21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 14, 2018
Mark 10:17-31
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jzfq0Z0zLY
)
Hold-outs. What are your hold-outs? It probably depends
on what we’re talking about. I wrote a few lists of various hold-outs. I was
told I don’t need to share the list of hold-outs to going to church, because
y’all have overcome those and I’d be preaching to the choir. So, I wrote a list
of hold-outs to writing a sermon, because I was stuck. It was interesting, all
of my hold-outs had to do with a lack of something – lack of inspiration, lack
of three points that came out of my studying the word and reading commentaries,
lack of self-discipline to just sit down and start typing, which I finally did
and why you’re getting an odd introduction to this sermon. When I started
writing this, I didn’t know where exactly I was going. I like it much better
when I get to my Friday writing time and I’ve got a three point outline ready
to flesh out. This week, I didn’t. So, let’s start with why we’re talking about
hold-outs.
Our Gospel reading is immediately after last week’s story
of Jesus blessing the children. So, Jesus has just finished placing hands on
the children and blessing them. As he is on his way from that place, a man runs
up to him, falls on his knees before Jesus, and asks, “Good teacher, what must
I do to inherit eternal life?” In other words, what must I do to be saved? How
do I get to heaven? Today we might say something about confessing your sins,
asking Jesus into your heart, and having a personal relationship with Jesus.
But Jesus doesn’t say anything about that. Instead, he replies, “Why are you
calling me good? No one is good, only God. You know the commandments: Don’t
murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your
father and mother.” What’s interesting to note is that the six commandments out
of the ten that Jesus quotes are the last six, the ones having to do with how
we interact with each other. The first four all have to do with our
relationship with God; these last six that Jesus mentions are about our
relationships with other people. The man says, “Teacher, I’ve kept all these
commandments since I was a boy.” And Jesus looks at him, and loves him. In the
whole Gospel of Mark, this man is the only person singled out by Mark as being
loved by Jesus. Jesus looks at this man, who’s on his knees in front of him,
and lovingly says, “You’re only missing one thing. Go, sell everything you own
and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then
come, follow me.” At this, the man’s face fell and he was dismayed and
saddened. Because now we learn that this man was very rich. Selling everything
you have is not what he wanted or expected to hear. This was his hold-out.
Jesus asked him to give up what he wasn’t ready or willing to give up. And the
man goes away.
So, again, what are your hold-outs? What are you unwilling
or not ready to give up if Jesus were to ask you? What are you holding onto a
little too tightly? I will tell you one of the ones for me is my children. I’ve
heard stories of missionaries who feel called to go to some remote place where
they can’t bring their children, and so their children live elsewhere and are
raised elsewhere. I have a problem with that. A call to serve God does not
supercede your call to be a parent, or a spouse. I know clergy whose call to
ministry broke up their marriages, not by their doing but by their spouses.
Their spouses did not want to change their lifestyle or did not want to be a
clergy spouse. It didn’t have to be that way, but that was those spouses’
hold-outs. I’ve shared before about giving up practically all my material
possessions and financial independence to serve in Nicaragua. Well, one of my
bigger concerns was about missing out on major life events in my family. The
mission agency’s policy was that you stayed in the field for a full year before
your first trip back home. I knew my grandparents were getting up there in age,
and I was of the age, in my 20s, where a lot of my friends were getting
married, and I wanted to be able to go to their weddings. The mission agency
agreed that major life events, like wedding and funerals, I could go back for.
My first trip home was after ten months, and in the two weeks I was back, my
middle sister got married, my youngest sister graduated from high school, and I
went to my cousin’s wedding, too. Where Jesus calls you, when Jesus calls you, he
knows what else he’s already called you to. All your vocations get taken into
consideration, not all of your commitments, but all of your vocations. When God
called me to seminary, I had to break my commitment to the mission agency and to
the schools where I was teaching. My commitment to God comes first. And Jesus
knows what else he’s called you to, he’s not forgetting about those callings,
you cannot use those as hold-outs when they are simply another piece of the
call he has placed on your life. It all works together.
My husband and I have started watching a new TV show this
fall, “Manifest” on NBC. In the first episode there’s a mom whose favorite
bible verse is Romans 8:28, “We know that God works all things together for
good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his
purpose.” In case there’s any doubt in your mind, we are those who love God, we
are those whom God has called. Yes, God has called you. Maybe not to serve in
another country, or ordained ministry, but God has still called you, is still
calling you. God knows all those different pieces of your life and how you’re
trying to weave them together and how he’d love to weave them together if you’d
let him. God’s got a master design of how all things can work together. You
might have to let go of some of your hold-outs, you might be holding on to
something a little too tightly, maybe even to the point that it’s holding you
instead of you holding it.
