SPELUNKING
How many here are familiar with the practice of exploring caves or spelunking? How many of you have ever gone spelunking? How many enjoy just saying the word spelunking? It’s like the sound water makes when it drops in a bucket… spelunking. It’s a fun word! And it’s an even more fun activity. Because exploring a cave is like exploring a whole other world. And the wonderful thing about living in America is there are so many great caves you can explore – without any experience or expertise: Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Ruby Falls in Tennessee, and Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs. There are great caves all over the place! And each has its own unique natural beauty.
Exploring caves like these is a lot of fun, but sometimes you want something a little more challenging, a little more off the beaten path, maybe a little more risky. Now, climbing into a dark, relatively unexplored hole might not be your idea of a good time. And you might be wondering why anyone would do this. Which is OK! In fact, just yesterday I was telling Bill about the time I went bungee jumping at “the bridge to nowhere” outside of L.A. and he asked me, “Why?!” and I suddenly realized that most sane people do things for reasons, a philosophy that honestly hasn’t always informed my behavior.
But for me, exploring the unknown is the reason, and early in our marriage I shared with Marcia how I had always wanted to go cave diving, and so she surprised me on my 22nd birthday with an overnight trip to a relatively unknown cave system with a group of like-minded students from UNI. I know what you’re thinking, this sounds like the set-up to a horror movie. Well, we arrived at the cave early on a Saturday morning and began exploring. This particular cave system was one with plenty of twists and turns, and forks, and even drop offs, and supposedly not all of the different tunnels had been explored. As we descended, we were greeted with beautiful, natural galleries and halls connected with tunnels of all different shapes and sizes. And at one point, we decided to go down a particularly narrow tunnel which kept getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, to the point where we were basically forced to army crawl at certain places to make it through.
Now keep in mind, I was about 50 lbs. lighter than I am know. But at one point the tunnel made what I can only describe as two L’s facing opposite ways, but with their short end meeting, like a Z with its crossbar straightened out so that it’s perpendicular to the top and bottom, like this [motions]. It basically did that, and if you know anything about human anatomy, our bodies aren’t used to bending that way. Well, I was in the middle of a line of about 8 people, and the first 4 went through fine, so when it was my term, do you know what happened? I got stuck! With my head and arms sort of twisted to the side and hanging down, I couldn’t move forward or back, and we were what felt like a mile into this thing. How would anyone be able to get me out if I needed to be rescued? I had never felt claustrophobic before, but I certainly felt it then and I even feel it a little now just thinking about it! Well with enough freaked-out perspiration and wrangling we were finally able to unwedge me and get me through… only to realize we were going to have to figure out how to get me back out the other way again!
WHAT IS TRULY GOOD
I was crammed in a tight space, and it would have certainly helped if I had prepared for the trip by giving something up that was dear to me ahead of time – the comfort of delicious food. And it’s giving up that which brings us comfort, what we may even think we need, that our passage is really about this morning.
It begins with vv. 17-18 where we read, “As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’”(1)
We don’t really know where Jesus was going or even the exact sequence of events that led up to this conversation. It may have been early or late in Jesus’ ministry, but what we do know is that this man seems desperate. He sees Jesus from a distance, immediately recognizes him as the Rabbi whose powerful teaching and miracles has brought crowds from miles around and he drops to his feet. We don’t even really know this man’s motives. It may be that he wanted to follow Jesus as a disciple, or that he truly desired to learn the secret to eternal life, or… as we are about to see, he may have wanted confirmation that he already was righteous, that there was nothing he needed to change. It may just be that he wanted to be vindicated for the way of life he had already chosen.
But it v. 18, as is often the case, Jesus gives a rather surprising answer doesn’t he? He doesn’t directly answer the question at first. He asks the man, “Why do you call me good? No one is goo but God alone.” This could be mistaken for a rebuke, couldn’t it? But Jesus isn’t correcting the man for calling Him “Good Teacher” and He’s not even really denying His own divinity – as is sometimes claimed. Instead, He is hinting to His true identity by suggesting that this man has inadvertently made a prophetic statement.
Ultimately, only the One who is good can have the secret to eternal life; because only the One who is good can be free from the effects of sin which brings frailty and death. All of our imperfections and infirmities, the dimming of our senses, the limited bandwidth of our minds, and all those little defects – both those we are born with and those which seem to slowly build as we age – are caused by entropy: the steady breakdown of the Cosmos and everything in it. One of the most fascinating developments in philosophy and cosmology of the past century is the realization of 2 things which Scripture itself confirms:
1) The universe is slowly running down. As it expands, it cools, and if left to its own devices it would cool down completely until there was no heat, no movement, no light, and no life (thankfully, the universe is not left to its own devices!)
