We had some technical difficulties with posting the video this week, so unfortunately you can’t watch the whole service. You can read Rev. Rachel’s sermon here, though, and you can see the bulletin here. That will at least give you an idea of what it was like if you couldn’t be there. Enjoy!
You Do Not Have to Be Good
Rev. Rachel Small Stokes (c)
Mark 10:17-31
October 14, 2012
Whew.
Well, isn’t this a challenging passage of scripture?
Last week Mark gives us that very stern teaching on divorce, and now this week he has Jesus saying that a rich person has no better chance of eternal life than a camel has of getting through the eye of a needle.
It’s enough to make you want to leave the lectionary and see what good ol’ Luke or Matthew have to say!
I’ve had trouble with this passage every time I’ve read it. I remember feeling incredibly convicted by it as a teenager, believing that it meant that the only way I could be a follower of Jesus was to have no possessions, no home, maybe one change of clothes.
Can you feel the pinch of that eye of a needle? What things that we hold onto is it calling us to give up? What things are more precious than our standing in God’s goodness?
These are important, vital questions. As we proceed through this month of stewardship season, it would be well worth pondering what is in your box that is blocking you from accessing God, and taking some steps toward breaking down those boxes.
These questions are ones we always have to live with, always have to ask ourselves.
But. They are not the point of this passage. At least not how I saw it this time around.
Because, unlike when I was a teenager and an earnest college student and a self-righteous seminarian and a children’s minister focusing on simplifying this lesson, when I read this passage today, as an adult who has sacrificed all sorts of things, including sometimes my own sanity, to be good, I hear a different message. I hear this:
You do not have to be good. You cannot be good. You will NEVER be fully good. There is no one good but God.
You are freed from this expectation.
You are freed to be human.
You are freed to accept God’s grace, God’s intervention in your life, God’s leading you someplace unexpected, possibly difficult, but certainly worthwhile.
This is one of those times that it’s probably beneficial that we’ve sent most of our children off during the church service, because this message is not for children. Children, who think in very black and white terms, need to know what is good and what is bad. They need those boundaries.
And in many ways, so do we all.
That is, after all, what the ten commandments are. They are boundaries, guideposts, signs that tell us what kind of relationship God wants us to have with God and with each other.
They are extraordinarily helpful.
My professor of Hebrew Bible (also known as Old Testament) in seminary described the Ten Commandments as tent posts holding up the community’s tabernacle. They gave guidance. You knew when you were inside the tent and outside the tent.
Gave your parents respect? Inside the tent.
Cheated on your spouse? Outside the tent.
Worshiped no other God? Inside.
Lied to someone? Outside.
Simple rules. Important guidelines. They gave everyone a sense of what was expected. If you could stay inside the tent, you could stay closer to God. It was a very safe system.
The problem, though, is that they were only tent posts. With only ten posts holding up a tent, there are MANY MANY ways to enter and leave the tent without breaking those rules.
So they added more rules. More tent posts. More explanations about what was and wasn’t “good.” It wasn’t long before there were more than six hundred rules that every good Jew needed to heed in order to be “good.” Some of them were fairly simple, but some were very complex, and involved how exactly to eat certain foods and who you could sit with when in order to remain clean (i.e. good).
If you could keep these laws, you were safe. But keeping them was certainly a full-time job.
Leslie and I saw some of this culture up close when we lived in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. We first noticed it when we saw men and women dressed all in black, completely covered from head to toe except for their hands and faces. Even on boiling hot days, they were dressed in overcoats and thick stockings and wool hats, because these were part of the dress code. They shopped only at their own grocery stores because the dietary laws were so stringent that other food would be too suspect. Our landlord, who was devoutly Hasidic, could not shake our hands or look us in the eye because it would make him unclean.
It was hard to live in this community as an outsider, one who would never be welcomed in the tent.
But at the same time, I could see the appeal. It’s very safe. It really bonds the community. When you’re all crammed into the tent, you’re forced to build strong relationships. They would stay up late into the night, singing and laughing together.
There are communities like this in every religion. Some of you may have grown up in some of them, or have neighbors who are part of them. They have many, many rules, and most of them function to keep the community tightly woven together, and to let people know exactly whether they are in or out of the tent.
I have a lot of sympathy for rule-followers. I have tried to be “good” and to follow the rules most of my life. It drives Leslie crazy, in fact, that I always need to go to the crosswalk, or enter through the gate marked “Enter,” or throw away perfectly good food just because the stated expiration date is past. It’s because I tend to believe that rules are there for a reason, usually one that binds the community together.
In this passage, though, Jesus is challenging his disciples and the rich young man to move beyond the strict adherence to rules. They ARE important. They are necessary, even. They are the first requirement for eternal life.
But they are not enough. They can never be enough. Because they are merely the tent posts that give us shelter. And God is much bigger than that.
Sometimes God even leaves the tent.
You may remember another story from the Gospel of Mark:
Jesus is worshiping in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and comes upon a man with a withered hand. When he heals the man, the Pharisees, the chief guardians of the rules, begin to plot against him because he has broken one of the major pillars, one of the ten commandments: he has done work on the Sabbath.
Most of us, when hearing this, would say that of COURSE it is right to heal whenever you can. God would want that! But there is also this commandment that the Sabbath is to be kept sacred. And couldn’t the man have waited a few more days? Rules are there for a reason! They are there to protect us!
