Rags to Riches to Enriched

“The word of God is living and effective,…
penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
…able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
No creature is concealed from him.” Heb 4:12-13

This small part of the letter written to the Hebrews is deeply revealing and powerfully truthful. For it teaches us, it enlightens us to the nature of God. That nature is love, complete and profound love, a love so total that our God watches our every motion and knows our every notion. If we ponder this very small verse of the letter to the Hebrews and use that as our lens, it reveals why and how Christ viewed the rich young man and by inference you and I in Mark's Gospel chapter 10.

The obvious thing we see in Jesus’ response to the young man:

“Jesus, looking at him, and loved him and said to him,
You are lacking in one thing.”

Christ’s immediate reaction is love and the desire to help and guide this young faulty follower.  And yet what Jesus told him something was too difficult for the young man to do.

As I reflected on this scriptural passage I realized that often it is easy to put myself into the place of those I read about in the bible, It’s easy for me to believe that I would respond differently to Jesus. It is easy for me to believe that I would follow him if He stood before me, looked into my eyes and asked me to abandon all that I've worked for to follow Him. Yes it is easy to say that, it’s easy to believe that this would be my answer…

Yet there remains the truth…He is…. Jesus is asking me to follow Him, He asks me every day, He asks me every moment to abandon my riches and follow Him. But let’s be very clear about something. He asks all of us to do the same... But the question is What are our riches, what denotes for us that one thing that we unknowingly or knowingly cling to, that thing we cannot give up, cannot abandon, cannot abandon even for Jesus? Whatever that one thing might be, the only thing that can penetrate our selfish desires is faith. Without faith we cling to the world…But with faith we cling to Jesus.

What is that one thing, for you? What is it that you are unwilling to give up for Jesus? For some of us it is power… some, wealth; some, the unwillingness to forgive; some, peer pressure; some, self-righteousness.

For each of us there is a stumbling block or two that stands directly between ourselves and our ability to surrender ourselves completely to Him. There is a very symbolic tale that goes something like this:

Hunters of monkeys in the Amazon have a clever way of trapping monkeys. They slice a coconut in two, hollow it out, and in one half of the shell cut a hole just big enough for a monkey's hand to pass through. Then they place an orange in the other coconut half before fastening together the two halves of the coconut shell. Finally, they secure the coconut to a tree with a rope, and wait. Sooner or later, an unsuspecting monkey swings by, smells the orange, and discovers its location inside the coconut. The monkey then slips its hand through the small hole, grasps the orange, and

tries to pull it through the hole. Of course, the orange won't come out; it's too big for the hole. To no avail the persistent monkey continues to pull and pull, never realizing the danger it is in. While the monkey struggles with the orange, the hunters approach and capture the monkey by throwing a net over it. And as long as the monkey keeps its fist tightly wrapped around the orange, it is trapped. The only way the monkey could save its life is to let go of the orange and flee.

This system works because the monkey is unwilling to let go of what it has clutched in its fist, yet it cannot have both the orange and its freedom. Even when the monkey sees the hunters approaching, it does not let go of the orange and escape, but jumps around screaming making every effort to escape yet it never releases the orange.

The monkey is entrapped by its own unwillingness to abandon what it desires so deeply, the monkey looses its freedom, sometimes its life, for the sake of a possession. I can imagine the monkey saying its last prayers as it sees the hunters coming.

 “Save me, Lord save me; please save me. I believe you have given me this orange, help me to keep it and my freedom too.” 

A good example is the rich young man in Mark’s gospel Chapter 10 vs 17:30 whose prayer probably was: “Give me eternal life, O Lord; only do not ask me to give up my wealth.”

If you love animals and see the monkey struggling to get the orange while the hunters are closing in on it, what would you do? You would probably shout to the monkey to abandon the stupid orange and run for dear life.

 

This is exactly what Jesus does to the rich young man. He sees the man in danger of losing himself in his wealth, he sees him losing eternal life all because of what he desired.

So he calls on him to give up the thing, that one thing that separates him from God and save his life. But the man is unable to do that.

But why did Jesus ask him to do this?  Let’s look at that reading from the letter to Hebrews again: 

“The word of God is living and effective,…penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,…able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him.”

By keeping this reading in mind we then listen to Mark’s Gospel tells us that:

“Jesus looked at him and loved him” 

He knew the heart of the young man. He knew there was something that separated him from God and wanted to shout “Let Go, Let Go! Just let go and enjoy eternal life.”

The teachings and directives of Jesus often seem difficult and perplexing but in the end it is to His will, His comfort that we are asked to surrender.

 The road we travel to follow God is rarely easy, yet it is always right, and I have no fast, quick, simple lose thirty pounds in thirty days answer, other than it is his way or the wrong way.

But what keeps me trying to follow Him is that, I know he loves me greater than I love myself… I know he knows me far better than I know myself. I know he knows what is best for me, and to this I can surrender, to this I can abandon my desires, to embrace his desires for me.

And so here we are, for what I have written is for you too. He loves you far greater than you can love yourself, He knows you far better than you know yourself. He knows what is best for you…it is for Him you are to abandon all that you have … to find all that he wants you to be…