Following
Jesus
Matthew 19:16-22
November 5,
2006
16-22 Then
someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have
eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask
me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter
into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?”
And Jesus said, “You
shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You
shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; also, You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him,
“I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” Jesus
said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell
your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When the young man heard
this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
As young boys, we played
army in the woods and in the swamp that were near our neighborhood. We
would dress up in our army outfits and go off to fight the bad guys. We
would ramble through those woods and that swamp until dark or until one of
our parents came for us. It was a game to us. It was all fun. We were
copying those heroes that we had read about in school. We were the heroes
that we saw at the Saturday afternoon matinee at The Center Theater.
I do not think we knew what it meant
to put on those make believe uniforms and play like a soldier. We were
doing it so that we could imitate those that had become our heroes.
The Gospel writers are informing the
readers that Jesus was always teaching about
discipleship. He also was teaching the people how they were to live their
lives in response to the creating and redeeming God.
Jesus of Nazareth offered to all who would
hear him a pathway to an eternal relationship with God.
Right before our text today is the
passage where Jesus was blessing the little
children. The disciples became impatient and began to scold those who were
bringing the children to Jesus. Maybe it was
dinnertime or maybe they were on a schedule, we really do not know why
they attempted to keep the children from Jesus.
We do know that
Jesus looked at them and said:
“Let the little children come to me, and do not
stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”
Matthew the evangelist finished that text by informing the reader
that Jesus laid his hands on the children and
blessed them and then got up and moved forward so that he could continue
to teach.
In the Matthew text for today, we discover a person
wanting to push the issue of discipleship a little further. Maybe the
person saw Jesus blessing the children and
then scolding the disciples for trying to keep the children away from him.
The person saw something that made him question if he was on the right
pathway in his attempt to follow God.
Something had challenged his comfort zone. Maybe that challenge made him
uncomfortable and that is good because it caused him to seek out
Jesus and ask this question: “Teacher, what
good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
At this point the debate was on for the person.
Jesus responded to the question with a
question. He asked: “Why do you ask me about what
is good?” That is an excellent way to debate a person and to
eventually arrive at the correct answer. Jesus
did not provide an immediate answer to the person. His question challenged
the person to examine his “religious comfort zone.” It made the person
look at him self and to start conducting a spiritual inventory of his
life.
Immediately as the person was examining his own
spiritual walk, Jesus followed up his
question with these words: “There is only one who
is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
It appears
that the person in the text was completely caught off guard by
Jesus’ question and statement! It appears
that the person was not sure what commandments Jesus
was informing him about and which ones he was to keep. Probably in a very
awkward way, the person then asked “Which ones?” Which ones! Everyone had
been taught the commandments since they were small children. It had been
incorporated into their lives at a very early age. They all knew that the
commandments were those ten that God had
given personally to Moses for God’s people.
In his moments of examination, the person asked “which
ones!" Jesus immediately responded to the
persons question with the obvious answer. Jesus
said: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit
adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor
your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Finally,
Matthew tells us a little something about the person who is talking with
Jesus. He informs us that it was a young man
who had done his best in life to keep the commandments that had been
handed down from generation to generation. He informs us by that statement
that this young man was a person of faith who was trying to be faithful to
the faith yet there was something stirring in his heart or soul that was
informing him that there was emptiness in his spiritual life. He was
seeking to fill that void or that emptiness when he approached Jesus. The
young man even informed Jesus that he had
kept those commandments all of his life. Wow, what a statement! How many
of us today could make such a statement. Do not forget about the apple
that you or I might have borrowed from our neighbor’s tree without
asking!
Jesus heard the young man’s honest response
to keeping the commandments. There is no doubt in my mind that
Jesus felt great love and compassion toward
that young man that day. Jesus also realized
that there was something that was absent in his life. He offered that
young man the opportunity to remove that void and to be filled completely
by the awesome power of our loving God.
Jesus said to him:
“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money
to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
Brothers and
sisters, discipleship is not about a tenth or a little above a tenth. It
is about 100 percent. Jesus did not ask the
young man to go and liquidate a tenth of his assets. He instructed him to
go sell all of the possessions that he owned and then give it all away to
the poor. He immediately followed those instructions up with these words “Then
Come follow me!”
The calling from
Christ is a complete calling where one
surrenders his or her all to the power of Jesus
of Nazareth. It is a calling that invites us and directs us to leave those
comfort zones of our and to become true Disciples of
Christ. It is not a calling to play at being a disciple of
Jesus as we boys did when we played a soldier
at war. It is a calling to be a faithful disciple of
Jesus Christi daily who is willing and
ready to give his or her all to the mission and ministry of
Christ.
For centuries,
the debate has gone on about tithing. Jesus takes that debate to a higher
plain. Jesus invited and invites those who
would truly be his disciple to give one hundred percent of themselves and
of their possessions to His ministry.
Marquis de Lafayette
was a French general and politician who joined the American Revolution and
became a friend of George Washington. An influential man in the U.S. and
France, Lafayette was also a man of compassion. The harvest of 1782 was a
poor one, but the manager of his estate had filled his barns with wheat.
"The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat,” said his manager. "This
is the time to sell." Lafayette thought about the hungry peasants in the
villages and replied, "No, this is the time to give."
Real love is often
measured by our willingness to let go of what we possess. Sometimes the
thing we grip most tightly in our hands is the very thing
God asks us to hand over to Him. That is what
Jesus was doing that day as he talked with
the young man. Jesus knew the young man was a
good man and that he kept the commandments. He also knew that there was
something else in that young man’s life that had control of his heart and
souls and that was his material wealth.
Jesus knew that in order for that young man
to know God’s saving love in the truest form
that the man was going to have to be willing to give it all up so that
God could be the center of his universe
instead of his wealth.
What does this
story say to you and me today? First, it challenges our comfort zones if
we really listen to the words of Christ. It
challenges us to take time and to look inwardly and discover if we are
really being faithful to Christ. Second, It
challenges us to look at our lives and to discover those things that keep
us from entering into a daily walk with our creating and redeeming
God. It invites us to discover those
possessions that possess us and then turn those things over to the mission
and ministry of Jesus Christ.
It challenges us to take the gifts and graces that God
has given to us and grow God’s kingdom by
witnessing to others about God’s love as
revealed through Christ.
It challenges us to give
everything to God!
The young man’s response
to Jesus was to walk away from Jesus. Matthew
informs us that the young man walked away from Jesus
with great grief upon his heart and soul. What caused him that grief! It
was the possessions that owned him that he could not let go of as Jesus
invited him to come and follow him.
Next week is celebration Sunday at
Aldersgate. It is a time when all of us will make our financial
commitments to the ministry of Jesus
Christ through Aldersgate Church. I am
inviting all of us, as we celebrate life at His table this morning and as
we go throughout the week to earnestly pray and seek
God’s guidance as we give back to God
what is God’s for God
ministry.
In the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
Amen
