Matthew 19:16-22
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 testify falsely; Honor your father and mother; also, 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, he went away grieving, for he had great wealth.
The rich young man was willing to follow Jesus – up to a point. And it didn’t take Jesus long to find that point. He admired Jesus but he refused to be a disciple.
I read an article a few years ago in the United Methodist Reporter by Methodist minister Wes Magruder of the North Texas Conference. He wrote of a graduating high school student of his congregation:
She was one of the brightest and best in my youth group. Star athlete. Straight A student. Graduating class leader. She had a solid relationship with God and could tell you about it, too.
I also consider her one of my first pastoral failures. During her senior year, she decided … to join the Army. I noticed that most people in my church and community considered her decision a noble, honorable, and sacred one. Not one person asked her if this was consistent with her Christian convictions.
Now, you may well imagine that his words rankled when I read them. I thought he was talking pretty tough for someone who leads a life as sheltered as an American United Methodist pastor. So I emailed Reverend Magruder politely saying so, and we wound up having a collegial email conversation for two or three weeks.
Then, more than a year later, I got another email from Reverend Magruder. He and his wife had moved to the west African country of Cameroon as missionaries. He attached a photo of their residence, a mud and thatch hut of less than 100 square feet. They had obligated themselves to at least two years of living in that hut in a small village with no electricity or running water.
I asked myself then and frankly now whether that would be the point at which I would be one of Jesus’ admirers rather than one of his disciples. It’s easy to be a Jesus groupie, not so easy to be his disciple.
There are two questions to this following-Jesus business that quite reasonably come to mind of anyone who is thinking about enlisting in the Lord’s army. The first one is, “Is there a point at which we can say no to Jesus and still be faithful disciples and not just admirers?”
Well, let’s see whether Jesus has anything to say about that. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, Jesus taught his disciples this way:
7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
If ever there was a passage that denounced the concept of salvation by works, this is it. Even if we do everything we are called to do, we have still done only what we are supposed to do. There are no Medals of Honor in heaven because nothing about discipleship is above and beyond the call of duty.
But what else should we expect from a man who told his prospective disciples and followers, “Take up your cross and follow me”? Somehow, modern Christians have decided that what he meant was enduring the ordinary, unremarkable unpleasantries of life, for example, putting up with difficult people or working through chronic illness. With self-pitying pride, some people say, “That’s just the cross I have to bear.”
Well, no. Jesus was not saying that to follow him we simply have to get from one end of a lousy day to the other. In the first century, when poor health, high childhood mortality, and early death were simply ordinary, no one would have heard Jesus say to take up a cross to follow him and thought, “Ah, he means putting up with my nagging mother-in-law.”
No, the cross meant death. The people hearing Jesus had seen their countrymen crucified before they had even heard of Jesus. They had seen the condemned carry the crossbeam of their crosses to the hanging site, just as Jesus would later do. They knew what it meant to carry a cross, and they knew where it led and how it ended.
From these passages and others, it seems that Jesus is saying that there is no point at which following him stops on this side of death itself. Our brothers and sisters in many overseas countries know this all too well. Rare is the American who is required to go all the way to death for Jesus, but disciples should understand that following him may include that.
Now, I think this is actually good news for us, not bad. Knowing that following Jesus could require everything including risking our very lives brings clarity to everything else about our lives. After all, if Jesus can require that, he surely has lordship over everything short of that. For example, our money, which is exactly the point at which Matthew’s rich young man decided to walk away from Jesus.
So the first reasonable question is, "Is there a point at which we can say no and still be faithful?" And the answer is, "No." Our obligations are unlimited.
But there is a second reasonable question. If the first question is, "Is there a point?" the second question is, "What's the point?" After the rich young man walked away, Peter asked Jesus bluntly: “We have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you … everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.’
Peter asked frankly, “What’s in it for me?” And the answer is a hundredfold plus eternal life. Now, I don’t know exactly what Jesus meant by a hundredfold except that we should understand that the rewards of discipleship are infinitely greater than the costs we pay. Let us suppose that the young man had agreed to sell everything he owned, call it a million dollars-worth back then, and had given the money to Graceworks and the UMCOR, then fell into place behind Jesus on the road. Several dozen people did, you know, but eventually they all dropped out except the Twelve and a handful of women. Even so, we know that Jesus was not saying that the young man would get back a hundred million dollars!
No, we must remember that Jesus said that he does not give as the world gives (John 14.27) and so whatever rewards we gain from following him will be ones we cannot gain any other way. Even if we do give our lives to follow Christ, we get much more than our lives back; we may die in the here and now, but we live with God for eternity. Hard to beat that deal.
In the meantime, we are given the peace of Christ and the community of his other disciples. Some wag once remarked that Jesus called forth the Kingdom of God but had to settle for the church. At its worst, a church is a group of Jesus admirers whose members are concerned with their own place and privileges, a sort of religious club where Jesus is forever standing at the door, knocking, but no one lets him in.
But at its best, the Church is infused by the Holy Spirit. Its people are filled with the love of God and love of neighbor. A church of Jesus’ disciples rather than Jesus’ admirers truly is the body of Christ in its time and place. That church –
Seeks first the Kingdom of God (Mt. 6.33)
Is not confused about its purpose, but is at peace (1 Cor. 14.33)
Equips its members for ministry (Eph. 4.12)
Does not have jealousy and strife (1 Cor. 3.3)
Does all things for building up (1 Cor. 14.26)
Is one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3.28)
Pursues love and earnestly desires the spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 14.1)
Receives its power from the Holy Spirit (Acts 1.8)
Bears one another's burdens (Gal. 6.2)
Prays in everything with thanksgiving (Phil. 4.6)
Casts all its anxieties on God (1 Peter 5.7)
Understands it is called to bless the world (1 Peter 3.9)
Is the salt (or preservative) of the earth (Matthew 5.3)
Is the light of the world (Matthew 5.14)
Is it worth it? Is it worth surrendering everything to Jesus to get back a hundredfold of blessings and life eternal?
The Kingdom of God, said Jesus, is like a man who found buried treasure in a field, so he sold everything he had to buy the field. We cannot take what Jesus offers unless we first let go of what we are already clinging to. What we let go of is not insignificant. It may be painful to give up. But what we gain is far greater and infinitely more valuable. And what the world gains it cannot gain in any other way.