The Emptiness of Success

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton

October 11, 2009

Read: Job 23:1-9, 16-17 and Mark 10:17-31

Today’s readings are centered on our relationship with our Creator God. We hear from Job in his distress because he cannot sense the presence of God. The psalm is that one we also hear in Lent, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. Again the sense of hidden, absent God. In our gospel reading from Mark we hear how difficult it is for us to enter the kingdom of God. There is an example of a man who comes to Jesus seeking eternal life, but he is asked to give up his possessions and he turns away shocked and grieving.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the gospel story. First of all, we need to understand that at the time Jesus spoke these words, the idea was that if you lived an obedient life, God would reward you, or bless you, with material possessions, with wealth. A sign of wealth, was a sign of a well lived life. So think about the shock that would be very real, if everything you ever learned about how to live, was turned upside down.

I want to take us back to Job for a minute, because the point of the Job story (I invite you to read the entire book of Job – it’s not that long) is to show that things happen in life that are beyond our control. In other words, “crap happens”, regardless of how carefully we have tried to live according to the commandments.

So, back to our wealthy man and Jesus. Here was a man who had found the emptiness of success. Yes, I said the emptiness of success. He had the very things that most of us think will bring us happiness. Most of us yearn all our lives for the very things this man enjoyed. First of all, he had a lot of money. That one gets most all of us. Our idle dreams of being rich and famous fuel the spate of lotteries springing up in almost every state of the union. We sit around trying to figure out how we would spend our millions if we could just win the lottery.

But here is a man who had all that, and his life was still empty. How many times is that story repeated? We could point to countless individuals like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, who had all the money imaginable, but were miserable all the same.

This young man also knows success in religious circles. He proves that even obedience to the law leaves life empty and meaningless. He has kept all the commandments from his youth, but he still has not found eternal life.

Most of us think that wealth and obedience will bring us happiness because we don't have either one. But here is a man with both, and he has found the emptiness of such efforts. He is still searching, so he comes to Jesus looking for answers and for real meaning in life.

That's when Mark gives us a touching picture of Jesus, who really understands this man. "Jesus, looking at him, loved him."

Perhaps, the opposite of rich is not poor. The opposite of rich is free. He was not free to take the hand of Jesus because his hand was too full of his things and his love of things. He might as well have had a ball and chain around his leg. He was not free to follow Jesus.

In fact, the meaning of "rich" may have less to do with how much money someone has as it does with what our attitude is about the money that we have. Some people have a lot of money but they are not enslaved by it; others have very little but they cling to it with desperation.

I read in a book some time ago something about the art of trapping monkeys in India. One technique is to drill a hole in a coconut and place rice in the coconut. A monkey will come along and stick a paw into the coconut, grab a fistful of rice, and then be unable to pull its paw back from the coconut. He is trapped by his greed. All he would have to do is turn loose of the rice, his hand would be free, and he could draw it out. The problem is that he places greater value on the rice that he is holding than he does on his freedom (Raymond Bailey, "Do You Want To Be Healed," Best Sermons 3, Harper & Row, p. 6).

And Jesus uses the example of a camel going through the eye of a needle. Why is it so hard for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? Think of the image of a camel. Perhaps, because the hump gets stuck. The hump is where all the extra stuff is stored, the fatty tissue that makes the camel self-sufficient enough to make it on its own through the arid places. The young man's money was his hump, it was what he relied on to get him through his own desert, and once it was gone he would have to rely on God instead and he would be streamlined enough to slide right through the eye, with no hump to hang up on the way.

Jesus’ point is that we need to give up whatever it is that keeps us from a closer relationship to God. We need to let go and rely on God, trust in God, instead of in our own strength. And, it’s not an easy thing to do. As Jesus says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible”.

A dear friend of mine recently took a camping trip, something he does regularly. But on this particular trip he shares a profound and deeply moving experience, he writes:

“My canoe trip north this year was wet and cold. It rained hard for the first two days, and then the temperature dropped and hovered around freezing. It began to snow on the evening of the third day. As I lay in my tent that night with waves crashing on the beach only thirty feet away, the howling wind was so loud that I couldn’t hear the waves. The cloud cover alternated between grey and dark grey. Much of the trip could be described as damp, cold, alone, discouraged.

The trip also had its profound, beautiful moments, including one I’d like to share. After miles of paddling, interspersed with muddy, hilly portages, I sat down beside a large lake for an hour or so and watched big whitecaps race across the lake toward me. In order to reach the campsite I had in mind, I would have had to paddle a bay about three quarters of a mile across. That was not feasible. As far as I could tell, I was the only person on that fairly remote lake. The waves crashing on the shore, the dark cloudy sky and the wild fury of nature combined to create a surreal scene in which my insignificance was contrasted with the vast power and dark beauty of the unfolding weather.

Years ago, a guide said to me that wilderness trips are a great equalizer. The strong, the confident, get cut down to size. The forces of nature are infinitely more powerful than the strongest among us. If you don’t respect them, adapt to them, they can destroy you. At the same time, the weak build strength on these trips. They discover inner strength, and they discover that the ability to think things through, to maintain perspective, is more important than physical strength”. (from Heron Dance website – Rod MacIver’s October 9, 2009 Pause for Beauty)

My friend came through his camping trip with a new insight. He emerged from the ordeal a slightly different man. Jesus says, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Upside down is a theme. Remember Job and his suffering. Job emerged from his ordeal transformed – read the book. There is no indication that he ever discovered the reason for his affliction, yet he seems satisfied. He had been treated insensitively by his visitors, yet without a word he intercedes for them in their need. Here is a man who has risen above egocentric inclinations. He understood his relationship with his Creator God.

