“Then who can be saved?”
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We are not at a time of great confidence.
Even when numbers may be ticking up, people believe their lives are getting worse.
Certainly the news seems to be getting worse.
And this is true in the Church as well, even though there is an unreported uptick in numbers here too.
I have just embarked on John Buchan’s life of Montrose, which he begins by describing an epoch, the 17th century, when, he writes, “a nation seems to move from the sun into the twilight” – a loss of harmony in institutions; a failure in nerve; a sense that the youth of the world has gone.
And Buchan adds, “In an age of uncertainty and change there is inevitably a craving for definition and discipline”.
Whether he is right, and whether we are in another such epoch, you can decide for yourself.
But perhaps the man who met and stopped Jesus as he was setting out on a journey is one who craved definition and discipline.
And, when the disciples come to ask Jesus in astonishment, “Then who can be saved?”, do we hear our own questions resonating with theirs?
If we no longer desire agreed ways of co-operating internationally,
if society’s laws are no longer something we expect to keep,
and if we can no longer assume that truth is what together we value and seek,
then how shall we be saved? Who can be saved?
We may find ourselves saying, with the prophet Amos, “it is an evil time.”
Who can be saved?
Perhaps ordinands can be saved – by learning and by committing yourselves to a life of self-giving.
Perhaps monks can be saved – if we have sold what we own, or given up family life.
Or perhaps we listen to the final phrase of today’s gospel, “the last will be first”, and think it will be better to hold back and not promise anything too early.
Today’s three readings all respond to the question, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Seek good,” says Amos: “love good, and establish justice”.
“Hold fast” says the writer to the Hebrews: “let us hold fast to our confession.”
And this ‘eternal life’ they seek is not respite after the heat of the day; it is not death as an escape from our problems. No, it is a passionate longing for all that is good to be embodied in a godly society, for the rule of God, the kingdom of God – a realm where what is unalterably perfect holds sway and we are encompassed within it.
And so this unnamed man comes to Jesus, falls before him and asks, ““what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
And Jesus pulls the rug from under his feet.
Would you hope for a spiritual director, your SD, to be as discerning as Jesus? – Be careful what you wish for.
The word of God, living and active, sharp and piercing;
“all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the One to whom we must render an account.”
One commentator says of Jesus’ words here: “Jesus loves us enough to expose our need.”
The man assumes that eternal life is an extension of the life he knows, something he can achieve if only he learns how, if only he lives it more rigorously.
Jesus invites him to expand his understanding: “No one is good but God alone.”
But the man’s thinking is too rigid, too fixed upon his spiritual training. He will not be deflected. ‘These commandments? I have kept all these since my youth.’
Yes, and the commandments Jesus has cited are our duties to our neighbour.
Jesus has held back the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods but me.”
This first of the commandments introduces an unbridgeable gap between the perfect life and what we accomplish, our aim ever to be a little bit better.
By its omission Jesus gives the man, who knows the commandments, the opportunity of enlightenment.
And, in the event, Jesus has to bring it home forcibly to the man who had many possessions, by inviting him to sell them all and to follow.
“You shall have no other gods but me.”
If the man had done this, he would have put beyond himself for ever the material means of achieving righteousness through charity.
Following Jesus would have been all –
the narrow gate through which he would have to pass to enter into perfection.
He could not.
We are not good at absolutes or at the unalterably perfect.
Imagine the havoc and terror wreaked if Plato’s Ideals, the Archetypes, were to live among us. Or read about in Charles Williams’ novel The Place of the Lion.
A camel may be threaded through the eye of a needle, but it won’t feel very good afterwards.
It is a journey we cannot make.
But Mark is writing good news and the section of the gospel we heard begins with the words: “As he was setting out on a journey”.
Yes, we may not make the journey, but Jesus can and does.
And what a journey it is.
The immediate context is taking his disciples up to Jerusalem,
to the Temple and to Calvary.
The narrow way, the eye of the needle, is the cross.
And Jesus is the camel.
And the full reach of this same journey is referenced in our reading from Hebrews: “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God”.
Jesus reaches that perfect Kingdom.
Who then can be saved?
He, our great high priest, the perfected one, has sympathy with us. He takes us with him.
This is where the words ‘hold fast’ come in: “Let us hold fast to our confession” …
perhaps we might think – ‘hold on tight’! As you come to communion today in the body and blood of Christ Jesus, you make this journey. Hold on tight.