2) We really don’t perceive the world around us the way it actually is. Our minds don’t “see” light or “hear” music; they process the signals manufactured by our senses. It’s true that light hits our eyeballs and sound vibrates the little hairs in our inner ears; but they can’t register all the light or all the sound. There’s a ton around us that we miss. What we “see” or “hear” is just the processing of electro-chemical signals in the brain.
But if the cosmos itself is subject to entropy, then so are our brains. And if our brains and the minds which are linked to them are subject to entropy and frailty, with only the dim perception of reality; then by our own power, we can never discover what is truly good, let alone perceive it in all its greatness, even if it were right in front of our faces.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It didn’t have to be this way. But because our first parents, created in God’s own image, freely chose to rebel against the Source of Light and Life and separate themselves from the fullness of His grace, they and all their descendants have inherited the natural consequence of that separation – the inevitable breakdown of body and mind and perception, and eventually death itself.
Because of the universal effects of the fall, no one is good apart from the grace of God, except for God Himself. Only God is good. Only God can teach what is good, because only God knows what is truly good. And only God can impart that goodness to others. This is why the rich man doesn’t really grasp what Jesus is saying, and as we are about to see, neither do his own disciples. By asking the rich man in v. 18, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” and then continuing to teach the man not only what is good, but what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus is saying that He is God! If He were not, then He should have followed v. 18 by just walking away and finding another line of work!
REAL OBEDIENCE
Instead, He continues the conversation with vv. 19-20, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”
Here, Jesus lists several of the 10 commandments, the heart of the Law of Moses and the Torah. But some are missing, aren’t they? If you will, take a moment and turn with me to Exo. 20:2-17,
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
In v. 19, Jesus lists all the relational commandments, the ones that deal with how we should treat one another. And instead of “You shall not covet,” He says, “You shall not defraud,” because cheating others out of what they have naturally comes from greedily desiring what they own.
I don’t think this is an accident – because I believe everything Jesus does in the Gospel is intentional – and I believe it is the key to what happens next. Jesus intentionally leaves out the 4 commandments dealing with honoring God (You shall have no other Gods before Him, you shall not make idols, you shall not take the name of the Lord in vain, and remember the Sabbath) because the rich man has already demonstrated his failure to recognize God in the flesh before him. And if the man fails to recognize God standing before him, how can he be expected to uphold the commandments describing how to honor God?
Still, Jesus sees the potential for discipleship in this man’s heart. We read in v. 21-22, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money[a] to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
Jesus sees in him the desire to do what is right and good, and just like with the other disciples, Jesus chooses him not based on who he is, but on who he can be if he is willing to give up all that he has and follow Jesus. So what does the man do? Unlike the disciples, he goes “away grieving, for he had many possessions.” We don’t know how many, because the idea of wealth is pretty relative and a person can be as jealously possessive of a few possessions as easily as many.
But no matter how rich he was, one thing is clear: he was shocked and grieving because he had failed to realize who Jesus was. Or, if he did realize it, he suppressed the truth within himself because he wasn’t willing to obey the greatest commandment of all. The commandment every observant Jewish boy or girl is taught before they can even read or write. The commandment preserved in the ancient prayer in the Shema, recorded in Deu. 6:4-5, expanded upon in the first 4 of the 10 commandments, and called by Jesus the fist of two great commandments: “Hear O Israel; the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
If the man really loved God this way, in obedience to the Torah he claimed to have obeyed since his youth, then he would not have hesitated for a moment to do what Jesus said, because it was God Himself who beckoned, who desired his friendship and his loyalty, who sought not only to tell him what is good, but to show it in the flesh by living and dying and rising again for him. The man either failed to see this or chose not to, because his wealth, and the security he found in it, were too precious to him. Jesus didn’t ask him if he had obeyed the first four of the ten commandments because he already knew the answer. Yet He loved the man enough to extend the invitation anyway, to present him with an opportunity for repentance, and to experience the richness of eternal life itself; a richness that puts all other riches to shame.
THE EYE OF A NEEDLE
Jesus then turns and shocks his own disciples almost as much as he had just shocked the rich man. In vv. 23-25 we read, “Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’”
These words should be as shocking to us today as to the disciples back then. Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with earning wealth or being financially rich in itself. John Wesley himself is famous for preaching, “Gain all you can… earn all you can… give all you can,”(2) and in Eccl. 5:19, we read, “Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil—this is the gift of God.” But whatever money we earn or gain isn’t really hours. We are entrusted with its care as stewards for a short season of life. But it belongs to God, and if we forget it, death will soon remind us because we can’t take it with us.
