MUMC Sermon-10/15/2006

October 15, 2006

The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

If I Had Two Million Bucks

Mark 10:7-31

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

Last Monday Lynne and I had dinner with Reverend Clayton Miller, a retired Methodist preacher,

a resident of Larchmont, and frequent visitor in these very pews. That night he told a story, which he then generously agreed to let his guests borrow. Thus, with gratitude, I retell his story.

Some years ago, Rev. Miller was approached by a youth in his congregation. The young man had a problem, he said, and he needed help. “So, what’s the problem,” wondered Clayton. “Well, I’m only 15, and I guess I’m going to have to leave home,” said the boy. “My dad has had it with my long hair. He said that if I don’t get it cut, I can’t live under his roof any more.” He went on, “But my friends will make fun of me if I get it cut. I can’t lose my friends. I don’t know what to do.”

“I can help with that,” said Clayton. So he put the young man in a chair in his office, draped a towel around his shoulders, and carefully cut a very little bit of hair from the back of the young man’s neck, and then he trimmed a bit carefully from above his eyes, exposing a bit of his forehead. Finally he touched up the sides, so that his ears peeked out again. “That should do it,” said Clayton.

A few days later he saw the youth again, and asked him how things went. “Great,” he said. “My friends couldn’t even tell that you’d cut my hair, but my dad had to admit that I had done it. Reverend Miller, you really got me out of a jam. I can’t thank you enough. If I had two million dollars, I’d give you a million.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Clayton. “But I guess you could do something, if you’d like. Say, do you have two dollars?” Nervously, the boy answered, “Yeah. I have two dollars. I guess.”

“In that case,” said Clayton, “I’ll take one dollar. That’s all.” At that moment, like our text says of the character we call the rich young ruler, Clayton’s young friend “was shocked and went away grieving,” and he didn’t see him again for a while after that. The young man didn’t come back for another haircut. And, though he said that he was grateful, he never paid the dollar for the first one, either. In the years since then, both Clayton and the young man looked back on the incident and laughed. It’s easy to say that we’ll give something we don’t have; but it is difficult to part with a gift of gratitude within our means.

Today’s gospel lesson is a troubling story, partly, I suppose, because we are so much like the man at the feet of Jesus, wondering with him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I notice just a few things in this lesson that trouble me.

I notice, first, that for him, life – even eternal life – is all about “me.” The same could be said of us. One of the underlying assumptions of our culture is a rampant individualism that tends toward a narcissistic disregard of the needs of others. We think that we can develop our souls alone, and we further assume that all life, including the life of faith, is a solitary journey.

While there is a solitary component to life – we are truly responsible only for our own actions – still, the life of faith is a community effort. We come to church not merely to learn principles for living alone, but we come into the church to become part of a community where we hold one another accountable, where we learn to forgive each other, and where we come to live with one another as with God. Indeed, some say that the Christian notion of the trinity – God in three “persons,” exemplifies that even God needs the community that is important to each of us. We cannot be fully Christian alone; we each need one another. So, first I notice the underlying assumption in the question, “What must I do?” and our need always to turn the “I” to “we.”

Second, I notice that the text says of him what could be said of most of us: “he had many possessions.” This young man at the knees of Jesus, like many of us, assumed that having the trappings of life would give him the joy of life. And, like us, he seems possessed by his possessions. The more he has, the more he is a slave to all that he has.

Preaching on this very passage years ago at the Riverside Church, Bill Coffin quoted the playwright Eugene O’Neill, who spoke as a prophet to the nation in an interview in 1946. O’Neill said that, in his view, “the United States, instead of being the most successful country in the world, is the greatest failure. Its main idea is that everlasting game of trying to possess your own soul by possession of something outside of it.” (Unpublished, from Sermons from Riverside, March 3, 1985) We are a nation of addicts, O’Neill is essentially saying, trying to find life in the wrong place.

To the extent that we continue in this mad desire to find life among life’s toys and trappings, even the most attractive, we are every bit as doomed as the man who comes to Jesus, only to be shocked and grieved by the very answer he sought. How to have life? “Go,” says Jesus, “sell what you own, and give to the poor….” In effect, he says, to the young man and to us: “Clean out your attic, your basement, your closets, and your bank accounts, and then, only then, will you have room for God.”

