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“Repentance as Reparation”
Mark 10:17-31
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Throughout the Bible, God calls the community of faith, be it the family, the church or synagogue, be it people who are caught in slavery, be it people in exile, be it the people in persecution; God calls all of God’s people to be different than everyone else.
I don’t mean that we must dress different or talk different necessarily. I mean that we ARE different. We are not part of the status quo; we are always looking for something better. And if we read our Bibles carefully enough, God will challenge us to be radically different than we are. That is part of the joy and challenge of the Christian faith.
What makes us different is our commitment to repentance and reparation. And this is not easy work. It cuts us to the core and makes us confront who we really are and juxtaposes that with who God wants us to be.
To be part of the family of God, this called-out bunch of rabble-rousers who are set to change the world, we are confronted and convicted by God as we attempt to be faithful. Like a deer in the headlights, we meet head on our resistance to change. For first world Christians, there can be no more offensive a scripture than the one we have today. It is offensive because it cuts at our economic core. It exposes our addiction to possessions and power. But if we examine it and ourselves, we might just find the way to eternal life.
Consider the man in today’s scripture. He so much wanted to be a part of the family of God. He did everything that he thought he should, but yet he still found that being a part of the Christian family of Jesus was a bit more than he bargained for.
This story is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Matthew and Luke, the story is about a rich young ruler. We have had plenty of rich young rulers to run our country and some old rich rulers. We have never had a poor ruler rise to power. They could never do so because of the cost of a campaign. I mused to someone this week that our country might look very different if no candidate had to raise money for air time. That the power of their words and message might be what drove their campaign instead of the money. Think what would happen if there were no give-backs for campaign contributions. When Jesus confronted him and called him to reverse the inequity, the rich young ruler went away sad. He did not want to play Robin Hood. He did not want to sell all he had and give to the poor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the friends of the rich young ruler didn’t call Jesus’ words class warfare.
But according to Mark, he is not young or old, a ruler or a peasant. He is simply a man, a man with possessions. In other words, he could be just like you or me. See if you can see yourself in this story. The man ran up to Jesus and knelt down before him and said, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus had plenty of people ask him the same question. His answer we can assume was pretty rote. “Keep the commandments”.
“Yes, yes, I have done all of that since I was a little tyke, but I want more.” Perhaps he was saying, “this old-time religion just isn’t doing it for me like it was before. Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He wanted more, more, more.
Many of you
know that I left the church in college when I discovered politics. I cynically looked at my well-off suburban
church upbringing as a forum for supporting my prejudices. I was passionate about social justice and the
church didn’t seem to have a voice in this struggle, except to retain the
status quo. Oddly, it was sitting in a
poor Baptist church in
Jesus looked at him, the scripture says “with love”. He is the only one in the entire Gospel that Jesus explicitly loves. Jesus expressed his love by saying, “if you want to get serious, we’ll get serious.
If you really want to have eternal life;
If you really want to know what real living is all about;
If you really want to know what God is all about;
If you really want to know what faith is all about;
If you really want to be a part of my family, then sell all you have, give to the poor and then come follow me.”
That shut him up.
Now, why was Jesus so hard on this man?
Do we want him to be so hard on us?
Is that what we need to do in order to have eternal life?
Is that the only way to become a part of Jesus’ family?
The disciples asked Jesus, “then, who can be saved?” There’s a telling question if I ever heard one. The disciples assumed that only people of means could be good followers. I mean, our possessions are signs of blessings from God, right?
Remember, back in those days, it took “riches” in order to be “religious.” Remember that the only people who were allowed in the synagogue or the temple were people who were ritually clean, had the proper attire, could afford the right number of animals and grains for the sacrifice. It took money to be religious. But it does not take a cent to be faithful.
Poor folks
by and large are a heck of a lot more faithful than rich folks. I saw this in
In Mark’s Gospel, the faithful, the good soil are the poor, the outcast, those without monetary wealth. The rest of us are choked by the thistles of wealth and possessions like the man in today’s gospel reading; or like the disciples we turn tail and run at persecution because we have no depth.
Jesus identified with those who were left out of the religious and economic establishment: the lepers, the widows, the blind, the lame, the diseased, the disadvantaged. He welcomed them into his family. Jesus said to the man with many possessions, “sell all you have, give to the poor then come and follow me.”
“Sell all you have,” that’s repentance, repentance from that system of inequality. “Then give the money to the poor,” that’s the reparation part. Jesus is asking us to engage in repentance and reparation.
