then give that up, and find riches in heaven as you follow Jesus. Then after you’ve gotten rid of that one, maybe you find something else that gets in the way, so let go of that. Then maybe something else. It’s a journey. Not something that we perfect, and certainly don’t perfect in one moment, but a constant journey of shedding or letting go of what gets in the way, and growing stronger in discipleship and growing closer to God and Jesus’ way. That involves doing more ministry, like helping with the street ministry, or going to the Community Table. Or letting go of the fear and anxiety of being invitational: invite someone to the Halloween party, to introduce people to the people in this congregation, and maybe even introduce them to God.

It’s not that we must be perfect today. We are all on a journey, that is a life-long journey. We never truly complete it. We never achieve perfection, but do it one day at a time. Letting go of one thing at a time, moving closer to joining in Jesus’ footsteps. A life-long journey, one day at a time, trusting that God’s grace never condemns but is always lifting up, forgiving, sending a Spirit of renewal and new life, continually saying, “Keep following me”. To keep growing, to keep following, and to keep making the world a more loving world.

Amen.