‘In the 1953 film, The Million Pound Note, Gregory Peck is a poor sailor given a £1 million note. Whenever he tries to spend it, people treat him like a king and give him everything for free. Yet in the end the £1million almost costs him his dignity and the woman he loves.
We don’t know why the rich ruler asked about eternal life (Mark 10.17-31). Unhappiness? After all industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie noted long ago that millionaires seldom smile! One of the problems of rising affluence is that ‘enough’ always means just a little more – TV and advertising make sure of that! And money can get in the way of the relationships which are so essential to our happiness.
Whatever the reason Jesus challenges him to give his money to the poor but the price is too high. The rich man walks away, broken-hearted, knowing what he leaves behind. We think of money as opening doors but here it closes the door to life, not just eternal life but to the life of this new community of disciples who put Jesus before their financial choices. He is invited to let go of his money because we can’t travel light with heavy baggage, or engage with others when we are full of ourselves.
This story challenges us about how we live with money, the choices that we make. And the challenge to generosity is one that we cannot duck. A generous heart and a generous lifestyle will open doors for other people in need. It will also open doors for us to new life in Christ and in relationship with his people, his disciples. But following Jesus with our money is not easy. It has to cash out in our day to day living and attitudes. Some years ago Fr John Dresko, an orthodox priest, wrote the following which has not been translated from the original American:
“My gift to God is a genuine reflection of my heart. If I give $400 per month to the bank on my car loan, but think the church is fleecing me for $20 per month, I have a heart problem. If I do my grocery shopping and write a check when I leave for $100 so my family can be fed, but think $20 per month is too much for the Bread of Life, I have a heart problem. If I can go to the package store and drop $20 for a bottle of liquor but gripe about the costs of sharing the Blood of Christ, I have a heart problem. If I cheat the church out of regular giving by pleading about my ‘cash flow’ while ignoring the fact that the church has the same bills and the same ‘cash flow’, I have a heart problem.”’ (Sermon Reflections by Peter Howell-Jones, Vice Dean Chester Cathedral)
The New Testament scholar Tom Wright identifies this heart problem with a call to a transformation of character. He writes that ‘Jesus is challenging the young man to a transformation of character.’ It is worth our while staying with this idea and the way Tom Wright unpacks it in relation to this encounter:
‘The young man has come wanting fulfilment. He wants his life to be complete—complete in the present, so it can be complete in the future. He knows he is still “lacking” something, and he is looking for a goal, a completion. Jesus suggests he needs turning inside out. His life is to become part of a larger, outward-looking purpose: he is to put God’s Kingdom first, and put his neighbour (especially his poor neighbour) before his own fulfilment and prospects. Here is the real challenge: not just to add one or two more commandments, to set the moral bar a little higher, but to become a different sort of person altogether.
Jesus is challenging the young man to a transformation of character.
And the young man isn’t up for it. He turns and goes away, sad. Here is the gap between theory and reality, between command and performance. Jesus has told him how to behave, but the young man doesn’t know how to do it. The question hangs, disturbingly, over the rest of the Gospel story. What is the path to God’s new age, to the new time when God’s Kingdom will flood the world with justice and peace? How are we to be the sort of people who not only inherit that world but actually join in right now to help make it happen?
But what we notice in Mark 10 is something which seems to operate in a different dimension. For a start, it is a call, not to specific acts of behaviour, but to a type of character. For another thing, it is a call to see oneself as having a role to play within a story—and a story where there is one supreme Character whose life is to be followed. And that Character seems to have His eye on a goal, and to be shaping His own life, and those of His followers, in relation to that goal.
All of this suggests that Mark’s gospel, with Jesus Himself as the great Character who stands behind it, is inviting us to something not so much like rule-keeping on the one hand or following our own dreams on the other, but a way of being human to which philosophers ancient and modern have given a particular name. My contention is that the New Testament invites its readers to learn how to be human in this particular way, which will both inform our moral judgments and form our characters so we can live by their guidance. The name for this way of being human, this kind of transformation of character, is virtue.
What does it mean to be virtuous?
The dynamic of “virtue,” in this sense—practicing the habits of heart and life that point toward the true goal of human existence—lies at the heart of the challenge of Christian behaviour, as set out in the New Testament itself. This is what it means to develop “character.” This is what we need—and what the Christian faith offers—for the time, “after you believe.”
When we approach things from this angle, we are in for some surprises. A great many Christians, in my experience, never think of things this way, and so get themselves in all kinds of confusion. Virtue, to put it bluntly, is a revolutionary idea in today’s world—and today’s church. But the revolution is one we badly need. And it is right at the core of the answer to the questions with which we began. After you believe, you need to develop Christian character by practicing the specifically Christian “virtues.” To make wise moral decisions, you need not just to “know the rules” or “discover who you really are,” but to develop Christian virtue. And to give wise leadership in our wider society in the confusing times we live in, we urgently need people whose characters have been formed in much the same way. We’ve had enough of pragmatists and self-seeking risk-takers. We need people of character.’
The fundamental answer to the question what is supposed to happen “after you believe” is that ‘what we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on the one hand and in mission, in its full and large sense, on the other; and that we do this not least by “following Jesus.” The way this works out is that it produces, through the work of the Holy Spirit, a transformation of character.
This transformation will mean that we do indeed “keep the rules”—though not out of a sense of externally imposed “duty,” but out of the character that has been formed within us. And it will mean that we do indeed “follow our hearts” and live “authentically”—but only when, with that transformed character fully operative, the hard work up front bears fruit in spontaneous decisions and actions that reflect what has been formed deep within. And, in the wider world, the challenge we face is to grow and develop a fresh generation of leaders, in all walks of life, whose character has been formed in wisdom and public service, not in greed for money or power.’
So, Jesus’ challenge here is not simply about our use of money or about our own stewardship - should we give five per cent, ten per cent, or twenty per cent or everything (as with the Rich Young Ruler) – but about developing a generous heart and a generous lifestyle that will open doors for other people in need. It is about becoming like Jesus, who laid down his own life that others might truly live. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
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Pink Floyd - Money.
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