28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Mark 10:17-30
AIM: To help the hearers trust in God and in him alone.
An African priest describes how hunters catch monkeys in his country. They slice a coconut in two and hollow it out. In one half of the shell they cut a hole just big enough for a monkey=s hand to pass through; in the other they place an orange. Then they tie the two halves together, hang the coconut from a tree, and retire to the bush to wait. Sooner or later a monkey swings by, smells the orange inside the coconut, and slips his hand through the hole trying to extract the delicacy. Naturally he fails. While the monkey is struggling with the orange, the hunters approach and capture the animal by throwing a net over it. As long as the monkey keeps its fist wrapped around the orange, the monkey is trapped. The animal is not smart enough to realize that he cannot have both the orange and his freedom. He could save himself simply by letting go of the orange. The animal is trapped by his own greed.
The monkey is not too different from the rich young man in the gospel reading we have just heard. It is tempting to dismiss the story on the ground that we are different: we=re not rich. Even if that is true, this young man with Amany possessions@ closely resembles us in another way. He takes his religion seriously and is faithful to his religious duties. If he lived today, he would be a devout churchgoer who since childhood has made a sincere and generous effort to keep all the precepts of his religion. When Jesus reminds him of God=s commandments, he responds: AAll of these I have observed from my youth.@ Which one of us could say that? We=re talking serious moral effort here.
How devastated the young man must have been, therefore, to hear Jesus tell him he is still Alacking in one thing.@ When he heard what that was, he was crushed. >Sell everything?= we can imagine him asking in shocked disbelief. >You=ve got to be kidding!= No wonder that Ahis face fell,@ and that Ahe went away sad,@ as Mark tells us. Wouldn=t you? After all, enough is enough.
Jesus disciples were equally shocked. Their religion taught them that wealth was a sign of God=s favor. And now Jesus has said that riches exclude people from God=s kingdom. It is any surprise, therefore, that the disciples are Aexceedingly astonished,@ as Mark tell us, and ask each other: AThen who can be saved?@ The answer to their question is clear. If entrance into God=s kingdom is reserved for those who, in addition to keeping all the commandments, also give away all possessions, then no one is in heaven, not even the Blessed Mother herself! She might make it on the basis of keeping the commandments. Yet she presumably had a house and a few possessions, however modest. So she would still be excluded on that score. Jesus confirms the impossibility of getting to heaven by our own efforts when he announces flatly: AFor human beings it is impossible@ B only to add at once: Abut not for God. All things are possible for God.@
What Jesus is telling us could be paraphrased as follows. >If you think you can get to heaven by your own efforts, forget it. You cannot. That is impossible. Even keeping all the commandments won=t get you in, supposing you had kept them all B which you haven=t. Heaven is not the result of anything you do or ever can do. Heaven is the result of what God does, for you. Getting into heaven is a miracle, a miracle of grace. Heaven is God=s free gift.=
Jesus did not tell the young man with many possessions to sell everything because riches are evil. Rightly used, wealth is good. Riches become a danger for us, however, when we hang on to them too tightly B like the monkey with his hand keeping tight hold of the orange in the coconut, even when he sees the hunters approaching. And riches are also a danger to us whenever they give us a false sense of security. Money can do this, but other things as well. Jesus mentions some of them toward the end of our gospel reading: family, parents, children, property. Even our good works can give us a false sense of security when they lead us to suppose that they give us a kind of claim on God which God is bound to honor. Not all the prayers and virtues and sacrifices in the world give us a claim on God. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim.
Jesus summons us, as he summoned the rich young man in today=s gospel, to trust in God and in him alone. He wants us to see that true discipleship goes beyond keeping a set of moral rules and affirming the truths we find in the creed and catechism. The demands Jesus makes on us are impossible. We need to get that straight from the start. They are impossible, that is, for everyone except God. AAll things are possible for God,@ Jesus tells us. That sentence from today=s gospel runs like a golden thread through the whole of Holy Scripture. It was God=s message to Abraham, when he was unable to believe that he could father a child in his old age, and his childless wife Sarah laughed at the very idea. AIs anything too marvelous for the Lord to do?@ God=s angel asked Abraham [Gen. 18:14]. It was God=s message to Mary, when she questioned how she could be the mother of God=s Son: ANothing is impossible with God,@ the angel told her [Luke 1:37]. The Lord is giving the same reassurance to each one of us today.
When life seems too much for you; when you are weighed down by anxiety, illness, injustice, the claims of others, or the nagging sense of your own inadequacy; when God=s demands on you seem too great B whenever, in short, you come up against the impossible; then you are up against God. He is the God of the impossible. In every impossible situation, in every trial that is too hard for you to bear, his divine Son and your best friend is saying to you, with tender love:
AFor you it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.@