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‘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.’

What do we do with a difficult, awkward text that everyone of us ignores? For which of us, me included, have actually sold all that we have and given all our money away to the poor?

I’m not judging our relative wealth – that’s for us to admit to the Diocese in the October annual census for Parish Share! But I imagine that most of us have more than the clothes that we’re standing up in.

And we might be more or less embarrassed by the challenge of this Gospel reading. Some might be very well off. Others might be in debt and would be extremely happy to sell that debt off to someone else!

And my comments aren’t just directed at us here today. Over the centuries, preachers and readers of this passage have either ignored it or looked to wriggle out of what it might be saying.

Genuine

Before we go any further, the man in the story seems to me to be genuinely seeking to go deeper in his relationship with God. He needn’t have knelt before Jesus. He needn’t have called him ‘good’. We have to believe that he’d kept the particular selection of commandments that Jesus had asked him about – and these were the ones that the Rabbi’s considered were doable. Wealth was normally considered as a sign of God’s blessing, an affirmation of his uprightness… And yet somehow the man sensed in himself that all this wasn’t enough. That he needed to go deeper. The man who had everything, apparently lacked something.

And we’re told that Jesus looked at him and loved him. Mark only uses the word ‘love’ in two other places. Jesus looked at him and loved him.

One for the team

One of the ways that the church has tried to sidestep this passage is by classifying the sayings of Jesus into two different categories. There are those like ‘love the Lord your God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength – and love your neighbour as yourself’ which should reasonably apply to everyone. Incidentally, these are the only other two references to ‘love’ in Mark.

Then there are sayings like ours today, about selling what you own and giving the money away, which the church argued were meant for certain individuals looking for a particularly saintly life or for those in monastic orders, who in a sense were taking one for the team. In a way, they were giving their stuff up on our behalf.

But I hope you see that there’s a bit of a flaw in that. It suggests that we could go through the rest of scripture and decide which bits are meant for us and which are really meant for someone else. Which bits we fancy and which we don’t.

That’s not really the gospel, is it? And of course, Jesus himself never made that distinction. He died for all. He didn’t die more for some than for others. God’s grace is freely and indiscriminately given.

Fudge

So, what do we do with this saying? We don’t do it, but we can’t ignore it.

In a way, maybe the church was right with their fudge. This command is given to an individual. Jesus doesn’t ask the same of Zacchaeus, for instance, another wealthy man. Zacchaeus freely chose to give away more than he had corruptly received – though he didn’t give away everything.

But then how do we know that he isn’t asking this of us, as individuals, either now or sometime in the future?

And, of course, there are implications to the more general commands such as ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ or ‘love one another as I have loved you’.

No compromise

Jesus gave everything. Not just the robe off his back but he also gave his life on the cross. There was no compromise there in what he did for us and so there should be no compromise in what he expects of us. No sense of a watered-down Christianity for some but not others.

For this man, selling all he had was a way of fulfilling that more general, universal, commandment. We may not feel particularly called to give everything up – but there is still the demand to love as we have been loved and treat our neighbour as ourselves, which doesn’t let us off the hook.

Elsewhere, Jesus says that those who hold onto life will lose it while those who give their lives away will keep it. We all know that, psychologically, being generous does something for ourselves as well those to whom we give. And that when we cling to things they become more of a burden.

To give…

We have a piece of artwork at home in Arabic script which translates as: ‘to give is to receive’. Deuteronomy 15:10 says: ‘Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake’.

But if we look again at our text, it’s actually less about giving and more about discipleship and being in relationship. The giving away of things comes before the invitation to ‘follow me’.

Jesus looks at the man in love, he gives the man his heart – but the man has already given his heart to something else. Jesus offers treasure in heaven but the man, in shock and sorrow, would rather keep what he already has. He wants to love, to follow, but to his own surprise he can’t.

But failure to give, didn’t make him less worthy of Jesus’ love. He is no less worthy than anyone else.

Holding us back

From Mark, we know very little about the man. He can run and he can kneel and he has many possessions. He’s probably young but he might be a fit older man. We don’t know how he came by his wealth. Maybe it was inherited – or perhaps he’d built a business up over time. Is he at the start of life looking to make a difference or, is he older and despite his success, he still feels empty? Was he looking for a challenge – or an easy answer?

Maybe you and I are challenged in much the same way. Maybe it won’t be today, but it might be next year or sometime in the future.  We might want to be generous, but something is holding us back. Perhaps something material, or our reputation, or some concern for future security; that we’re more invested in that ‘something’ than we ever thought, and it stops us from doing something else that we feel called to do.

Allow or prevent

Perhaps we need to start now to practice the art of generosity. For each to give a little more time or talents or money than was expected or asked. So, that when the really big ask comes along – actually it’s not so big. We’re in the habit of giving, we’re more free.

Do your possessions allow you to love or do they prevent you? ‘Where your treasure is’, says Jesus, ‘there your heart will be also’.

Maybe that’s the challenge of this Scripture. Perhaps we should keep on returning to it and asking ourselves the question where our treasure is – and how freely we can give our hearts. To ask ourselves if Jesus’ difficult, awkward question is addressed to us, at this time?

To whom are you speaking?

Malcolm Guite wrote this poem to focus our minds on this challenge:

To whom, exactly, are you speaking Lord?

I take it you’re not saying this to me,

But just to this rich man, or to some saint

Like Francis, or to some community,

The Benedictines maybe, their restraint

Sustains so much. But I can’t bear this word!

I bought the deal, the whole consumer thing,

Signed up and filled my life with all this stuff,

And now you come, when I’ve got everything,

And tell me everything is not enough!

But that one thing I lack, I cannot get.

Sell everything I have? That’s far too hard

I can’t just sell it all… at least not yet,

To whom exactly, are you speaking Lord?

What happened next

And I was going to leave it there. To say my ‘Amen’. But I came across one writer who noted that these particular verses in our Gospel have the man going on his way grieving. But it doesn’t tell us what happened next. She asks us to think about the later story in Mark 14. We’re coming close to the crucifixion. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and all had deserted and fled him. Except, we’re told, for one unnamed disciple ‘a certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth’.

Wouldn’t it be nice, she wrote, if that was our rich man, who eventually had sold all he had, gave to the poor, and at the very end, followed Jesus. Amen

‘You lack one thing’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St Margaret’s, Heywood on 13^th October 2024. It was based on Mark 10:17-31

References:

• https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/jesus-and-our-wealth-dwelling-with-a-hard-saying/
• Levine, A-J. (2022). The Difficult Words of Jesus. Canterbury Press.