Steve Lindsley
Mark 10: 17-27 (Selected Verses)

I don’t know about you but I, for one, am fascinated by the man we meet in our story today. I find him one of the more intriguing characters in all of scripture. He is relatable. He is authentically himself, for better or for worse. And he, like all of us to some degree, is endlessly searching for something that he cannot find on his own.

We don’t know a whole lot about this man – in fact, to get a better sense of him, we have to look at what other gospels tell us. Like so many of the gospel stories, this one is also found in Matthew and Luke. And it’s there where we learn that this man is fairly well off, financially speaking. We learn that he’s a leader of some sort. We learn that he’s relatively young and is a man of position and power and privilege. Which is why he’s often referred to as the rich young ruler.

We also learn that this man is a man of faith. A faith, apparently, that compels him to kneel before Jesus when he meets him – which must have been quite a sight; this man of position and power and privilege humbling himself before an itinerant Jewish teacher and preacher who was none of those things.

We hear the question he asks Jesus, the question that starts it all: Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It is the kind of question that people of power and privilege are prone to ask; their worldview assuming that something like eternal life can be acquired if they check the right boxes. Everything, a transaction.

Jesus decides to play along at first, responding by reciting the details of the law. And you can almost see the man check them off in his head as he does this:

You shall not murder – check.
You shall not commit adultery – check.
You shall not steal or bear false witness – check.
Honor your father and mother – check.

This man has aced the test – how happy he must be!

Except he’s not. Teacher, he responds, I’ve kept all these things since my youth. You can almost sense disappointment, even confusion, in his voice. He had kept the law to a “t,” and still he felt something was missing. What was it?

We are told that Jesus looks at him and loves him. This is more than just an observation of Jesus’ compassion – this is the equivalent of a good ol’ southern “bless your heart.” Because Jesus knows how this man is likely to react to what he says next: The only thing left for you to do, Jesus tells him, is to sell all that you own and give the money to the poor. Then you’ll find what you’re looking for.

How hard do you think it was for this man to hear this? He who was, more or less, used to getting what he wanted. He who lived by the “checking the boxes” approach to life. He whose power and privilege afforded him opportunities others did not have.

And still, something was missing – he knew it in the depths of his soul. And nothing that he had – his possessions, his power, his influence, even his faith – nothing could fill it on its own. How defeating and deflating it must’ve been to learn that the one thing he could do to get what he wanted was the one thing he was least willing to do.

And so, what does this man do? He walks away. He turns and walks away.

The story of the rich young ruler is a puzzle – a puzzle that elicits many questions for us; the most obvious being: did Jesus really expect him to give up everything? Jesus didn’t tell him to sell some of his possessions, after all. He said everything. Did Jesus really expect that of him? Does Jesus expect that of us?

We’re left sitting with that question on this second Sunday of our fall Generosity season, as we ponder and pray about what generosity means for us – you’ll remember the focus statement we introduced and recited last week in worship, that:

Generosity makes our world larger,
deepens our gratitude,
brings joy to life
and more intimately connects us to God and each other.

We’re left with the question of what to do with Jesus and this man as we prayerfully contemplate our session’s four goals for the new year and how we can play a part in helping bring those to reality. What exactly is Jesus asking of us, we wonder? Does he really expect us to give everything up for him? And if that’s the case, will we, too, wind up deflated and defeated?

It’s easy to take stock of this scene and wonder if Jesus had overreached a bit; if, in a fit of overzealousness, he might’ve inadvertently set this man up for failure. But beloved, I want us to imagine the possibility that Jesus is up to something else here entirely. What if his aim is not to point out the many ways this man might be falling short, but rather draw attention to everything he already had?

“Give all of your possessions to the poor,” Jesus says. Last week, you recall, we talked about the ways that generosity keeps our possessions from possessing us. Jesus actually might be taking it a step further here. The call is not simply to get rid of our possessions, but rather to reverse the roles. To change the very nature of the relationship we have with our things.

