The Grief of a Man who Couldn’t Change

Mark 10: 17-27

This story is found in three of the gospels with slight variation. We know it well. We know the end of it well. It’s the story where Jesus makes it abundantly clear that wealth and riches are inherently antagonistic to the life of the kingdom of God. We know it so well that we stop listening fairly early on, cause we’re so busy working out how to defend ourselves against Jesus final words.

So today I want to invite you to park the elephant in the room. And try and just listen for the nuances of the story that precedes the scary bit.

As I said, it’s a story is told in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). So it’s a really important story for the early Christians.

How much can you remember – listening test:

Who is the main character, apart from Jesus? “A person” comes to Jesus (only Luke tells us the person is a ruler, in Matthew and Mark its a young person – so it often is told as the story of the rich young ruler)…

How does he come (imagine scene)? … he comes running up and kneels (only in Mark)

What is his question? What may I do to inherit eternal life? Literally, what may I do in order that I may inherit the life of the age? (zoen aionion)

He asks Jesus a question about inheritance. As we all know, even now wealth is primarily inherited. The rich, for the most part (research tells us), are wealthy because of inheritance. They draw from the bank of mummy and daddy. So it makes sense that a ‘ruler’ excited about Jesus vision, Jesus’ teaching, might assume that the kingdom of God is something to be inherited. Inheritance is how the world works. He wants to be in on this thing.

To be a ruler is to live in a world light years away from the poverty and day to day struggle of Jesus’ galilean followers. To be a ruler is to be entrenched in a system of inherited power. You get it from your daddy and you and your daddy get it because ultimately Caesar gives it to you in exchange for your loyalty. Not only do you not really have to work, you have slaves to look after your every need.

And yet this young man, we are told had caught a glimpse of another world, of a God who did not rule as Caesar ruled. We are told that even this strange visitor from the heights of roman power came down to learn Jesus teaching about the rule of God. He’s a convert. He has glimpsed the world differently. And now he’s so enthusiastic about these new ideas that he comes running and kneels down. It reminds me of a fan meeting a rockstar.

In his answer Jesus starts to list for him the code of Jewish behaviour that we call the 10 Commandments (10 words). The way of life, summarised in the 10 Words is how you enter the kingdom of God. It’s not just something you inherit. It’s a form of life you live.

But the young man immediately claims to have kept the lot, since he was a kid. He claims to qualify for the kingdom of God. Should we take his claim at face value? A lot of preachers do. I’m inclined to think he was used to trying to impress those he looked up to. This was for him like a job interview. Of course he had kept all the laws, that’s what he has to say.

Am I cynical? We read “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”

Was Jesus cynical? Did he love him because he had kept all the commandments? Or did he love him in spite of his desperate need to impress? Or did he love him for a thousand reasons (including his desperate situation that we are about to discover) that all came back to chanelling a God who loves deeply and without inhibition?

Whatever the reason … Jesus’ love expresses itself directly in a command. To the 10 commandments he add another.

He says, You lack one thing… the one thing that matters.

Jesus does not say, I love you therefore you have a free pass to the kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t say, you are saved not by works but by grace (like Luther or Calvin might). These things are not opposites for Jesus.

Jesus loves says to him, the 10 words are all good but there’s more. And there’s something you need to do, you need to be free of the one thing that is stopping you participate in the life of the age to come.

What was Jesus command?

“Go, sell whatever you possess and give to the destitute and you shall have a treasury in the heavens, and come follow me.”

Who remembers how the young ruler responds?

And the young ruler goes away in grief and sorrow. It’s fascinating. The gospel writers paint a rich psychological picture of a person from the wealthy elite. And what we see through the cracks of his self-confidence here is grief. Not grief for his wealth that he is going to give away. He knows immediately, it seems, that he is not going to do it.

So what is he sad about? What is he grieving? …. I think its grief for his idealism. He grieves for the dream that he thinks will cost him very little (it will be inheritance). He has had this vision. This new belief. He has been converted in his head. But he knows it will remain in his head.

The saddest thing is that he is sad about himself. The self he has become. Trapped.

He now knows there will be for him no alternative future outside that self, outside the security of Roman power. Maybe for a minute he imagined there might be some kind of way of combining his lifestyle as a rich and powerful Roman, and the way of the rabbi from Nazareth. Now he knows that there can be no such combination. Jesus has popped his bubble. He dreamed that he could be a Ruler by day and a Christian in his spare time (perhaps). And so he goes away in grief and returns to his own kingdom. He cannot follow Jesus. He will not follow Jesus.