The man was so blinded by his possessions that he had substituted repentance with piety “I have kept the ten commandments since my youth.” Who among us can say that? But as Karl Marx once said, “material life determines consciousness.” We can surely be blinded by our wealth or lack of it. As a nation we have a disease called affluenza: a disease of affluence which makes us focus too much on having more stuff and more wealth. Our wealth is our addiction. Jesus said of our addictions in the 9th chapter, “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off for it is better to enter life maimed than to go to hell with two hands.” People in recovery know about these harsh words. This is about life and death. Your addiction needs to be cut off otherwise it will kill you.
Jesus said, in essence, the man must repent, get rid of that which he has that was gained through malice. Repent. Otherwise it will kill you. And give to the poor, make reparations. Then you are ready to come and follow me. And then you will have all the life you have ever wanted and more.
Remember, the reign of God which Jesus preached included the advent of a year of jubilee where all goods would be redistributed, all land that had been taken by fraud would be returned, and all debts would be cancelled. The calling for jubilee would be as unpopular today as it was back then. We might all go away grieving. We might not be willing to make reparation let alone repent. But that is what it is all about. And the result is not only a lack of rich and poor distinctions, but a new community based upon something greater than possessions—something more tangible and life-giving than domination. The result is a community of grace under God. The result is a new kind of family. Repentance and Reparation might seem on the surface like class warfare, but it is the grace of God to create a new humanity.
I have
spent the second half of my life dealing in some way, shape or form with
repentance and reparation. It started
with my realizing that my immense privilege as a first world person came with
great responsibility. I therefore had to
help make things fair for all. That’s
what justice work in all about, and it’s at the heart of the gospel. But as I got more involved in church with
this new consciousness, after my
I started realizing how my life had become unmanageable. I started realizing how addictions of one for or another had been a part of my family for generations. Then I started to make my own moral inventory. It’s hard to do this unless you are backed by a higher power. That group of people became an embodiment of God to me. They helped me work through my codependency and unlearn some of the things I have learned since I was a child. They helped me through my making amends with people. They became my church and taught me what church ought to be.
Jesus was on to something when he said to the man with many possessions, “sell all you have, give to the poor, then come and follow me.” He was saying, “Repent of your old ways. Make amends to those you have wronged. Then you’ll be ready for eternal life.” The man went away sad, but that doesn’t need to be the end of the story. It could be the start of his realizing that his life has become unmanageable and that only a power greater than himself could restore him to sanity.
I’m the first to admit that I have a long way to go. There are demons that possess me. There are behaviors that I detest in others that I see in myself if I’m brave enough to look in the mirror. But I’m on my way. And I have this church family to thank for putting up with me when I stumble. For we go on this journey together as we seek to put our unmanageable lives together, perhaps for the first time.
The man in today’s scripture wanted to inherit eternal life, just like he had inherited everything else. The family of God is not something we inherit. It’s more than saying “I believe.” It’s saying, “I believe, help my unbelief”. It is something we can achieve only when we are willing to do the hard work of repentance of all that has blinded us from one another and built up barriers to God. We then do the work of reparation, that is what the reign of God is all about, building a new community under new rules—no longer being defined by the ways of this world. And that is eternal life.
It is eternal because it is defined by God’s purposes and not by earthly power and domination. It is predicated upon equality and community, not division and vanity.
It is for that reason that Jesus said this blunt, tough statement: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, then for one who is wealthy to enter the reign of God.”
But when you do the work of repentance and reparation, when you address your addiction, then the words of Jesus make sense: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundred-fold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields---with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”
That is what it is like to be part of the family of God. There will be a hundred-fold more siblings, parents, homes and resources at your disposal. That is the good news.
The bad news is that the price of this is persecution.
People are not going to accept you for who you are all the time. People might not respect you in this new form of life. Addicts don’t like to be exposed. It may make them face their own addiction. And they often react violently. But our faith is stronger than violence, for we do not go through this alone.
Luckily for us, we do not have to be this strange, oddball all by ourselves. The church, when it is at its best, serves as a healthy family. We challenge each other when we need to and support each other when we want to, which should be all the time. That is part of what it is to be a church family.
Are there things for which you need to repent? Are there wrongs for which you need to make reparation? I know I’ve got them.
Our sisters and brothers in 12-step know all about repentance and reparation. We as the church would do well to be guided by their commitment and power. For they have tapped into the power of God. God’s power is unleashed upon us when reparation and repentance happen. It happens when our addictions are exposed and fought. That’s when the scales come off our eyes and we see God, our neighbors and ourselves in new ways. When we do all of that, when we get rid of all of the stuff that stands in our way, then we are already have eternal life. Because through grace mingled with repentance and reparation, we have been saved.