The youth group is also doing the same bible study as the
evening group, that the morning group did last spring. The book is Restored: Finding Redemption in Our Mess
by pastor Tom Berlin. He’s a United Methodist pastor serving in northern
Virginia. One of his analogies for a mess and restoring a mess is the restoration of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo painted it in the 16th century
and minor repair and cleaning had been done on it. But over the centuries,
dust, grime, candle smoke, cigarette smoke, and gazillions of visitors had
started to obscure the work. A few years ago a major restoration process was
begun to clean and repair and brighten the faded artwork. Well, in the youth
group version of the bible study, one activity is to put different kinds of
tape over a poster and then have the kids work to restore the poster – to
remove the tape, to fill in what’s missing, to get a sense for how to clean up
and bring a mess back to its original state. The kids only had scissors, tape,
paper, and markers to work with; they did not have high-tech or cutting edge
tools that might have allowed them to do a better job. But they did an
excellent job with what they had. This was a poster I bought in college of the
Maldives Islands at sunset. I forgot I even had it until I went looking for old
posters. Even repaired with basic materials it’s still a picture of the
Maldives at sunset.
 |
| Among the improvements are some surfers, seagulls, and a monkey in a palm tree! |
Now, some of the kids got frustrated with the process of
trying to fix it. Some gave up. Some of us have perfectionist tendencies that
can be major hold-outs. I didn’t give them fancy artist tools like they had to
restore the Sistine Chapel. But some kids kept going, doing the best they could
with what they had, not holding any preconceived ideas too tightly, just fixing
what they could, improving how they could. Working it all together until this
was the finished product.
Hold-outs can keep you from working on something. They
can keep you from participating how you might otherwise. And we all have
hold-outs. We all have something, whether perfectionism, or wanting it my way,
or distractions, or anxiety, or fear, or a feeling of not enough or lacking
something, there is something that tries to keep each of us from fully
following Jesus. The man was invited to follow Jesus while he was on the way
somewhere. He didn’t know where Jesus was going, if there were hotel
reservations for that night or where he was going to lay his head, where his
food would come from, if he was going to like his traveling companions. There
is a lot of unknown when we follow Jesus. It can become a hold-out. Yet Jesus
says, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their
life for me will find it.”[1]
Or, in Ecclesiastes, that book that gives us the great wisdom that “there is a
time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,”[2]
it also says, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many
days.”[3]
What is your bread that you’re holding on to too tightly? Is it money? Is it
status? Is it a certain feeling? What’s your hold-out? Is it fear? Is it
selfishness? Is it the unknown? Is it belonging, or not belonging?
That is what is most curious about the man’s question.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? You don’t do anything to inherit. You can’t
earn your way to an inheritance. It’s about belonging, not about actions.
Salvation is through faith and not by works. Jesus freely offers it, invites
himself into our lives, stands at the door and knocks, all we do is accept our
inheritance as God’s children, or turn it down. It’s pure grace, unconditional,
unearned, undeserved, unmerited. It’s not about keeping the commandments. It’s
being part of God’s family, which is an open invitation. I know you’ve said
yes. And that means you can quit striving. It’s not a competition. You can’t
earn your way into heaven. You belong to God. So get rid of whatever hold-outs
there are between you and God. There’s a hymn by another Methodist preacher,
Charles Albert Tinley, called “Nothing Between,” it’s in your hymnal, #373. We’re
going to listen to it and enter into a time of prayer.
1. Nothing between my soul and my Savior,
naught
of this world's delusive dream;
I
have renounced all sinful pleasure;
Jesus
is mine, there's nothing between.
Refrain:
Nothing
between my soul and my Savior,
so
that his blessed face may be seen;
nothing
preventing the least of his favor;
keep
the way clear! let nothing between.
2.
Nothing between, like worldly pleasure;
habits
of life, though harmless they seem,
must
not my heart from him ever sever;
he
is my all, there's nothing between.
(Refrain)
3.
Nothing between, like pride or station;
self
or friends shall not intervene;
though
it may cost me much tribulation,
I am
resolved, there's nothing between.
(Refrain)
4.
Nothing between, e'en many hard trials,
though
the whole world against me convene;
watching
with prayer and much self denial,
I'll
triumph at last, there's nothing between.
(Refrain)
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