The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23), October 13, 2024

Any preacher knows that the only thing harder than preaching on difficult texts, is preaching on easy ones. Confusion can at least be investigated, often profitably; what does one say about the nativity stories that has not been said before?

Fortunately, this text is difficult! Jesus has just told the enthusiastic rich man that the key to eternal life is to “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” After further telling his disciples that it is difficult for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven, he then asserts that the reward “in this age” for divesting oneself of possessions and even of family commitments is…more of the same, a hundredfold? Why is the reward even more of what we are told to detach ourselves from? And why does this reward include (almost as an afterthought, as in fine print) “persecutions”?

C. Clifton Black notes[i] that among the things returned to us a hundredfold will be brothers and sisters, mothers and children. Fathers are conspicuously absent from that list. Why? Because following Jesus; entering the kingdom of God; pursuing eternal life means having God as our father and entering God’s household. The more deeply we enter into relationship with our relational God, the more deeply we are tied into the web of relationships that constitute God’s world. The Process-Relational view understands everything as constituted by past events, including the presence and actions of other people, and God is the one in whom all events relate. The more I surrender myself to God, therefore, the more I become your sibling, All of the brothers and sisters and mothers and children and houses and fields in God’s kingdom are now mine, and I am theirs. As for persecutions, deeper involvement with the world implicates me in the struggle for justice and wellbeing for all, which will entail opposition. As my seminary community likes to say, we go deep with God in order to go wide with the world God loves.

This insight is a useful corrective to several of our more popular heresies, which might come up in preaching or discussing this text.

The disciples may be shocked not only by the radical nature of Jesus’ demands, but also by the reversal of the common expectation that material possessions are a sign of God’s favour. They are not, says Jesus; on the contrary, they may be distractions because possessions can assure you and others that you are on the right path to happiness, success, and even morality. The Prosperity Gospel is not a 20th-Century invention.

Neither is the purpose of the Christian life gaining entrance to heaven; the Gospel is not primarily a guide to getting there. Jesus instead invites us into deeper relationship with God in this life. In the age to come / the full kingdom of God, we will live the life of that age, but in the meantime, in this age, we live in deep relationship with the family of God. Relinquishing our hold on our possessions does not earn us a ticket to heaven, but is rather a step in the process of entering more deeply into life in God.

Living simply is a good environmental ethic, and sharing with the poor, a social justice one, but once again, the Gospel is not primarily a set of moral teachings about how to be a good person. Jesus’ call is to a transcendent relationship which has immanent implications.

An interesting sermon illustration might be Bishop Myriel in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, whose generous gift of silver brings another man closer to God: the bitter convict on the run, Jean Valjean. Bishop Myriel, Jesus, and the actions commended to the disciples are all examples, of kenosis, or self-emptying, about which Open and Relational theologian Thomas Jay Oord, among others, has written extensively.

[i]      C. Clifton Black, “Mark 10:17-31, Exegetical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 4, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 169.

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Tim Bowman is an Ordained Minister in the United Church of Canada, serving Gladwin Heights – St. Andrew’s Pastoral Charge in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. He is currently a ThM student at the Vancouver School of Theology, focusing on Process Theology. Tim is a contributor to Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Edited by Jeff Wells, Thomas Jay Oord, et. al., and lives in New Westminster with his wife, child, and two cats.