May God help us to remember Job as we enter our own times of orientation, disorientation, reorientations when the traditional wisdom just doesn’t work. Doesn’t make sense. And may we also, like Job, draw from a deep place in our soul, when we don’t have all the answers and God is seemingly hidden, and have the courage to say, “yet shall I trust him.” Jesus, looking at us, loves us. Amen.

Running Through a Field of Thorns - Marriage and Divorce

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton

October 4, 2009

Read: Mark 10:2-16

Wow! Preaching about divorce and marriage is like running through a field of thorns, as my colleague Charles says. Why? Because any congregation today is likely to contain people who are married, people who are divorced, people who are divorced and remarried, people who may get divorced at some future time, people who have been treated shabbily by churches due to their marital difficulties, people whose lives and families and friends have been hurt by the pain of divorce. It's everybody's issue, indirectly or directly. And so, preaching about it looks like running through a field of thorns, and listening to a sermon on marriage and divorce can, no doubt, seem the same way: one misstep and we just add to the hurting. A divorce may be necessary, I can especially think of abusive relationships, but it's never a triumph. It's always made of heartbreak. Just ask anybody who's lived through one.

So let’s journey together carefully into the thorny field, in the hope that amidst the briars we can find together the good news of God in Christ, for a world that's broken and in pain.

The discussion gets started because some of the Pharisees are out to get Jesus. They want to trap him in his words, and so destroy his credibility. The issue they raise is a controversial one at that time, in first-century Palestine: whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Authorities differ on this question. Some allow divorce only in instances of adultery. Others allow divorce for the slightest of reasons. But note how the issue is framed: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? No consideration is given to the possibility of a wife divorcing her husband. That is out of the question. Here, in first century Palestine, men have all the power.

Jesus knows this question is not an honest inquiry. He knows the Pharisees are not interested in learning his opinion, but in testing him, in defeating him. He responds to the question with a question: What did Moses command you? In other words, how does the Law of Moses read, the law you hold in such high regard?

Of course, Jesus knows the answer, and so does everyone within hearing distance. It's what we call today a no-brainer. And so the Pharisees shoot back the correct reference: Moses allows a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

The reference here is to Deuteronomy, chapter 24. It's arguable, to say the least, that Moses is giving permission to divorce. What he does instead is to recognize that divorce happens and to set forth norms regarding certain types of remarriage. Like the canon law of the Episcopal Church, Moses acknowledges that divorce happens here in this world outside the Garden of Eden.

Jesus pushes behind Deut 24 to Gen.1-2, Jesus pushes behind the stipulation of the law to the story of Creation, behind the legality of divorce to the intent of marriage.

It is as though he thumps a finger against the chest of each of those Pharisees and says: Don't you get it? Your hearts are hard! If human hearts were not hard, then marriages would always work, and Moses wouldn't have written about what happens when they don't!

Jesus addresses each one of us and says the same thing. Don't you get it? Your hearts are hard! But please note this, and note it well. He's not just challenging the divorced among us. He's challenging every last one of us, even if we have been married happily for six decades. The divorced are not to be regarded as some pariah class different from the rest of us. The problem of the hard heart is not limited to divorced people, but is common to us all. In some it becomes manifest in a marital break-up. In others it shows itself in a marriage that remains together but is lifeless. In still others hardness of heart appears in a failure to forgive our friends, in a judgmental spirit toward our children or parents, or any of the other forms of sin in which we humans become trapped. The divorced are not worse and not better than the rest. We all find ourselves in the same place: outside the gates of Eden.

But then Jesus stops talking about hard hearts. Instead, he takes us by both hands and looks at us with an expression of compassion, hope, and remembrance. He calls us back to a time before the invention of power games, whether it’s the sexism of his own period when men called the shots about marriage and divorce, or today's equal-opportunity destructiveness where either partner can damage the other. Jesus, looking at us with that expression of compassion, hope, and remembrance, calls us back to a time before time, back to when our home was the garden, back to the intention of God at creation. God made them male and female. Delightfully different. Wonderfully equal. Intended to be one flesh. No hardness of heart. No games, no secrets, but naked and unashamed.

(Rev. Charles Hoffacker)

The heart of Jesus’ message is about relationships – and Jesus reminds us of the ideal that we can all strive for in our marriages and in all of our relationships.

The late newspaper columnist Lewis Grizzard wrote articles filled with offbeat, southern humor. But underneath the laughter, there was a sadness—a life of personal suffering and loss. Some of Grizzard’s pain came from his troubled relationship with his alcoholic father, who had abandoned the family when Lewis was a boy. Later in life, Lewis reconciled with his father.

As the old man lay in his final illness, Lewis repeatedly pleaded with him. “What’s wrong, Daddy? Why can’t you stay sober? What can be so bad that you can’t talk about it?”

His father refused to answer. Even when Lewis assured him that it didn’t matter what it was, that he loved him whatever was the awful truth, his father would only sob and weep and sputter, “I’ve made a bad mistake.”

Lewis never learned what his father so secretly and deeply regretted. “But,” he wrote, “it doesn’t matter. Whatever his sin, whatever his secret, I loved him and love him still.”

And that’s what Jesus does. He loves us with a love stronger than sin, a love that is there no matter what. In fact, it’s the love of Jesus that makes our loving possible. In Christ, by the power of his love and forgiveness, we can live in the kind of relationship that God desires for us: relationships that are lasting, life-giving, and loving!

It’s the love of God that melts the hardness in our heart and produces great relationships.

On the night He was betrayed Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it, he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant.” As Christians we are called to a table that celebrates the equal creation of all God’s people. We are called to drink deeply from the cup of forgiveness for the healing of all our relationships. In Christ we become one body and it is in the love of Christ that all love is sustained. Amen.