Sunday 28 B (2009)

Exactly 800 years ago, in 1209

St Francis of Assisi and a few companions

got permission from the Pope

to set up the Franciscans as a new and different religious order.

Those first Franciscans took the gospel we have just heard very seriously.

For them, it really was a word from God

that was alive and active,

giving them a direction,

calling them to be truly poor

so that they could be with the poor.

Still today in our Church, there are those,

including the Franciscans,

who hear this gospel

and feel that Jesus is speaking to them

in a direct, immediate and fairly literal way.

Maybe this is the case for someone here.

These are not the only people this gospel is for.

Today’s gospel speaks directly

with a mixture of challenge and reassurance

to our situation.

By ‘our’ I really do mean to us

as the people of St William’s

who gather here for prayer and worship.

Firstly, whatever we may think,

and whatever mixture of motives we may have,

just being here

puts us among the ranks of the religious,

the observant, by today’s standards.

Secondly, we are (mostly) rich.

We live in one of the rich countries in the world.

We live in the richest areas of one of the major cities of that country.

With the wonders of the web,

you can look at a map showing average household incomes,

adjusted for household size, for 71 areas in Sheffield.

The areas are funny shapes, and don’t correspond very well to the areas we know by name,

so, if I could, I show you the map.

Instead, I’ll just say,

six of the top seven among this seventy-one

make up the area going

from Hunter’s Bar out to Dore and Totley,

and from Brincliffe, Carter-Knowle and Millhouses

over to Fulwood and Ranmoor.

Our way of thinking,

what we think is reasonable,

is shaped by these circumstances.

We are the man in the gospel,

so let’s look at the gospel more carefully.

Jesus is leaving. It sounds like

the man is anxious to speak with him before he leaves.

He runs up. We feel the urgency.

He kneels down. This seems a bit odd to us,

and it sounds like it seemed a bit odd to Jesus too,

but there can be no doubt that this man is taking Jesus seriously.

He must have heard of him,

indeed he had probably heard Jesus teaching

and was starting to wonder

how his own life fitted into that teaching.

How his life fitted into

Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of God,

the reign of God, is near,

and that the poor and the non-observant

are definitely not excluded from God’s love.

The man questions Jesus.

His is asking

‘what must I do to be

forever under the reign of God,

to be part of His Kingdom’.

Jesus first answers with the Ten Commandments.

He highlights those that deal with relations with others.

Clearly,

these are a solid starting point for the answer to the man’s question.

They are the starting point in His dialogue with us today.

Jesus is saying

“is there anything obviously really bad in your life”:

the man thinks he is doing OK on this score.

The man’s approach up to now

shows he is serious about seeking God’s will,

and he does not know of,

does not recognise, major offences in his life.

Now Mark’s gospel has a wonderful line,

one of the great Gospel lines,

Mark tells us that:

Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him.

Jesus doesn’t love the man

because he is ‘good’:

he just loves him,

he just loves us.

Now we come to the heart of the matter.

The man is rich!

I think we can be sure the man counted this as a blessing,

a source of good fortune, a good thing.

Wealth allowed almsgiving,

and it probably made it easier for him to be careful about his religion.

Jesus’ challenge to this thinking rings down the centuries:

“go and sell everything,

give the money to the poor,

and follow me”

Jesus wasn’t telling the man to sell up

so that he could help the poor,

he was telling the man to sell up

so that he could become poor,

so that he could truly follow Jesus.

His wealth, being rich,

was his biggest remaining obstacle to following Jesus closely.

Then the man’s face fell and he went away sad.

Why was he sad?

He was sad because he was taking Jesus seriously.

He wouldn’t have been sad

if he had been from one of the groups

that were trying to catch Jesus out with clever questions.

He was sad because he cared,

and that sadness was itself a touch of grace,

a touch of God’s word, Jesus.

We don’t know what the man did later,

but it is hard to believe he simply went on as before.

In the second part of this gospel

the disciples cannot make sense of what has happened.

They have picked up Jesus’ message of good news:

that the poor and the law-breakers can be welcomed by God.

But we hear the disciples are ‘astounded’ and ‘astonished’ by this new aspect,

which Jesus ‘insisted’ on:

are we?

How do we feel,

as we hear that

a rich person being truly under the rule of God is less likely than

being able to fly to the moon on a bicycle.

We cannot feel comfortable.

I certainly don’t.

Then, in one of those wonderful gospel paradoxes,

Jesus offers words of reassurance:

we cannot overcome the barriers that separate us from God’s kingdom,

but God can.

Nothing is impossible,

we, the rich, must trust to His mercy.

This is a gospel for us,

for us as individuals and,

and perhaps more so,

for us as a community.

For, as well as thinking ourselves individually as the rich man

we should also be thinking that we as a whole,

this parish of St William’s, is the rich man.

So today,

as we encounter the Lord in the Eucharist of our Mass,

let us imagine ourselves running to him,

kneeling before him,

asking what we need to do to follow him

being looked at and known by him

being loved by him

let us listen to how he wants us to follow him,

what step he wants us to take

this day, this week, this year,

in the direction we take in life

and, as we allow the Lord to confront us,

allow His word to be alive and active in us,

let us do it with great trust in God’s mercy and power.