Addiction Affliction

Sermon for October 11, 2009 Proper 23 Text:  Mark 10:17-31 Title:  "Addiction Affliction" A.  Have you heard the story of the jeweler who happened to be seated on an airplane beside a woman wearing an enormous and brilliant diamond ring?  After starring at it for a while, his curiosity got the better of him.  He said to her, "I couldn't help but notice your beautiful diamond.  I am an expert in precious stones.  Please tell me about that stone."  She replied, "This is the famous Klopman diamond, one of the largest in the world.  But there is a strange curse that comes with it." Now the man was hooked. He asked, "What is the curse?" The woman frowned as she said, "Mr. Klopman."   So it is with possessions.  They can sparkle in the eyes of the possessor like a brilliant diamond.  But one can discover that they just might come with a curse.  Acquiring possessions can become a kind of addiction that can take a person's life over. Have you ever watched the show "Celebrity Rehab?"  It's the story of 8 to 10 celebrities who have had their life taken over by one or more addictions:  booze, drugs, whatever.  They are under the care of Dr. Drew, a clinical psychiatrist and now TV star who runs a drug addiction center in Pasadena, California.  It's easy to get addicted to the program; over a number of weeks, the viewer is drawn into the lives of these people like they were best friends, as they struggle to overcome the particular addiction that possesses them.  It is horribly difficult for them, and some never make it.   Well, a desire to have can be an addiction affliction itself.  Possession obsession can cause us to live life in a way that places us at the center and God on the outskirts of existence.  Case in point:  the Rich Young Man, whom we meet in this morning's passage of Scripture.   B.  As the passage begins, Jesus and His disciples are continuing the long trip to Jerusalem, where the Master will acquire both the Cross and the Crown.  But before they had even gotten started, an apparently very eager man places himself in Jesus' path..  Kneeling before Jesus in a humble position of respect, this man clearly recognizes both His goodness and wisdom.   He addresses Jesus as "Good Teacher," showing that this man both respects and admires the Master.   The young man asks Jesus what he must do to "inherit" the eternal life he desires.  Here, eternal life is a synonym for being saved and part of the Kingdom of God.  But instead of directly answering this man's question, Jesus first hones in on the man's reference to goodness:  "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone."  Jesus is not saying that He isn't good, but with these words He focuses the man's attention on the One who is the source of all goodness, His Heavenly Father.  To find eternal life, one must look to the Father, and to the indescribable grace He offers to all humanity.  The commandments quoted in verse 19 include, in order, numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 5.   Although this story appears also in both Luke and Matthew, Mark is the only one who quotes Jesus as saying, "Do not defraud."  This unique addition is believed by some Biblical scholars to be a restatement of commandment number 10 ("You shall not covet"), while others see it as an extension of number 8 ("You shall not steal").  Who knows?  But this discussion is off the point of the story.    After Jesus recites these commandments to the man, he swiftly insists, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."  Now, Jesus' eyes tell the whole story here.  In verse 21, Jesus' eyes focus on this man with true compassion, and we get a sense of Jesus' regard for this man whose questions seem so sincere..  Later on in the story, in verse 23, Jesus' eyes become steely as He looks around to summon the other disciples to listen to Him with a single glance.  And finally, in verse 27, Jesus once again looks at the disciples with both strength and compassion as He acknowledges that all things are possible with God.  We can see by watching the eyes of the Master that He is filled with both compassion and a desire to help everyone grow spiritually.   In light of Jesus' feelings of compassion for the young man, He states that the man lacks "one thing." But he actually gives him two commands.   First, the man is to go, sell what he has and give it all to the poor. Second, he is to come and follow Jesus - a path that will lead him to the eternal life he seeks.  Now everything comes crashing down.  This man is no longer enthusiastic but "shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions."  Now, in Jesus' day, riches were generally assumed to be a sign of God's favor.  To actually give up what God had blessed him with to find eternal life with God was illogical and incomprehensible, at least to the mindset of the day.  The rich young man judged the cost of eternal life too high and sadly left.   Once he had departed from the scene, Jesus and his disciples were left alone to discuss the matter further.   Being saved and possessing an abundance of riches are in disturbing tension with each other. Author and historian Clovis Chappel wrote that when the Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, the body of a woman was found mummified by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius.   As you may know, this very famous volcanic eruption occurred in the 1st century, taking the resort city of Pompeii, built precariously on the side of the volcano, completely by surprise.  Excavations have revealed much about Roman culture, because destruction came so fast that everything was preserved by the storm of volcanic ash that engulfed the city.  This woman's position told a tragic story.  Her feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were straining for something that lay behind her. The treasure for which she was grasping was a bag of pearls.  Chappel said, "Though death was hard at her heels, and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell...But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life.  It only froze her in this attitude of desire." The rich young man was possessed by possessions.  There was no room left for the grace of God in his life.  He trusted in his own resources, and not the resources of the Almighty. But it wasn't just the young man who was puzzled; the disciples were "perplexed" at what Jesus was saying too.  