Jesus is challenging this rich young man, and all his disciples, too, to understand that, while the rules are the beginning, they are only the beginning. In his culture, to be wealthy was a sign of God’s blessing, and to be poor was a sign of God’s displeasure. So, to sell all of one’s possessions and become one with the poor would be going very much against the rules.
The Law, Jesus seems to be saying, might show you where God’s tent is, but it does not get you into the Holy of Holies. For that, much more is required. Your whole self is required. The elimination of all distractions, especially wealth and possessions, is required. The union with Jesus, the pure and unadulterated love of God without any other goal, is required.
This, of course, is impossible – at least without God doing some serious intervention.
What strikes me about this passage in the story of the rich young man who seeks eternal life is that he illustrates what it is like to grow up in faith.
As children, because we were black and white thinkers, we needed to learn the basics. We learned the Bible stories, usually minus the gory parts. We learned the Ten Commandments. We learned the Golden Rule. We learned what we needed to in order to become “good” Christians.
And as children, as teenagers, and even young adults, that IS good! We are learning how to live with our fellow tent-dwellers. We are learning what we can about how to build a fulfilling life. We ask questions of our elders; we learn from their wisdom.
But then it gets hard. Because there are days when the rules don’t work. There are times when you are torn on whether it’s okay to heal on the Sabbath, or tell a white lie to keep someone else safe, or to support a friend whom you know has committed a crime, or even, dare I say, whether to rest your exhausted body or drag it to church.
When these times come up, it really helps to be developing a faith that is moving beyond rules. Once we have learned all the rules, the next task is to develop a passion, a love, a heart that beats even louder than the rules and becomes our true guide.
We develop this faith through practice and courage. We continue to practice the guidelines we’ve been taught, but we have the courage to add in new experiences. We let go of the rigidity and focus instead on the loving intent behind the rules.
We learn that Sabbath is there to keep us focused on God, so we practice meditating or praying or walking in the woods to sharpen that focus – even if our minds won’t stop chattering for a moment.
We learn that we are not to covet our neighbors things because it allows us to focus more on the relationships with each other, so we practice listening, and compassion – even if we’re not sure we can really love that neighbor.
We learn that honoring our mother and father was a way of giving back to those who gave us so much, and of keeping the community intact, so we practice hospitality, gratitude, and care – even if we fear saying the wrong thing.
And somehow, in this practicing of love, God enters and offers us grace.
One of our youth was telling me this weekend that her teacher assigned them to write a business letter, and all she gave them was an outline. Just a few tent posts, with no explanation. Never having written a business letter before, she was understandably bewildered. It would have helped, she said, to know more about what to expect from a good letter, to see examples, to be able to ask questions, to learn about the expectations. And that is right and good for where she is in life. She wanted more than tent posts. She wanted a whole community to help her know the expectations. But those of us who now write business letters regularly know that, once she’s gotten all the rules down, she’ll still have work to do. She will still have to come up with the passion about the topic of her letter that is compelling enough for someone to read it and take it seriously. She will need inspiration beyond the outline.
Great artists know this. Picasso, you know, was first a stunningly good realistic painter. He could do a dead-on accurate portrait. He learned the rules, and learned them well. But then, he found a passion, a courage to some rules and to be called many things other than “good.” Perhaps it was divine inspiration, God’s creative grace, that drove him to know which rules to break and when. And he created some of the most memorable and inspiring works of art our culture has known.
And Jesus knew this. He was, after all, a teacher, a rabbi. He had to pass ordination requirements in which he proved his knowledge of the Law.
But he also knew that the Law wasn’t good enough. Nothing was good enough except for the full embracing of the love of God. And that it was only God’s grace – nothing that we could do or be or strive for – that could truly convict us in that way.
Trying to be good, trying to get things right, misses the point. Once we know where the tent posts are, it might just be okay to wander outside the tent a bit and see what the great world of God’s creation has to offer. It might be good to explore, to stumble, to get a few nicks on our knees.
Only then will we know whether it’s worth coming back to that tent, or whether some of the tent posts need moving a bit.
Only then will allow ourselves to be fully human, the great and wonderfully flawed creatures that God created us to be.
Only then will we be really freed to let God’s love enter into us, unblocked by the rigid walls of what is right and wrong.
It’s stewardship season. Our theme is Embracing the Wider Kin-dom. As you consider what that might mean for you, I would challenge to think, like Jesus asked the rich young man to think, what is keeping you from being able to fully embrace that loving and grace-filled kin-dom. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s rules, or “shoulds” (which are really rules!). Maybe it’s overworking, or overworrying.
We invite you to bring these things to the altar with your pledges on consecration Sunday. We invite you to let them go. But not because it will make you good. Only if it will make you free.
Good isn’t what it’s about. God is what it’s about. The God who doesn’t always follow the rules. And that, while far more difficult, is also what makes this a journey worth taking.
Some of you may recognize the line, “You do not have to be good” from a famous and often-quoted poem by Mary Oliver. Though you may have heard it many times, I think it bears repeating in the light of this story. It invites us to roam outside the tent, and to let the sunshine of God’s love crack open our rule-bound hearts.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese.” Dream Work. 1986)
Amen.
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