The Rich Man’s Question
The Rich Man’s Question
Sunday 13th October 2024
A sermon by Kenneth Padley from Mark 10.17-31
I am intrigued by Jesus’ tense conversation with the rich man in today’s gospel. It has evident implication for our approach to wealth. Because of this, Christians have disagreed about what it might mean. Readings polarise between Marxists who emphasise Jesus’ revolutionary injunction that the man distribute his possessions to the poor, and liberals who seek to accommodate the passage to affluent audiences by emphasising the man’s obedience to God’s commandments and Jesus’ love for him.
Despite these differences of interpretation, Marxists and liberals both commence their exegesis from the problem of the man’s wealth. In order to get some fresh perspective I’d like to take a slightly different point of departure. I’d like us to step back from the fact of his wealth and ask how he got it in the first place.
This is one of those sermons where we need to engage in some close textual analysis. So you may like to have the order of service opened at the gospel reading – or if you are watching online to open your Bible at Mark chapter 10.
To discover how the man got his wealth, I think we should start by enquiring after his age. Today’s reading is often called the story of the ‘rich young ruler’. But nowhere does Mark call the man a ‘ruler’ – that detail is introduced in St Luke’s version of the story. And nowhere do we hear that he is ‘young’ – we owe that to St Matthew’s adaptation of the section in Mark 10.20 where the man says he has kept God’s commandments since his youth.
Now this notion of keeping the commandments ‘from my youth’ may suggest that the man is young no longer. However, recall that the story begins in verse 17 with him running up to Jesus and kneeling before him. Only in St Mark do we get this physical information and – with all respect to those seniors who enjoy jogging and training for marathons and other such painful pursuits – I read Mark’s reference to running and kneeling as implying that the man is indeed young.
With this inference in mind, let’s review the possible sources of his wealth…
- His wealth could have been stolen. But this grates with his claim to obey the commandments, including the one which forbids theft.
- His wealth could have been won. But again, the man’s emphasis on conformity to law suggests that he is risk averse; he does not have the ethical profile of a gambler.
- His wealth could have been earned. But we must also discount this option if he is young, because he has not yet had time to earn a fortune.
- Given all this, I conclude that the man’s wealth must have come from his family. And I’m going to suggest that it wasn’t a gift from a living relative because of the very specific question which he asks Jesus at the start of their conversation. Mark 10.17: ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ It is so easy to miss the significance of this verb; some English Bibles fail to translate its connotations at all. However, it is a most particular verb. It is only used on this one occasion in the whole of Mark’s gospel. I suggest therefore that its reference is load-bearing – indeed that it is the key to unlocking everything which follows.
What the man’s question about inheriting reveals is an attitude incompatible with Jesus’ proclamation.
- Here is a man who has done well by worldly standards. He has grown up around wealth and been trained in the art of flattery. He greets Jesus as a ‘good teacher’ (v. 17). And he hopes for a favourable word in return.
- Here is a man who has confidence in his own probity. He believes that he has kept the Jewish moral commandments since he was old enough to comprehend them (v. 20). However, (v. 18), he is insufficiently humble to recognise that only God is wholly good.
- And given this character, here is a man who thinks that salvation – the kingdom of God / eternal life – call it what you like – might be available to him as a right. He lacks any sense of the overflowing grace of God, any sense of his dependency on the almighty. I speculate that this is why the commandments which he discusses with Jesus are only those about people – not the four first commandments about God.
- Here is a man who stands in complete contrast from the passage immediately prior in which Jesus says that ‘whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it’ (10.15). We touched on this theme of gift and gratitude three weeks ago. God’s Kingdom is not a due. It is an unexpected and overwhelming present. It confounds our utter unworthiness.
What messages from this might God be speaking to us today?
- Today’s gospel is not about what we inherit from our predecessors, be that pecuniary or emotional – although there is evidently a practical challenge in Jesus’ words that we make philanthropic use of our God-given talents for the benefit of others.
- Nor is this passage an exhortation about what we leave behind us – so the Canon Treasurer cannot use it as a pretext to talk about legacy giving, although if you feared I was going to go there, let me not disappoint and fail to draw your attention to the ‘Support us’ page off the ‘More’ tab of the Cathedral’s website.
- Today’s passage is about neither our inheritances nor our legacies. Rather, it serves as a fundamental challenge to our sense of entitlement. The treasures of heaven are not ours by right, nor through anything we can give. If we do not unhitch the baggage of our superiority complex from our camel of faith, we will jam in the eye of the needle. Instead, like the disciples in verse 28, we just need to follow. Note – verses 21 and 22 – that following is precisely what the rich man is unable to do.
Footnote: St Mark records just two extended parables in his gospel, that is the parable of the sower in chapter 4 and the parable of the vineyard in chapter 12. Today’s tale from chapter 10 stands as a middle term between these two stories.
- It looks back to sower where Jesus lists the lure of wealth among the things which choke God’s word [4.19], in contrast to the blessings which accrue to Jesus’ followers in this age. These blessings are numbered as a hundredfold in Mark 10.30, an echo of the multiplication of the sower’s seed in Mark 4.20.
- And today’s story also looks forward to the vineyard. I said that 10.17 contains the only use of the verb ‘to inherit’ in Mark. But within the parable of the vineyard we find the only use in Mark of two related nouns. Listen to Mark 12.7 in which we read, ‘the tenants of the vineyard said to one another [about their landlord’s son], “this is the heir [the inheritor]; come let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours”’.
In crucifying Jesus, the tenants of the vineyard are more unscrupulous than today’s rich man. Nonetheless, both fail to acknowledge God’s primacy and agency. The tenants think that they can acquire God’s vineyard by short circuiting the rules. Today’s rich man thinks he can inherit eternal life by slavish obedience to rules. Both fail to appreciate that the promises of Jesus are sheer gift to be received – merely and only – through the gratitude of faith.