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October 11, 2015 at Advent Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. 20th. Sunday after Pentecost. Mark 10:17-31. The kingdom of God is now!
Question: How would you describe abundance of life, or what would it take for you to say that your life is already abundant? What does that really mean?
Julie Leach of Three Rivers, Michigan appeared at a press conference announcing her as the winner of a $310 million Powerball jackpot, Oct. 6, 2015.
She said that after she told her boyfriend of 36 years, Vaughn Avery, "He wanted to go to work. I said, 'Are you crazy? We don't have to work anymore.'"
She said she wants to take care of their children and 11 grandchildren. Though he has tried proposing to her "several" times in the past, she has refused, pointing to their friends who have gotten divorced.
"I said he would have to sign a pre-nup now," she said with a laugh.
She said she hopes to buy property in Michigan for the whole family.
"I’m going to take care of my kids," she said. "I don’t want them to work the way I had to work and deal with the things I had to deal with in life. I want to make it a good life for them and take care of them."
The ticket was sold at a Shell gas station in Three Rivers, Michigan, just a drive away from the border with Indiana. The drawing took place on Sept. 30
I will comment on both the lottery winner and the Gospel in my message today.
Please find the Thought of the Day…let’s read it together:
The realm of God
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the realm of God.”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of”It III love this new translation that uses the word realm rather than kingdom of God for I believe that God’s presence is everywhere and it is now, not after we die, although it is there as well. But the abundant life that Jesus talks about is achievable here and now if we but follow his teachings.
The Gospel is also about the interplay between the haves and have nots. The rich and the poor. Between the world’s values and God’s realm. There is a line from Melville’s Moby Dick from the sermon by Father Mapple on Jonah that says:
“…sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport, whereas Virtue, if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers.”
Now remember, sin is not some simple individual act but anything that separates us from God’s spirit and from each other. Sin breaks down relationships and causes suspicion, anger and eventually ends in violence and war.
When Jesus continues to answer the man’s question about eternal life Jesus tells him to keep the commandments because these are the basic moral and ethical parameters within which a civil society must live.
The young man says that he already does that, “I have kept these since my youth,” and yet somehow it doesn’t seem to be enough.
O.K. Jesus says, already knowing what the problem is:
“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 Jesus meant, I believe, was not that after death the young man would somehow have treasures in heaven, but rather he would have abundance of life as I said before, here and now, because it is here and now that both heaven and hell are experienced. Jesus was talking about finding the ultimate meaning and purpose of life as he says in the Gospel of John:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Which of course then begs the question we started with this morning;
“What is abundance of life?”
I am sure that there are as many and varied answers as the people who answer this question. Our diversity of interests and life choices and styles is one of the many wonders of human culture and society.
We often wonder as we accumulate things,
“How much is enough?”
And what do we need to have to do and what do we need to have peace of mind?
Having been there for a very short period of my life as a child I certainly would not romanticize being poor or living in poverty. But I must admit all of us most certainly including me have much, much more than we need for life to be abundant, and virtually all of my good childhood memories have absolutely nothing to do with things. I am absolutely sure that Jesus drove that point home with divine force when he said:
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
In seminary we were taught not to think of a tiny silver sewing needle here but the gate of the Temple that was called “The Gate of the Needle,” because it was very, very low, in fact made for passage only for humans on foot, hence it would be very difficult but not impossible for a camel to pass through if they were to hug the ground and crawl through the gate.
It can be done, but it won’t be easy. Whether a sewing needle or an actual historic gate the meaning is the same. Mainly that it is not the things we have that bring meaning to life but the spiritual well-being that comes to us primarily from relationships with other human beings.
One of my favorite saying regarding wealth and meaning in life is:
“True abundance in life is not having everything you want, but wanting everything you have.”
Sounds simple enough but not so easy to achieve considering the state of affairs in our world today. There is so much violence, anger, suicide, and breakdown of both families and communities. People whose lives are abundant don’t behave that way. Something is most certainly missing. And what might that be?
As is the case so very often the answer to the man’s question is in the question itself. He asks;
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The answer is nothing, because it is God who saves and not you. That’s why I have always struggled with the Christian doctrines that claim you must accept Christ as your personal savior which would mean you are control weather God saves you or not. That is more than just deeply troubling to me.
Some time ago I experienced one of those wonderful “God” moments I call them and it was when for some reason, or no reason at all I fully realized that if God’s love is unconditional, and I believe it is, than there is nothing I can do to stop God from loving me, or even loving me less.
I have absolutely no power over God’s love! Immediately I think of the Gospel of John:
“31 Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’”
As Pastor Steve recently posted regarding the same passage that is our Gospel today;
“Let go of what you can measure and what you can lose – either riches or goodness – and grasp only what is infinite, what is already yours.”
AMEN.
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