We all know that possessions and wealth are ultimately fleeting; that the more we have, the more we stand to lose. We also know that, when we find ourselves without, we’re forced to place our trust in something beyond the tangible, beyond what’s right in front of us. My cousin and his husband who live here in Charlotte own property just outside of Chimney Rock, and we all know the utter devastation last week’s hurricane unleashed there, wiping that tiny town right off the map. Scott and Joey have made a couple of trips to the area since to check on their cabin and take supplies to the people there. They tell me that these people have lost nearly everything they once owned, the worst kind of “without;” and so they have no choice in the moment other than trusting that the needed supplies for today will be there today, and the needed supplies for tomorrow will be there tomorrow, and the same thing the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that….

When we find ourselves without, we are forced to place our trust in something beyond what is right in front of us. We’re invited to put our unwavering trust in God and God’s work in the world. Our faith in Jesus and the generosity he wants for us and not from us drives us from dependence on the temporary to the eternal and boundless love of God, that wellspring that never runs dry.

Generosity, then, is a counter-narrative to the seductive story that you and I have been reared in from our earliest days: that the end goal is to make more, earn more, gain more and win more. Generosity is the stubborn assurance that each one of us are loved by God and the body of Christ just as we are, regardless of power or wealth or privilege.

Which means generosity, at its heart, reverses the roles. It flips the script. It sets us free.

Free. That is what this man was missing. Being free! Because being free does come from having more. It comes from needing less. Let me say that again: being free does not come from having more; it comes from needing less.

There’s a term for this kind of freedom in the financial world – it’s called margin. Simply put, margin is that sweet cushion between how much money flows into one’s bank account and how much one spends. The goal, any financial planner will tell you, is to accentuate that cushion as much as possible – that’s building margin.

And in a spiritual sense, generosity creates margin in our life. When we seek to possess more, to gain more, we have little margin for others – even for ourselves. But when we make a point of setting aside some of our time, our energy, our money for the sake of others, we build margin into our lives. We become more aware of the opportunity to share and respond to those calls from Jesus when they come.

And if you want a perfect picture of what this kind of generosity margin looks like, just look at our Welcome Center this past week or our sanctuary narthex today. Supplies you donated for hurricane relief; supplies you rushed out to get at Walmart and Harris Teeter and Costco and any place you could find them before they were gone. You spent inordinate amounts of your own money on multiple packs of bottled water and toilet paper and baby formula and granola bars – the kind of quantities you’d never buy for yourself. You embraced everything that generosity has to offer to help those who have lost everything.

I could not be prouder of you, Trinity. And I also cannot help but wonder what it would be like if we bottled up that generosity and lived it every day of our lives, even when there is not a crisis that needs tending to.

It’s a crying shame, you know, that the man in our scripture today didn’t allow himself to build that kind of margin in his life – after Jesus practically handed him the roadmap on a silver platter, teeing him up to experience the fullness of God’s generosity. Such a shame that his story ends with him walking away and us never hearing from him again.

Or do we?

Sometimes the lines connecting the narratives of scripture are drawn in bold ink, plain as day. Other times they are more like a faint dash, seen only to those who look close enough.

And when we look again, we see something. A few chapters ahead in our Bible, a few months up to a year ahead in time. It’s during that ominous moment when Jesus’ life is near its end, the powers closing in around him. He’s praying in the Garden of Gethsemane; the disciples fast asleep. The Roman guards descend on them in a flash, most run for the hills and leave Jesus alone.

Except for one. One young man who’d been there with Jesus; been there wearing nothing but a linen cloth – a sign of someone who had chosen a life of poverty; of giving up all possessions. The soldiers tried to catch him, but he wiggled out of their grasp, leaving behind the linen cloth, his last earthly possession.

Now it is entirely possible that this is nothing more than some random dude that scripture just happens to throw in to the narrative. Or maybe the writer of Mark wants us to make a connection and wonder – wonder, as scholars have over the years, whether this might be someone we’ve already met; someone who once sought the kingdom of God earnestly and was unwilling in the moment to go there. Someone who, after initially walking away deflated and defeated, had a change of heart, as generosity can certainly do; and took Jesus up on his offer to truly become free.

Perhaps, friends, we are not all that far away from being free ourselves. Perhaps we are already building margin for the kind of generosity God is calling us to embrace throughout our lives. May it be so – this church generosity season, and always.

In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, thanks be to God – and may all of God’s people say, AMEN!

* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.