By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Now, they say that you can't put a price on true love but the fact is that most of us don't have that kind of money to throw around on true love, let alone on fake love. Curious to know how what else that ten million dollars might have bought, I did a little research on the web and found out that with one dollar, UNICEF can buy a year's worth of schoolbooks for two children in Somalia. There are approximately five million children living in the country and a little quick math tells us that the money Kim Kardashian spent on a wedding for a marriage that lasted less than three months could have bought enough school books for all of the school children in the entire country of Somalia for four years.

"It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," Jesus said, and when we see the extravagant waste of millions of dollars on media weddings, the greed of Wall Street bankers, and the enormous salaries received by CEOs even as their companies go bankrupt and their employees receive lay off notices, we nod our heads at Jesus' words and shake our fists at the self-centered predatory rich whose behavior seems as far from the gospel as Somalia is from downtown Alfred. If Jesus were around today, we say, certainly he would be carrying a placard saying, "We are the 99%", and demanding more equity in our country between the rich and the poor.

Of course, before we get too sanctimoniously outraged, we should remember that the three dollars we spent at Dunkin' Donuts the other day for a coffee and apple fritter could have bought a year's worth of school books for six Somalian children. Maybe you or I can't educate an entire country, but are we not still rich in the eyes of a Somalian child?

There is no question, I think, that ten million dollars spent on a sham wedding is shameful. There is no question that the wheelings and dealings of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Goldman Sacs that plunged the country into recession were morally reprehensible. We should be angry. When people use their money to prey on the poor or elevate themselves above others, they are clearly far from the Kingdom of God and they are appropriate targets for our righteous condemnation. At the same time, however, we shouldn't become so focused on the obviously greedy that we fail to consider the questions that Jesus is directing our way. Are we sure, after all, that the modern day parallel to the rich man who questions Jesus would be Kim Kardashian or Kenneth Lay? The rich man in Mark sets out quite a different resume than we would hear from any of today's financial villains. First of all, there is the very fact that he is asking Jesus whether he is doing the things he needs to do for salvation. It's hard for me to imagine Kim Kardashian tossing in her bed at night wondering if she is pleasing God. The rich man, however, is seriously interested in God's opinion of him and furthermore, he has spent his life trying to be a good and faithful disciple.

"I have kept all of the commandments from youth," he tells Jesus, "including the prohibitions against stealing, lying, or defrauding others." We don't know how he made his money but if he is being honest about his moral integrity, we can assume that his wealth is either a well managed inheritance, or a result of careful spending and smart investments, less like the portfolio of a hedge fund manager and more like the portfolio of a hard working responsible accountant who regularly sets aside 10% of every paycheck and carefully diversifies his stock. This is a good guy. This is the kind of man that you'd want on your church's Board of Trustees -- he'd not only help to manage the church Endowment Fund but he'd be more than willing to crawl around under the building trying to figure out why the plumbing isn't working. In fact, no matter how much we would like this story in Mark to be a story of Jesus condemning the rapaciously greedy, the reality is that the only difference between the man in this story and you and me is that word "rich", and the word "rich" is ultimately a relative term. Compared to Warren Buffet, every person here is impoverished, but compared to a child in Somalia, every person here is wealthy beyond belief.

So, who is Jesus talking to? Could he be talking to us?

Mother Teresa once visited Australia and a young man was assigned to be her guide and “gofer” during her stay. He was thrilled and excited at the prospect of meeting Mother Teresa -- he himself had considered joining a monastery and he looked forward to the opportunity to discuss his vocation with her and benefit from her wisdom. She hadn't been in Australia long, however, before the young man became frustrated. Although he was constantly near her, they never had the opportunity for conversation because there were always other people for her to meet and activities that consumed her attention. Before he knew it, her tour was over and she was due to fly to New Guinea. In desperation, the young man said to her, “Mother Teresa, if I pay my own fare to New Guinea, may I sit next to you on the plane so that we could talk and I could learn from you?”

Mother Teresa looked at him. “You have enough money to pay airfare to New Guinea?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” he replied eagerly.

“Then give that money to the poor,” she said. “You’ll learn more from that than from anything I can tell you.”

