He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these [commandments] 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.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Mark 10: 20-22
Shoeless Joe Jackson was a baseball player who grew up in the south around the turn of the last century. Even now, 93 years after he played his last game, he is still ranked third in career batting average behind only Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. To put this into perspective, his career batting average is a full 30 points higher than Rod Carew’s.
Shoeless Joe is best known today for being implicated in the 1919 Black Sox scandal in which eight players were accused of accepting $5,000 each to throw the series to the Cincinnati Reds. There is a legend that has grown over the years that says that when Jackson walked out of the courthouse after giving his testimony, hundreds of boys were crowded outside waiting to see their hero in person. And as he stepped out onto the courthouse steps a boy ran up to him, grabbed him by the sleeve and begged him, “Say it ain’t so, Joe! Say it ain’t so!”
When I read the gospel story of the affluent young man who is told by Jesus that he must sell his possessions and give them to the poor, I can almost hear that boy’s voice pleading with Shoeless Joe. Because we read this text, and like the man who knelt before Jesus, we, too, want to say, “Say it ain’t so! Say it ain’t so!”
That young man who knelt before Jesus may have been wealthy by the standard of his day, but his possessions were nothing compared to ours. All of us are vastly more affluent than he could ever have dreamed of being.
He comes to Jesus hoping to be told that he’s already done everything that is needed for eternal life, but Jesus tells him that all of the good things that he’s done in his life don’t mean a thing. And so he does what we often do when confronted with the radical beauty of the gospel. He turns and he walks away. He never hears the rest of what Jesus has to say about how he can be saved.
When I read this I want to run after him and shout, “Wait, you didn’t hear the good part!”
But he’s gone, and he misses the whole point of what Jesus is saying.
The point that Jesus is making is so simple, beautiful and obvious that we often find it difficult to grasp onto. Forgiveness and eternal life aren’t dependent on what we do. They are dependent on what God does. Jesus didn’t step into this world in order to come half way into our lives, or even 99 percent of the way into our lives. When he cried out, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing,” he meant that all of our sins are forgiven and that eternal life is given to all who believe.
This love and forgiveness is found in what God does, not in what we do. We can’t buy it, or trade for it, or work for it. We can only live in response to it. And that’s the part that this poor guy missed in his dismay over being told to give his possessions to the poor. What can we do to inherit eternal life? Nothing! All we can do is to live in response to what has already been given to us. All we can do is to live in the shadow of the empty tomb as people who have been saved and who desire to share the gospel story with others.
Say it ain’t so? It is so. God invites us to live as people who are called to serve others, empowered to give away everything that binds us to this earth, and willing to turn over our very lives in response to this new life that we share.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen and Zion Lutheran Churches.
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