I’ve mentioned in past sermons that in the ancient world, wealth was seen as a “zero-sum game.” That means that if one person got rich, it was usually off the back of others. Jesus doesn’t tell the rich man to give up his wealth because money is bad; he’s telling him to give up the exploitative lifestyle which places his own wants above the needs of others. As Wesley also said in the same sermon, “None can gain by swallowing up his neighbor’s substance, without gaining the damnation of hell.”(3)
And today, who is more materially wealthy than those of us in the developed world? We certainly do have poor people in the U.S., but most of us have a roof over our heads and plenty of food to eat while we enjoy all the benefits of technology which makes a lot of the hard labor we have to do easier. Now, I’m sure we can all think of someone a heck of a lot richer than we are: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. But we live in a world where according to Gallop’s 2019 Basic Needs Vulnerability Index, 1 in 7 adults or 750 million globally are unable to either afford food or shelter, or do both, and have no safety net: no family or friends to help.(4) About 785 million don’t have access to clean water, and 1 in 3, or over 2 billion people, don’t have access to a toilet or a sanitary way to get rid of human waste.(5)
We live in a world of extreme disparities between rich and poor, and what many of us fail to see – like the rich man who approached Jesus – is that material wealth all too often breeds its own kind of spiritual poverty, its own spiritual sickness. The luster of gold blinds us to the greater riches Christ offers to those willing to “go, sell what [they] own… give the money to the poor…” and follow Him. But doing this isn’t just about material wealth. It’s about everything we find safety and security in, that we fear to lose more than we love God. Let me repeat that: doing this isn’t just about material wealth. It’s about everything we find safety and security in, that we fear to lose more than we love God.
That might mean material wealth. But it might also be our comfortable social circle. It might be our job. Or our reputation. Or our hobbies, the things we love to spend time on. Or even our families. It’s natural to want what’s best for our kids and those closest to us, and like money, family in itself certainly isn’t bad – it’s a gift and blessing from God! But I’ve found people sometimes approach their commitment to Christ and His mission lived out in the life of the church as a sort of economic transaction. If we view the body of Christ as a product to be consumed, which exists to primarily serve ourselves or our families first, and only after that, others (if there is anything left); then we will eventually find ourselves being asked to give up more than we are willing to.
This is partly why I think “church hopping” from one congregation to the next is so common in American Evangelicalism. All too often, we love the truth of free grace which brings salvation, but not the truth of costly obedience which comes with discipleship. And so we swallow only half the truth, wondering why – as we hop from church to church – we are eventually let hungry and malnourished.
Whatever it is that keeps us from loving God with “all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might” by consecrating or committing ourselves completely to following Christ wherever He leads; is also what threatens to keep us from entering the kingdom of God, let alone experience the full richness of its beauty. This is why Jesus tells his disciples that it’s “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
But how could we possibly give it all up, if need be, to follow Jesus? The disciples ask as much in vv. 26-27 where we read, “They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’”
We should be just as dismayed as the rich man and the disciples. But Jesus comforts them, and if the rich man had stayed long enough, he too would have been comforted by the words “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” All things are possible! Only by trusting in God’s grace and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide our steps can we possibly hope to enter God’s kingdom. But that grace is freely available to all who put their trust in Him. That’s good news! It means it’s not up to us to muster the strength needed, because there is no way we would be able to without God’s help. But we serve a powerful God who brings life to the dead and strength to the frail, and that includes all of us.
THE HOPE
In the remaining verses, Peter, never one to stay silent – even when he probably should, pipes up in v. 28. Here we read, “Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’”
Jesus encourages Peter and the other disciples by telling them there is nothing they have given up that will not be restored one hundred-fold. The “age to come” won’t be defined by the scarcity, the frailty, the selfishness, and the fear of loss we experience today. Not only will all things be restored and made new, but we will be restored and made new. But with that restoration comes a reversal, an upheaval of the old order of things, the very order which fueled the cycle of scarcity and sin in the first place. And many who took comfort in their deeds, their wealth, or their reputation, will find themselves saved by the skin of their teeth, by God’s grace alone, if they are saved at all.
As Paul writes in 1 Co. 3:12-15, “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.”
The question at the end of the day is this, what will you do? Will you answer the call of the disciple, and leave everything behind to follow Jesus? Are you willing to give up everything you’ve taken comfort in, in the hope that the promise of the kingdom is so much greater than anything the world offers than any comfort we can gain by our own power? Or will you be like the rich man, who hoped to be vindicated in the knowledge that he was “good enough” and wound up being dismayed because he realized the cost – and the hope – of discipleship was more than he could bear?
FOOTNOTES
(1) New Revised Standard Version (Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989). All Scripture quotes NRSV unless otherwise noted.
(2) Wesley, John. “Sermon 50: The Use of Money,” found in The Wesley Study Bible, NRSV. Ed. by Joel B. Green. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 1223.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Esipova, Neli. “750 Million Struggling to Meet Basic Needs With No Safety Net,” on Gallup News. Web. Written June 16, 2020.
(5) “The Water Crisis,” on Water.org. Web. Retrieved Oct. 09, 2021.
First delivered Oct. 10, 2021 at Cortez Church of the Nazarene, Cortez, CO.