The encounter between Jesus and the rich man is one of the hardest stories in the Bible because we're not sure who Jesus has in his sights and if it is us that he's talking to, we're not sure what to do with his words. From the most ancient times, people have been trying to soften this passage to make it more palatable. A scribe copying an early manuscript of the gospel of Mark inserted his own words in verse 24, so that instead of saying, "How hard it is for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of God," the scribe has Jesus say, "How hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the Kingdom of God." Maybe the scribe had a little nest egg of his own that he was reluctant to part with and decided to make Jesus' command more reasonable, but even if that's what the scribe wished Jesus had said, it's not what Jesus said, and we should resist the temptation to spiritualize his words and interpret them in a way that makes them too comfortable. I think this should be a hard passage for us, and Jesus' words should make us think about our income and our spending habits and how much money is enough and how much is too much. If nothing else, Jesus is telling us that we can't be good disciples without considering how faith impacts our wallets. One person said that if you want to know what kind of person someone truly is, look at their checkbook, and it would be a useful exercise for all of us occasionally to look over our bank accounts not with an eye for what they say about our retirement viability but for what they say about our faith.

And to understand what our money says about our faith, we need to do one more thing with this passage before we leave it. I want you to not only hear the words that are exchanged between the rich man and Jesus but I want you to look at the man as he talks. The first thing the man does when he approaches Jesus, before he even speaks a word, is kneel down. Every other time that someone kneels before Jesus, it is the prelude to a request for healing. This is not an arrogant rich man seeking public affirmation of his goodness; this is a man who knows he is in need of healing. The man has upheld the commandments and led a good religious life, but he knows that he is still not whole, that there is something within him that is broken. There's an emptiness there, or is it a loneliness? He has done everything he can think of to obtain salvation and yet he knows in the struggle of his restless spirit that something remains missing. He reaches out to Jesus for the healing that will bring him the peace that he so desires.

And Jesus, the physician, diagnoses the man's illness quickly: the man has been thinking of salvation as a thing that you can obtain like an estate on a hill or a diamond headpiece. He has treated the commandments as an investment plan that will ensure his long-term viability. Salvation, though, is not a thing. Salvation is living in peace and wholeness with God, and the only way to live in peace and wholeness with God is to also live in peace and wholeness with others. Salvation cannot be obtained in isolation; it cannot be obtained by focusing solely on one's one needs -- salvation comes only when we turn our eyes from ourselves and think about others as well. Jesus challenges the rich man, saying, "Look at the resources you have. Use those resources to establish a new relationship with the poor in your community. Use your resources of time and energy to attend to those in need of comfort, to care for those who are suffering. Stop seeking your own peace and think of the peace of the entire community.

"Divest yourself of yourself and invest instead in others, and in so doing," Jesus promises, "you will be healed."

"Divest yourself of yourself and invest instead in others, and in so doing, you will be healed."

In 1995, the Columbus Dispatch carried the story of a community that discovered the truth of Jesus' promise. Katie Fisher was a 17 year old high school student who had contracted cancer her sophomore year. She had endured several hospital stays and many rounds of chemotherapy and she was becoming increasingly concerned about the medical costs her family had incurred on her behalf. Katie decided to offer a lamb she had raised to the County Junior Livestock Sale hoping she could earn a little money to help out her family. Before the lamb went on the block, the auctioneer told the audience about Katie’s condition, hoping his introduction might push the price-per-pound above the average of two dollars and to Katie's delight, it worked: the lamb sold for $11.50 per pound. What came next was even more astonishing. The buyer brought the lamb back to the auctioneer and suggested the auctioneer sell it again, which stated a chain reaction of generosity. All day, that lamb was sold and re-sold as families bought it and gave it back; as businesses bid on it and returned it to be auctioned again. Katie’s mother said, "The first sale is the only one I remember. After that, I was crying too hard." They ended up selling the lamb thirty-six times, and raised more than $16,000 in the process.1 A young woman, a family, and a whole community knew healing that day.

But it wasn't the money that healed them; it was the giving that healed them.

"Divest yourself of yourself and invest instead in others, and in so doing," Jesus said, "I promise, you will be healed, all of you together."

But the rich man walked away because he had many possessions.

"What will you do?" Jesus asks.

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1. from "The Story File" by Steve May