Mark West
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
March 16, 2003

What Shall It Profit?
Mark 8:31-38

What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

The question is asked as if no one could miss the answer.  It would seem to require someone who is completely lacking of any scrap of common sense to trade their soul for money, drugs, alcohol, you name it- but it happens every day.  So, let’s take a look at this bit of scripture and see if we can make it a little more complicated, maybe that way it can gain a greater impact on our lives. 

What shall it profit a man?  Well, we all know what a profit is. The dictionary defines it as an advantageous gain or return.  It gives a sense of somehow being better off than we would otherwise be.  I’m not sure that I could complicate profit anymore than that, other than to add that profit isn’t necessarily measured in money, it could also be measured in social or political advantage or by many other quantifiable means. 

If he gain the whole world.  That could be quite a task.  That is if I knew exactly how to gain the world.  I suppose there are several different possibilities.  The first to come to mind would be in the physical sense, to capture and rule over all the lands of the world.  At last check, no one has accomplished this feat, but some have come close.  One particular individual was Alexander the Great.  He may not have ruled our entire known world, but he certainly ruled all of his.  His desire for conquest was so great that it ruled his life.  What a pitiable man he must have been when he realized that there were no other lands to conquer, that his desire was left wanting.  Another possible way to gain the whole world could be economically.  I’m certain this would be difficult for an individual to accomplish in any age, but Solomon (you know, the one who built the temple) and Bill Gates (you know the one who built Microsoft) would be two noteworthy examples.  I once heard that Bill Gates’ time was worth so much that if he walked across a floor strewn with hundred dollar bills, it would not be worth his time to stop and pick them up.  Man, could you imagine the stress of slowing down to smell a rose.  And Solomon, he started out well enough, but the next thing you know he built his own palace bigger than the temple, married a pagan and started worshipping the pagan gods Ashtoreth and Molech.  Any way we look at it, gaining the world is about power and gaining advantage over others. 

And lose his own soul.  Ah, the crux of the matter is at hand.  What price do we put on being “successful” in our world?  The soul spoken of here refers to that entity of a world that is not ours, which is resident in this worldly body until it’s shell is cast off, and it’s fate is determined.  This soul will continue to thrive after passing from this world, either damned or sharing in the Kingdom.  Success is certainly not dependant on giving up ones soul, but the temptation is always there.  Let me tell you a story. 

It is astonishing for how little a man will sell his soul. A preacher, shopping at a local plant nursery came across the owner and said to him, “What a beautiful day!” “It sure is,” replied the man.  They talked for a while about the beauty of the plants, the flowers and the sunrise that morning when the preacher exclaimed, “How thankful we ought to be for God’s creation, I hope you never come out here without praying.” “Pray, I never pray!  I have nothing to pray for.”  The preacher thought this to be mighty odd and said as much, and then asked, “Doesn’t your wife pray?” "If she likes," "Don't your children pray?" "If they like, they do." "Well, I’ll tell you what” said the minister, “I’ll give you one hundred dollars if you will promise me not to pray as long as you live." "Alright," said the man, "I don't see what I've got to pray for;" and he took the hundred dollars. When he went home, the thought struck him, "What have I done?" And something said to him, "Well, John, you will die soon, and you will want to pray then; you will have to stand before your Judge, and it will be a sad thing not to have prayed." Thoughts of this kind came over him, and he felt horrible; and the more he thought the worse he felt. His wife asked him what was the matter; he could hardly tell her for some time; and at last he confessed he had taken a hundred dollars never to pray again, and that was preying on his mind. The poor ignorant soul thought it was the devil that had appeared to him. "Yep, John," she said, "sure enough it was the devil, and you have sold your soul to him for that hundred dollars." The poor creature could not work for several days, and he became perfectly miserable, from the conviction that he had sold himself to the devil. However, the preacher knew what he was about. He guessed the man would be at church that Sunday to ease his terror of mind, and sure enough he was there, and he heard the same man who gave him the hundred dollars take for his text these words, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" "Yes," he said, "what will it profit a man, who sold his soul for a hundred dollars?" Up gets the man, crying out, "Sir, take it back! Take it back!" "Why," said the preacher, "you want the hundred dollars, and you said you didn’t need to pray." "But, sir," he said, "I must pray; if I do not pray, I am lost;" and after some testing by parleying, the hundred dollars was returned, and the man was on his knees, praying to God.  

The great Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis wrote that our ancestors were imbued with a notion that they could invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God.  And that out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God to make him happy.   

How wonderfully profound those words are for us today.  We live in the world, but need not become enamored of it.  It is that part of us that will continue on into the next life that we need to be concerned about.  Wealth, physical power, influence.  It is none of these that will keep us from losing our soul.  So stop trying to fill the God size hole in your heart with a man-made world.

AMEN