The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
October 12, 2003

The One Thing You Lack
Mark 10:17-31

The rich young man in our Gospel story this morning breaks three big First Century rules of decorum. The man ran, he knelt before Jesus, and he called Jesus “good.” It helps to know that all of these were out of step with polite society of the day. 

First, our man of many possessions runs up to Jesus. In a culture where the rich folks with couth would stroll around slowly in no great hurry, running should have embarrassed the anxious questioner.  

Second, the man kneels before Jesus before asking his question. While one might kneel before Caesar or King Herod, the action is a bit extreme for a dust-covered Rabbi.  

Third, he addresses Jesus as “Good Teacher.” We don’t mind calling something good, but the designation “Good Teacher” is unique for its time. Jesus is right in pointing out that it is God who is good, for it was exactly this practice of calling God “good” that made the designation “good” sound jarring. Good was a descriptor for God, like holy is used to describe God. So, saying “Good Teacher” would have roughly equivalent to saying “Holy Teacher” or even “Divine Teacher.” 

Jesus completely looks over the man’s public display of admiration. After the embarrassment of running up to Jesus, kneeling at his feet and hinting at the holiness of Jesus, the rich man gets the bizarre question, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” One commenter on this passage[1] has noted “It is rather like writing, ‘Thank you so much for your letter of the twenty-first. You ask a great many interesting questions. But tell me, what exactly did you mean when you wrote ‘Dear Sir’? ‘Dear’? In what sense am I ‘dear’ to you? And ‘Sir’ is similarly inappropriate. I am not a member of the aristocracy. And as for that comma…’” 

Before the man can answer the odd question, Jesus rattles off six of the Ten Commandments. Jesus tells the man to inherit eternal life he must follow this portion of the Ten Commandments dealing with our ethical dealings in the world. You want in on God’s kingdom? Obey God’s law. 

The rich man then gives the seemingly impossible reply, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” It sounds as if the man tells the sinless Jesus that he too has never sinned. But there is another possibility. The rich young man could mean that according to the law he has kept on the right side of these commands. If he sinned, he could have offered a sacrifice to God and been forgiven. Whether, he means that he has never done anything wrong, or he has done what he had to in order to be forgiven, the man still insists that from his youth he has stayed on the right side of God’s law. 

He must not have been lying. Marks tells us that Jesus looked at him and loved him. Then Jesus lovingly suggests that the man go, sell all he owns, give the money to the poor, and then come and follow Jesus. The man leaves dejected for he had many possessions. A closer translation of the Greek would be that he possessed many properties. This young man is landed gentry. He owns the land that others work and he can’t let go of that life of privilege. 

This story cuts against the grain of traditional Jewish belief that God blessed rich people. The man’s many possessions should have been a sign of God’s favor. Instead, Jesus sees them as an obstacle to faith. Jesus then goes on to tell his disciples that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. 

Now here is where you may have heard a bit of homiletical fiction in the past. There is a much-repeated story that “Eye of a Needle” refers to a gate into Jerusalem. It seems that a preacher in the Middle Ages wrote that there was a gate into Jerusalem called “The eye of the needle” through which camels could pass, but only by hobbling through on their knees. The idea was that it is difficult, but not impossible and it had the added punch line of suggesting that rich folks who wanted into heaven needed to get on their knees.  

It’s a great little story, but it has no basis in archeology or any other known facts. There is better evidence that the gate named “eye of a needle” was created by a pastor trying to soften Jesus’ teaching for a well-heeled congregation. The truth is Jesus was referring to the largest animal in Palestine and the smallest common opening. He meant a real camel and an actual eye of a needle. The idea is that humanly speaking it is flat impossible to get a camel through the eye of a needle. It ain’t happening, now or ever whether the camel gets on its knees or not. 

So where does this leave us? Though the man had not disobeyed the ethical commands of the law, he could not gain eternal life. I assume we want to gain eternal life and this man found that it was more difficult than he imagined. What will become of us? What is the one thing we lack? I think to unravel this knotty problem, you have to go back to the first words. Those words spoken while the dust of the mad dash to kneel at Jesus feet still hung in the air. He said, “Good Teacher, what must I do….” 