Jesus reiterates how difficult it is to enter the Kingdom.  He offers the mind-sticking image of a camel passing through the eye of a needle.  Such a statement has fascinating church scholars for generations, who find this saying hard to swallow, coming from the lips of the man who loves us enough to die for us.  Some scholars have speculated that Jesus was referring to a certain gate near the outer wall of Jerusalem that was very narrow.  This gate, known as the "Needle's Eye" in Jesus' day, would certainly have been hard for a camel to get through it.  But Jesus' point is more radical than that.  He is clear -- it is impossible for men and women to save themselves, whatever their financial state.  Only through God is it possible to be saved.   This section concludes with Mark's casting the disciples in an uncharacteristically positive light.  Peter reminds Jesus that the disciples have already done exactly what Jesus had asked of the rich man - given up everything they had and followed him. In effect, Jesus agrees with Peter by promising that for all the things his disciples have given up for his sake, they will receive back "a hundredfold."   C.  Now what are we 21st century believers to make of this story?  As always is true in Biblical study, there are certain contextual clues we should take note of before we apply what Jesus said to our own situations.  First of all, we should notice that everything that occurs here occurs within the shadow of the Cross.  Notice how the passage starts out: "After Jesus was setting out on a journey…"  The journey was taking the Master to Jerusalem, and to His death and Resurrection.  Mark wants us to keep the Cross on the front burner of our minds here, and interpret everything Jesus says in the light of this event..   The second clue we should notice is that the rich man asks what He must DO to inherit eternal life.  Jesus immediately directs the man's attention to God, by whose grace salvation is available and only available.  The man didn't have to do anything to gain salvation.  Or perhaps more specifically, what He had done had not earned him eternal life.  He had performed the Jewish Law to the best of his considerable ability, and had successfully kept all of the law.  But he still knew something was missing; he still sought eternal life.  What he never realized was that he could do all that is within his power to do and never improve his relationship with God.  No one can earn his or her way into Heaven.  The more one tries, the more one focuses on the self and the less one focuses on God.   What the man had to do – and what we have to do – was to surrender something; namely, the riches that were keeping him from having a spiritual relationship with God   Our last clue is a word clue.  When Jesus addresses the disciples, He calls them "children."  The astute reader remembers that a couple of chapters back, Jesus used a child as a sermon illustration, telling His followers that they must trust their Heavenly Father as a child trusts his or her earthly parents.  By calling His disciples children, Jesus is reminding them (and us) that the childlike trust in God is pivotal in understanding what He is trying to teach.   Now, about this young man; Jesus' eyes tell us that He loved this seeker.  Jesus knew the fellow was sincere in his quest for eternal life.  He was a model citizen, a promise keeper and a truth seeker. He didn't use his wealth to oppress the poor. He didn't go on a phony TV show and pick a wife out of a lineup of gold-diggers. He didn't squander his money on worldly trinkets or immoral pursuits.  But Jesus knew that the man still had a problem. The Master tried to diagnose and treat that problem with His challenge: "Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me".  Don't make the mistake that just because this fellow had to give up his wealth, that all Christians have to do the same.  It's not the wealth that got in the way.  It was the addiction..  Money, in and of itself, is not necessarily destructive, - in fact, a steady cash flow is essential for the work of the Church throughout the world.  So it's hard to pinpoint money as a necessarily dangerous addictive substance. But clearly, there was something here that had the rich man hooked. The problem is not that he had wealth, it's that he trusted his wealth more than He trusted His Lord.   Remember the context:  Jesus is on the way to the Cross.  God gave us His only Son so we might know eternal life.  The man sought the Law to give him such eternal life, but it was a fruitless struggle.  Salvation is only available by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  And we must trust the Lord as children trust their parents to know the saving and life-giving grace of God.  The rich man had to give up the possessions that defined his life. Jesus challenged the man to make an exchange, to drop what limited him in exchange for what freed him so as to open up to a wider and more meaningful life.   And so it is with us.  What must we root out of our lives that may hinder us from following Jesus?   Maybe it's an addiction to work.  Maybe it's an attitude that says 'I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps.'  Maybe it's an addiction to a bad attitude that never really loves others.  The only addiction affliction we can have is addiction to God.  That must be our first priority. In her book A Practical Guide to Prayer, Dorothy Haskins tells about a noted concert violinist who was asked the secret of her mastery of the instrument. The woman answered the question with two words: "Planned neglect." Then she explained. "There were many things that used to demand my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted, and did whatever seemed necessary. When I finished my work, I turned to my violin practice. That system prevented me from accomplishing what I should on the violin. So I reversed things. I deliberately planned to neglect everything else until my practice period was complete. And that program of planned neglect is the secret of my success."  May we begin the process today of defining what has us in chains, and releasing them to the Lord, so we might know His freedom and His peace.  Amen. Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com