Usually when we read this story we know the ending and we start to distance ourselves from him. He’s not the hero of the tale. What might it be like to see this man like Jesus did? Can we love him the anti-hero? Maybe there’s something of him in our lives and in our life story?

When I first started preparing to preach this text I was reading a book by Michael Pollan called “How to Change your Mind: the new science of psychedelics” – you know LSD and magic mushrooms. And my first thought was that maybe the Rich Young Ruler was someone with his mind in a rut. Maybe he needed some psychedelic chemicals to wake him up. I was going to call this sermon ‘The Grief of a Man who Couldn’t Change his Mind’  I was wrong. 

I was reminded of the writing of St Paul (Romans 12: 1ff).

Therefore I implore you brothers, by God’s mercies, to present your bodies as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God, your rational worship. And do not be configured to this age (rich man’s status quo), but be transformed by the renewal of the mind

The history of psychedelics is interesting though, if you allow me to digress briefly. So psychedelics refers to a group of non-addictive chemicals which, when you consume them in tiny quantities have an enormous impact on your consciousness. LSD was made in a lab in 1938 (Albert Hoffman) and psilicybins or magic mushrooms have been eaten by humans and other animals for centuries.

I was interested in how people describe how they ‘change your mind’ Apparently they give you an experience (a trip), in which things not only look different but feel different, in which you feel different. Typically it feels like the boundaries of your self are dissolving, your ego is dissipating and you are more connected to the world and others. Many people call them spiritual experiences because a more connected world feels like a meaningful world. And it’s meaningful in such a powerful way that you struggle to describe it to others. In religious terms it feels ‘ineffable’ – undescribable – like we say of God – and yet more real than ordinary experience. It’s common for people afterwards to describe this connected, ego-free world as an overwhelming experience of love.

When they brain scans on people in a psychedelic experience they noticed a sudden loss of activity and blood flow to a place in the frontal lobes of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN –  discovered in 2001) which kind of orchestrates how all the other parts of the brain connect. It’s like the brain version of what psychologists call the ego. It’s kind of like the conductor. But it doesn’t develop and function in children until later in their development. So psychedelics seem to put the conductor to sleep. But there is an increase in traffic between other parts of the brain that don’t usually communicate directly. Default Mode goes down… or we might say, ego steps aside. It’s like a reboot. Like having fresh and child-like eyes on the world.

Interestingly, there was a lot of research was done in the 50s and 60s after the creation of LSD about the potential benefits of psychelics. and in the late 60s it all got shut down by the US government after someone called Timothy Leary and his friends tried to spread the experience as far and as wide as they could. People had some bad trips. There was bad media. The drugs became illegal. The research got shut down. But part of that research was that there looked to be enormous benefits using these drugs as treatment for depression and anxiety and addiction. So although the research went underground for 30 years it got revived again and funded again in the 90s and now its the big new thing in science for the last 10 years. Fascinating, but to return to our text.

It’s hard, maybe impossible humanly speaking for a rich person to enter the life of the world to come… hard-wired as they might be for the life of the world now.

So I was thinking that maybe the rich young ruler needed a psychedelic experience to set him free from his addiction to power and wealth and comfort. And the thought remains, maybe it might, with the right support and help make a bit difference.

But last night it dawned on me that this is to miss the point. Not because such things are a bad idea. The real reason is that he had already changed his mind about the kingdom of God. He already believed. He already wanted to inherit it. He’d already had his conversion experience. In his head he believed, but not in his body or in his culture. And the kingdom of God is neither a set of beliefs or a series of amazing experiences, as helpful as these may be. The kingdom of God is a journey for which we must present our bodies, as St Paul says, as a living sacrifice.

It’s all very well for the ego to take a break in the privacy and safety of our personal experiences. But Jesus tells this ruler that his ego needs to take a break in the everyday history of his life. To enter the kingdom he needs to be vulnerable with the vulnerable.

Sell what you have and give it to the destitute.

Chemistry, and meditation techniques and conversion experiences are fine… but they can easily miss the point.

Faith is a way, a journey. Jesus final command is ‘follow me.’

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, says Paul. But he also says that this will ultimately happen as you present your body as a living sacrifice… we might add in the spirit of Jesus… the mental transformation that matters will ultimately happen as we abandon ourselves for a life of vulnerability shared with the vulnerable who cross our path every day.

Amen