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Who here gets disturbed by the story of the rich young man? It was the Gospel reading this past Monday again and I’ve found myself thinking about it for a week now—both before and since. The man wants to know what to do to gain eternal life, but it turns how he doesn’t need to add anything more to his task list. Rather, Jesus tells him to get rid of some things... like all his possessions and give his resources to the poor. Then he can come and follow as a disciple. As someone who tries to be serious about their faith but still owns a whole closet of clothes and more books than one can read in a lifetime, it makes me feel guilty and maybe a bit of a flop as a Christian disciple. Why the call to let all of his possessions go? Seems extreme.
But then I find myself thinking of the other extreme. I find myself tailing this young man when he is old. I see him possessing even greater wealth while facing inevitable challenges to his health. The poor are still present in his surroundings. They always are and always will be, as Jesus later admits. But having never developed generosity, the man has no friendships with any of them, and maybe not with anyone at all, having denied himself one of life’s greatest joys. His name has been etched into the wall of a cultural center so that he will live on in posterity. But no one passing by pays much attention to it, and they certainly won’t after he is gone. His house is even grander than that of his youth. But no one else lives there now with him. Everyone in his family has their own ostentatious living quarters. And I have to wonder how the man feels at this point. Is he any happier for having held onto it all or is he now even sadder than he was on that day when Jesus “looked at him with love” (at least that is how the Markan version of the story goes) and urged him to disperse of his riches?
What I see now from thirty or forty years down life’s journey is that Jesus was trying to do him a favor on that day. Trying to free him from something that possessed him rather than the other way around. And I think about those times when Jesus has tried to do the same for me. To give me a more abundant life than the one I hold with a clenched fist.
Maybe in my case it hasn’t been money so much. Grad students in ministry don’t exactly rake in the big bucks, but as my boss reminded me yesterday, that doesn’t mean each of us has not been gifted with riches beyond our imagination. Or at least riches we take for granted and forget are true riches that come as gifts from God. Nothing we deserve. Gifts that are meant to be returned as gift to God by way of his beloved, the little ones of the earth. Riches like an education, a winning spirit, a position of privilege, good health. None of these are bad things any more than the young man’s wealth was a bad thing. They become temptations though when we cling to these things for ourselves, like the young man, and refuse to let these gifts pass through us when the invitation comes.
At the Jesuit retreat center where I often attend Mass, communion is always followed by the singing of "Take, Lord, Receive" - a contemporary version of St. Ignatius’ Suspice by John Foley, SJ:
Take, Lord, receive all my liberty,
My memory, understanding, my entire will.
R: Give me only Your love and Your grace, that’s enough for me.
Your love and Your grace, are enough for me.
Take, Lord, receive all I have and possess.
You have given all to me, now I return it. (R.)
Take, Lord, receive, all is Yours now.
Dispose of it, wholly according to Your will (R.)
It’s a hard song to sing, and not just because it is a bit out of my range. Rather it is hard because the words are a challenging. Can I really say these words and mean them? But the more I sing it week after week, the more freeing it becomes. I suspect we begin to enjoy our eternal life at the very moment we realize that life really does belong only in God’s hands.
And that leads me to imagine the end of the story differently for the rich young man. Maybe he did go away sad on that day, but maybe time taught him to sing the Suspice. Maybe he did sell what he had… well maybe everything but a few pairs of clothes and all the books. And maybe he came back and fell at Jesus’ feet and said, “Teacher, I’m here now.” And maybe Jesus said, “So you are. Welcome to eternal life.”