“Our ambivalence about riches”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Mark 10:17-31 (Forward, p. 18) CEV p. 1040
“The disciples were confused as Jesus led them toward Jerusalem...” So begins the next verse, verse 32a, the one following today’s passage. The disciples were confused, it would seem, over the issue of riches. According to learned sources, we get two ‘takes’ on this matter. Many of the older works suggest that the Israelites of Jesus’ day believed in a kind of cause and effect notion, ‘what goes around, comes around’. In other words, if you were a righteous person, then God rewarded you with health and prosperity, whereas if you were evil, God gave you the opposite. And so, wealth or riches were considered to be a blessing from God and an outward sign of who you really were.
However, several more modern writers, such as John J. Pilch, ascribe to the notion that the Judeans of Jesus subscribed to the notion that everything on earth was limited, that is, there was only so much land, water, food—or riches—and that if someone had more, it was because he or she was greedy and had taken, by one means or another, what rightfully belonged to someone else. And so, riches or wealth would certainly not be seen as a gift from God but as something unlawfully or unnaturally gained, and this, solely by human effort. So, given this profound difference of scholarly opinion, it is hard to know for sure what attitude Jesus’ audience would have had about riches.
As it can be seen from the above, Biblical scholars are quite divided as to the meaning and sources of riches in the ancient world. However, when it comes to riches, they aren’t the only ones to be ambivalent.. We today often reflect the same ambivalence, albeit in different terms. On the one side, there are those who would say that most of those who are rich, who have wealth, have gotten it rightfully and legitimately, namely by their hard and diligent work and wise decisions. While, on the other side, these are those that these folks have profited on the backs of either their underpaid, overworked employees or have exploited, much to its detriment, our earth’s natural resources.
However, regardless of one’s ‘take’ on the matter of wealth, then or now, there is one thing entirely in common to both. No matter whether they have
been gainfully accumulated or not, nobody wants to be without them or have to give them up. In fact, if truth were told, most of us would like ‘just a little bit more.’ The ‘rich young ruler’ of today’s account was most upset when Jesus told him to sell all that he had and give the resulting money to the poor. And the one brother in Luke 12:13, most surely was hoping for more money when he asked Jesus to adjudicate between him and his brother in terms of their father’s estate.
What is more, most of us do not see the impediment that riches or wealth, or possessions in general, can be for pursuing and working for the kingdom of God. Jesus was quite emphatic about this: “It’s hard for rich people to get into God’s kingdom” (verse 23), to which some ancient manuscripts add ‘the people who trust in their wealth’, which surely is what Jesus is getting at. People, then and now, have a tendency to trust in monetary things like bank accounts or investments or non-monetary things like houses or vehicles or other possessions, and give them a value or a worth beyond what they should, beyond what they should be giving to God and His kingdom. And, sad to say, this can even be said about the church: we can trust in our buildings, programs, people, liturgy, traditions, theology, or history more than we trust God. The principle that Jesus is enunciating holds true applies to anything and everything that we prize or value above God.
Indeed, as Jesus said, none of these things can ultimately save us, and in fact, there is nothing we can do as humans—and nothing that we have—can do this. It is indeed impossible for us humans, but with God nothing is impossible. So, the bottom line is that we need to trust God, to trust Jesus, and nothing else. Amen.
Forward notes: “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (verse 22).
“A young man comes to Jesus, seeking life in its fullness. After dispensing the formalities of keeping the law, Jesus devastates this young man with five peremptory verbs: go, sell, give, come, follow. And this eager young man goes away grieving. I had to be an old man before I heard the grief in this passage and understood the grief-stricken beginning of all discipleship.
“Grief is our human response to loss. It wells up when beloved persons die, when we lose things of value, when our selves are fractured by life. It
imprisons us in its embrace. And there is no quick way through the grief except to wait until it lightens and life seems possible again. You can’t manufacture the recovery. But new life always begins in grief. I hope the young man found that our.”
Moving Forward: “Let us grieve when there is loss—but also remember the words of Psalm 30:6: “Weeping may spend the night, but Joy comes in the morning.”