Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 12, 2003 Wisdom 7:7-11 Hebrews 4:12-13 Mark 10:17-30	Listen to Audio

My, my. Did Jesus really mean what we just heard him saying? Of course he did. But did we hear all that he really said? Let’s look at what he said a little more closely.

First of all, we have to understand the mind and the heart of his hearers. Both the man who was disappointed in Jesus’ answer, as well as his disciples who questioned him further, believed, as part of their own Jewish heritage of faith, that God rewarded the virtuous with good health and prosperity, and punished evildoers with sickness and poverty. To actually see a positive value in poverty, and even to embrace it, was not only foreign to their way of thinking – it was positively repugnant.

So, of course they had difficulty accepting Jesus’ call – command, really – to give up all material possessions for the sake of the kingdom of God. But don’t we have the same difficulty? – We who live in supposedly more enlightened times, with 2000 years of Christian experience and tradition behind us – After all, if something bad happens to us, don’t we often ask, “What did I do to deserve this?” – as though it were a punishment from God? And if everything seems to be going well for us – we get that raise or promotion; we find that better job; that investment pays off or that idea sells – don’t we see that as a sign that we’re on the right track?

And yet, Jesus’ words cut through all of that – he insists that we look at things differently. How differently?
First of all, the man who walked away because “he had many possessions,” was a good person, concerned about living a virtuous life and keeping God’s commandments. He sincerely wanted to do the right thing. And Jesus affirmed that when he told him, “you are lacking in one thing,” meaning that he was very close, but not quite there.

The important words for us to hear are these: “Jesus looked at him with love.” Jesus was not simply imposing a new and impossible commandment on the man. He was letting him in on the secret of love in its fullness. Jesus did not just tell him give to charity, but to go and sell all that he had, give the money away to the poor, and become a disciple – following Jesus wherever he went, without baggage and without an earthly place to call home.

What is Jesus really saying, as he “looks at us with love”? He’s saying we can’t earn eternal life. We can’t merit God’s favor by being good. We can’t be assured of our part in God’s kingdom because everything’s going good for us here and now. We can only gain eternal life by emptying ourselves, and allowing God to give it, by demonstrating in deed what we say in word, “God, you are more important than anything else.” And that’s the only thing worthy of love, isn’t it?

It seems the man had a desire and a willingness to meet the demands of duty, but couldn’t see his way to answer the call of love. And so, “his face fell, and he went away sad – for,” as the Gospel tells us, “he had many possessions.”

And Jesus laments, what a barrier earthly treasures are to receiving God’s love. How appropriate it is that we often call our possessions “stuff,” because that’s precisely what they do. We stuff ourselves so full of stuff that there isn’t room for God. Yet Jesus realizes how impossible it is for us to loosen the stranglehold that our stuff has on us – “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.” But, he assures us, what is impossible by human means is possible for God.

But what he’s saying here is not that God will pull us into his kingdom while we are still clinging to our stuff, but rather that the power of God will enable us to divest ourselves of the power that our possessions have over us – if we want that. If we let him, God will enable us to let go of our grasp on things, and God will fill us with what he wants, which is himself.

This week, the fifth week of our Retreat for Everyday Life, we are asked to contemplate the ultimate emptiness – the sinfulness of the world around us. The trick this week is to look at sin and evil without yielding to the temptation to try to fix it or to assign blame. If we are willing to look at the sinful state of humankind, and the many consequences of sin and evil around us, without getting locked into our compulsive need to fix or to blame, we will begin to see and even feel the emptiness that Jesus came to fill, the woundedness that Jesus came to heal.

The world is impossible to fix, humanly speaking, just as stuffing our lives with things cannot fill the longing that God alone can satisfy. As St. Augustine said many years ago, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” And as Jesus said many years before that, “Nothing is impossible with God.” Nothing.

© Thomas Welbers 2003