It’s almost impossible to overstate Jesus’ message here. We are fortunate that he made something of a joke, for otherwise the church might have succeeded in watering down his own words: “Children, … 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.” (Mark 10:24-25) It’s a joke, meant to shatter our brittle, well-protected, economic interests. It’s a joke with a serious point. We are all and each too easily possessed by our possessions. We cannot get enough, because they never ever satisfy.

So, first, the life of faith is not about “me,” but about “us.” And, second, the life of faith is not about possessions. And, third, I would notice in this story that every character, including Jesus, has to decide to take a risk, and thereby to trust God.

Of all the characters Jesus meets in the gospels, this is the only one specified as loved by Jesus. Yes, he loves them all. But here, Mark notes a particular emotion: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” (Mark 10:21) This young man is also unique in that he is the only person in all the gospels who is invited to follow Jesus who then decides not to follow. He is the “almost” disciple. He cannot take the risk. He believes he’s willing to give anything to follow Jesus, then he learns that the price of following is just too high.

Following God means taking a risk, always. Because: to follow God is to trust God’s ways over the ways that we’ve come to know and trust in our culture. To follow Jesus is to let go what we know, and trust what we believe. And note that Jesus, too, has to decide to trust God. Jesus is, we remember, on the way to the cross. And the disciples with him have left their old lives – boats and nets and homes. This is risky business, this faith business.

And yet it is the risky ventures that pay off in dividends of new, abundant life. I am struck by the difference between the story of the young man in the lesson, his unwillingness to risk, and the story of Muhammad Yunus.

In case you missed his story, Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh, and the organization he founded in 1983, the Grameen Bank, were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It is the first time in its history that the Peace Prize has gone to a Bangladeshi or to a not-for-profit organization. The committee noted the difference that has been made in the lives of more than six-and-a-half million Bangladeshis, mostly women, by the micro loans given them by Yunus and the Grameen Bank.

Yunus came up with the idea for lending money to the poor during a trip to a village in Bangladesh during a famine in 1974. There he met a woman who was struggling with arthritic fingers to weave bamboo stools. Though she worked hard and long hours, most of her profits went to pay exorbitant rates to local moneylenders who were her only source for capital for raw materials. She had to borrow five taka, equal to about 9 cents, for each stool she made. Most of her money went back to the lender, then she began the process again.

Yunus said of her, “I thought to myself, ‘My God, for five takas she has become a slave.’” Yunus and some students surveyed the woman’s village the next day and discovered 43 other villagers who owed a total of $27. He said, “I couldn’t take it anymore. I put the $27 out there and told them they could liberate themselves.” He asked that they pay him back whenever they could. The following year, they all paid him back, day by day.

The next year he made more small loans, again from his own pocket, and again mostly to women, and, again, with no collateral. In 1983 he founded the Grameen Bank. Since then, the bank has made nearly $6 Billion in loans, the largest being about $20. More than 90% of the borrowers were poor women, people unable to get loans from traditional banks. The overall payback rate is almost 99%. The families whose loans bring their standard of living up almost invariably use their new income to send their children to school. Yunus has a dream for these people. “One day,” he often says, “our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.” (NY Times, October 13, 2006)

Visiting that famine-weakened village in Bangladesh in 1974, Yunus might have responded differently. He might have thought, “The need is too great.” Or he might have said to himself, “I can’t help very much; so I won’t help at all.” He might have simply gone away, grieving, like the man in the story whom Jesus loved. Or, like Clayton Miller’s young friend, he might have said, “If I had two million dollars, I’d give a million,” hoping he’d have to do nothing at all.

Instead, he did what he could. He took a risk. He realized that we are all connected to one another. He gave away something he owned. He followed his heart.

In our lives sometimes the long odds are challenged, and won, by one person working with and beside another. Sometimes we can, and we do, take what God gives, and use it for good. And it becomes, in the hands of God, just enough to make a difference.

At the end of today’s lesson, the disciples give up on any hope of entering the kingdom of God, knowing that each of us is rich, in a way, and saying to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus, very likely confident that God will always raise up risk-takers like Muhammad Yunus for the sake of the world, says to them, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” (10:26-27)

God puts in our hands the means for transforming our church, our world, our community, our very lives, and the lives of our neighbors.

The question facing us is never “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” but always “What shall WE do, together?” Will we do our best, and then, will we trust God?

That seems like a big risk. And it is. I believe Jesus calls us to community, to sacrifice, to trust. Do you believe that, too?