Proper 23B/Pentecost 20
Mark 10:17-31


by David Henson

I am the rich young ruler.

And so are you. 

In the context of our world, we are all rich young rulers. If you make a mere $34,000 a year, you are part of the elite economic class, the wealthiest of the wealthy, the top 1 percent of humanity’s 7 billion people.

In this light, there a few passages in the Scriptures more troubling than Jesus’ exchange with the rich young man in the gospels. As the world’s rich, few of Jesus’ words sting more than his words to the rich man.
 
We can believe that the meek will inherit the earth, that we should love our neighbors, that we should turn the other cheek, that we should pick up our crosses and follow Jesus. We can keep these commandments, much as the rich young ruler kept all the commandments.

But give away our wealth? Live in solidarity with the world’s poor and oppressed? There is no way to read the story of the rich young ruler without a sinking feeling in my spirit, because I know Jesus is talking to us.

Like the rich man in the story, we are the ones who have, who have amassed fortunes and possessions more than we can count. Possessions we love, protect, serve, and spend money to insure against loss, rot, theft and damage. In our consumeristic culture, we are not what we eat. We are what we buy. We are defined by our possessions, and we define our worth by what we can possess. Our closets full of clothes sewn with injustice define us as rich young rulers. Our pantries and refrigerators with food seeded with environmental degradation and human oppression reveal us as rich young rulers. Our multi-car garages filled with cars barely a year, two years old, proclaim who we really are.

We are the world’s rich young rulers, pushing around shopping carts and ruling the world with hegemonic purchasing power.

Like he tells the rich man in the story, Jesus speaks to we Christians today who so fastidiously try to live into our faith. Jesus tells us to leave our wealth, to give it up, to share it with the world and, in doing so, follow him into an eternal life.

And, to me, our true identity as the world’s wealthy is why we spiritualize this story. We want to blunt the edges of Jesus’ sharp rebuke of wealth so we can barely feel it prick our skin when, in fact, it should gouge us to the bone. 

by Randy Walker

I am an agnostic who was born and raised in a very strict Christian fundamentalist environment. God was portrayed as a demanding enforcer who lashes-out and destroys if His demands are not met. People were viewed as evil beings that should not breathe God's air unless he gives them the right to do so. Ever heard the expression, "not fit to tote guts to a bear"? I did, as a child when it was orated from the pulpit during a sermon. The preacher was referring to people in general.

The central religious premise was "fear," fear of God, fear of life, fear of other people, fear of Satan, fear of....one's self. Everything other than going to church and reading the Bible was- or had the potential to be sin. We had no television set in our house for years because TV's were called evil, of the devil, and if you had one in your home, you were in danger of hell fire! The only music approved for listening was performed in- or condoned by the church. Certain hairstyles and makeup were sure to provoke the wrath of God on anyone who wore them. In my mind, God was a capricious being who watched everyone, relentlessly, and pounced at the first shadow of a transgression. I did not hear about love or a loving God until I was an adolescent.

By that time, I had grown weary of the confining environment I had endured as a child; it felt like a boa constrictor around my torso, squeezing the very life from me that it claimed to preserve and save. Instead of feeling liberated, and more importantly, supported and safe, I was full of fear, anxiety, and anger. I became an angry teenager and eventually an angry and confused young man. This anger carried over into my adult life, and I was the cause of misery for those I loved the most. Unfortunately, my pent-up anger led me to places I should never had seen, much less been a part of. I have been violent, and I have received violence. I've heard the wails from the depths of an insane mind and witnessed the violence of the criminally insane. I have been to the brink of suicide more than once in my life. It can be said that I have been to the abyss, where I looked into it, and even placed my head inside it, and lived to tell about it. While I have faced my demons (figuratively speaking) and I am at peace with myself, these events have left me with "baggage" that cannot be unloaded...only lightened, and then to a limited degree. A positive outcome is that I am now a more empathetic and compassionate person than my loved ones or I ever dreamed I could be.