As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’
Mark 10:17-27
This is part of the Gospel reading for Sunday 13 October, generally given the caption “Jesus and the rich young ruler.” It’s significant that, of all the people he meets in Mark’s Gospel, this is the one we’re told that Jesus loved. It’s tempting to read this and either say, “Jesus doesn’t really mean everyone should sell what they own and give the money to the poor,” or comment on the interplay between wealth and Christianity, or else recall that this was the passage that sent St Anthony out into the desert in an early development of the monastic life.
It’s clear from Jesus’ ongoing comments that entering the kingdom of God is, from one angle, challenging for everyone – it’s just that the rich have a tougher time than the rest. Earning our way into salvation – by having wealth or by giving it up – can’t be done. There might be something else going on here, however. Remember how this starts, with the man’s question to Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Well, we don’t “do” anything to inherit something: inheritance isn’t something that we earn. It happens because we belong to a particular family. The disciples, like Peter and the others who left their previous way of life in response to Jesus’ invitation to follow him, have become members of a new family, part of the household of God. Eternal life with Jesus is about relationships not about positions. And of course we inherit something within a particular family when someone dies and leaves it to us. Someone has to die. Mark’s Gospel will go on to tell the story of how Jesus died, and was then raised to life again. As he said to the disciples, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
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