Let’s pause there. The man wants to know what to do. As far as he is concerned he can add a few things to his to do list and he’ll hit the pay off on eternal life. Jesus gives the not-to-do list from the Ten Commandments. The man has kept the commandments and feels confident—confident enough to declare to Jesus that he has kept all of these from his youth. But the man has enough uncertainty left that he ran after Jesus, fell at his feet and called him Good Teacher to find out what more he must do. 

The problem was Jesus was not a good teacher. At least that’s not all he was. Jesus was not like other teachers who expounded their own thoughts on this and that. A key part of Jesus’ teaching was that he was and is God’s son. As C.S. Lewis wrote, 

A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse . . . but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 

The main problem with the rich man is that he has missed Jesus’ identity. This is shown by the commandments Jesus does not name. The four of the Ten Commandments Jesus leaves off his list are the ones concerning God. There is no discussion of acknowledging that there is only one God, that we should not worship idols, we should not take the Lord’s name in vain, and we should honor the Sabbath—the Lord’s Day. Jesus adeptly skipped the very four commandments the rich man was least concerned with. How do I know this? The man did not correct Jesus’ omission. Jesus dropped four of the Ten Commandments and the man did not notice for these were the four he missed.  

The rich young man could obey the ethical commandments, but he couldn’t turn over control of his life to God. The one thing he lacked was to trust God with everything, placing God in control of his life. As Jesus said, getting a camel through the eye of a needle is humanly impossible. Yet with God all things are possible. For this rich man to gain the eternal life he so desperately desires, he needs to trust Jesus fully. 

We know he respected Jesus. But he never really understood whom he knelt before. The rich man did not appreciate that Jesus was a holy, divine teacher. Jesus was not simply a good teacher in the way we usually think of those words today. If the rich young man could have grasped that Jesus was God in the flesh then he could have seen following Jesus was the only appropriate response, no matter what the cost. But Jesus seems to have sensed that the man was possessed by his possessions and he would not be able to let go of what he had to gain the inner peace and joy that eluded him. 

It was too difficult for the rich young man to gain eternal life, because Jesus did not just give him a to do list to check off to get in to heaven. The man needed to reorient his whole life to God. Reorienting his life to God was what he lacked, and that reorientation is what the rich young man refused to do. 

I want to close with a story that shows how eternal life is less about what we do and more about reorienting our lives to God. A man arrives at the pearly gates and is questioned by Saint Peter as to why he thinks he should get into heaven.  

“Well I was in church most every Sunday. I always tithed. I tried not to cuss to much or say bad things behind someone else’s back.” 

“What else?” Peter asked. 

The man looked a bit taken aback, but he added, “I taught Sunday School for 26 years. I fed people in the soup kitchen at our church once a month. Umm… hang on, there’s more… I took care of my Mama in her last years when she needed so much care. That should count for something.” 

Peter just looked at him. 

“Wait, wait. I helped build a Habitat for Humanity a few times. I never cheated on my wife, that’s good, right?”

Peter was just looking. 

“I was always honest in business with everyone I dealt with.” The man paused, and looked at the ground. “What do you want me to say? What does it take to get into heaven?” 

“Well we have a point system,” Peter explained, “You need a hundred points or more to get in.”  

“What am I up to now?” the man asked. 

“Three and a half points so far,” Peter answered. 

“Three and a half points?” the man replied, the exasperation showing through in his voice. “I don’t understand. When I was a teenager the preacher told me that all I had to do was to turn my life over to Jesus. Trust him. Turn from doing the things I knew were wrong and ask for his forgiveness. I thought I was as good as in heaven all this time. And now you tell me after all the things I did I can’t get in?” 

Peter smiled and said, “Turning your life over to Jesus, turning from what you knew to be wrong, and asking for forgiveness is worth 100 points. Welcome home.” 

Amen.