I would like to start today by presenting you a book that I found quite inspiring. It’s called “Dangerous Prayers” by Pastor Craig Groeschel, and the subtitle is “Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to be Safe“. It’s quite a funny book, actually. Groeschel starts with explaining how, when he was still a young pastor, a friend approached him and asked him jokingly but still, why was it that Groeschel’s prayers were so lame, and Groeschel had to acknowledge that indeed, as he puts it, his prayers were flat, dull, predictable, stale, boring. He says that he used to pray things like: Lord, show us traveling mercies and keep us safe. Safe, he noticed, was an important word for him. Actually he realized that most of his prayers were about safety. And then, as he kept thinking about what his friend told him, he started meditate on Jesus’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, before Jesus gave his life on the cross. And yes, Jesus prayed for safety. He said: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me!“. But Groeschel saw also that, immediately after, Jesus added: “Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39), and that was indeed a vulnerable and dangerous prayer of submission. That’s when Groeschel says he really realized that Jesus was calling him to a life of faith, and not a life of comfort. He writes: “Instead of coming to [Jesus] for a safer, easier, stress-free lifestyle, the Son of God challenges us to risk loving others more than ourselves. Instead of indulging our daily desires, [Jesus] calls us to deny them for something eternal. Instead of living by what we want, he tells us to pick up our crosses daily and follow his example.” And he adds that for too many people, prayer is like buying a lottery ticket, a chance at living a life on earth that’s problem free. Some others pray or go to church as a sentimental routine. Others pray because they feel guilty if they don’t. But Groeschel notices: “None of these prayers reflect the life Jesus came to give us [because] instead, he called us to leave everything and to follow him“. That’s when he moves to talk about the Gospel we have just heard this morning.
Well, I thought it was refreshing, and easier to relate to, and maybe also a little scarier, to indeed realize that the story of the rich young man is not only about our love of money, it is also about our desire to be safe. It’s about the desire to be safe that often hides behind our quest for material comfort and financial security. And in this, it’s not necessarily about exceptionally wealthy, greedy or selfish people, it could be about anyone among us. If we look closer at our text, we quickly understand that this man that comes to Jesus is certainly not presented as a bad person, as often with the scribes or the pharisees. Actually, this man seems very devoted, he sees Jesus and the text says he “ran up” to him, and to show his respect he even knelt before Jesus. And then he called Jesus “Good teacher” and then he asked his question, not to trick Jesus or to test him, as Jesus’s enemies used to do, but the man asked because he genuinely wanted to know what was the best thing he could do to inherit eternal life. After Jesus had reminded him about God’s goodness and the commandments, the man confessed that he had kept all of those since his youth. From what he said, it does not look like he was boasting or being self righteous. He was a good Jew worried about doing what was right. And for all those reasons, Mark tells us that Jesus loved him. So much that Jesus invited him to leave everything to follow him. But we know how it ends, the man couldn’t do that, because, the Gospel says, he had many possessions.
Well, I don’t know what you think but from what I can gather I think that indeed Mark puts a lot of effort to present the man not as a greedy or even a selfish person. The man looks rather like a worrier, he wants to be sure, and he wants to be safe. Safe about his life now, safe about his life in the hereafter.I think the way he asks his question is quite interesting. He says: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” as if eternal life was a thing he could get, manage, possess, maybe stack under his mattress with bags of gold. And because of that, he will miss out on all that Jesus had to offer him. The man chose his possessions over Jesus, he chose his money, probably, but above all he may well had chosen his safety. Peter is correct when he notices he and the disciples made the right choice by choosing Jesus over everything.
And that’s when I guess the text starts asking us tough questions. Because most of us are not well known for being wealthy, so there is little chance we identify to a man who had many possessions, but there are much more chances that we have a worrier living inside of us inviting us to play it safe, to save and make plans, to think about the future, and maybe this worrier is quite sensible and reasonable, but maybe, as Groeschel notices, this worrier is also making it difficult for us to follow the real Jesus. Actually, I don’t think that most of us cling to our possessions out of greed, rather we do it out of worry and because we want to do what’s reasonable and we want to do the right thing. It makes me smile that Jesus compares rich people to camels, because they were those beasts of burden that moved so slowly and clumsily because they were greatly encumbered by all the stuff they had to carry. If I start thinking about it though, I realize we all look a little bit like them in this country, we have so much stuff it’s hard to move, even sometimes inside our own houses. And it’s not so much that we want to have it all, it is more that we are so afraid of lacking. We are so afraid of something bad. We want to be safe more than anything. And we pray God that everything will go well, we pray God to keep us and our loved ones safe in the here and now and, beyond that, in eternity. A humorist said one day that most people make God their AAA in heavens or their last step after their retirement plan, well maybe he wasn’t completely wrong about that. But today Jesus says there is a better way for those who want to be his disciples. It’s a sacrificial way, but it’s a way of freedom and peace, joy and abundance in a loving community even in the midst of trials:
There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
If anything this Gospel is an invitation to let go, to let go of possessions that’s for sure, and maybe even more to let go of worries that are at the root of our desire to save and possess. Instead of clinging to safety, we are called like Jesus to offer ourselves and be ready to do the things God will require of us. I love it that a priest said about this passage of the Gospel that Jesus asks difficult things of the people he loves and he does that because he trusts them with doing difficult things, and even, with God’s help, they can reach the impossible. Surely what happened to the man in our story is that he thought he would never be able to do what Jesus asked of him, not thinking God would give him the strength to do what God had called him to do. Jesus says that what for mortals (…) is impossible [is] not for God; for God all things are possible.
So maybe Groeschel is right to say that it starts with our prayer life, with praying better prayers so we can follow Jesus more boldly. He says it doesn’t have to be complicated. Risky prayers can be very simple ones. He does not give examples, so you have to come up with your own. For me, I tried to think about the kind of prayers I could pray, and I have started wondering what it would be like if I woke up in the morning saying things like that: Lord, remove from my life something that hurts my faith. Lord, send me today someone I can help. Lord, let me speak your truth today to someone who needs it. As for us and our churches, I heard a pastor recently saying every church, instead of praying for their own growth as we are often so tempted to do, should instead pray that God would let them know what it is that breaks God’s heart in their community and ask God how they could address it. It looks like a great prayer too: Help our churches to let go of our worry with survival and open our eyes to the needs of the people, and of the poor, around us. That’s all Jesus asked the young man to do.