On at least two occasions during my teaching years, a student came to me and asked, “What do I have to do to get an A?”  I’m sure others wondered but didn’t ask.  These students were motivated, hard-working.  They had been diligent in maintaining their cumulative 4.0 GPA; now I was ruining everything.  They were quite polite about it.  They came to me, asked and were ready to write down and understand the steps, the process, the things they needed to do.  All quite reasonable.  The conversation would then go something like this: “I did everything you told me to do.”  Therefore, I deserve an A.  It’s your fault I don’t have an A.

The key element was elusive: demonstrate how you are thinking about what you have read, these words, these thoughts, these paragraphs with which you’ve been working.  Demonstrate how deeply, how far you’re willing to wrestle with these deep words, these agile thoughts, these sometimes-mysterious ideas.  Bust the sod of your mind.

Well, that was too much.  Give me the formula.  Tell me the answer.  Just tell me what you want me to say, what I need to do, so I can just do it and get my A!  You have to think; you’ve got to cultivate that ground.

These students, all my students, were busy people, with hopes, dreams, distractions, diversions, and deadlines.  Sound like anyone you know?  Their interests were elsewhere; they didn’t see why they should have to invest time, attention, and thought into something that wasn’t connected to anything they wanted out of life.  They were willing to work but not as willing to sacrifice.  Work that cost more than they were willing to pay wasn’t worth their while.  Besides—who pays to work?  Said the college students, though their parents knew.  We work to be paid!  No wonder one student evaluation advised all who would come after: “Run—don’t walk—from Kucera’s class.”  It’s odd to be characterized as more demanding than God.

A man “ran up” to Jesus “and fell on his knees before him” (10:17).  Well, that’s a promising start, right?  “‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” (10:17).  Not a bad question.  There’s much to consider in that question.  Jesus seems to have said quite a lot already about doing things, loving neighbors, loving God, and so forth.  Do this, don’t do that.  Be nice; don’t be mean, kind not cruel.  That’s basically what the Bible tells us, what it’s all about, right?  God’s Word, beloved, is only secondarily concerned with having us do and not do.  God’s Word above all is meant to introduce us to someone.  God wants us to do something, certainly, and He wants us not to do all sorts of things, but we will never do or not do until we first know someone—God in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit.  Doing is the result of being.  We do what we are.  If we do not, it is because we are not.  Once God claims us, we begin on the path of doing whose we are.  Doing as a way of life, a habit, as what is desired rather than what is compelled—such voluntary doing, volitional, willed doing, is the result of belonging to and knowing God.  God changes the life by changing the heart.

The right first question is not what must I do, but who must I know.  People all over the world, and many an angry atheist, are completely confused about this.  Doing kind things does not make you a kind person.  Doing good things does not make you a good person.  We are more than the sum of our actions.

I’ve always been struck by Jesus’ response.  How about you?  Do you recall what he says?  “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone’” (10:18).  Is Jesus saying he is not good?  No, because if he were saying that, he’d also be saying he was not God.  God alone is good, Jesus says.  Why is God the only one who is good?  Because only God is not fallen; because it is the very nature of God to be good; because God would not be God if He were not good.  To say God is to say good.  When English first emerged, around the year 500, give or take a century, God and good were spelled the same: only the vowel sound distinguished them.  To know God is to know what is good.  Not to know God is not to know what is good, not to know bad from good.  Here, then, are the multitudes of this earth, killing each other, raping, plundering, laying waste without concern or compunction.  All those good-hearted, kind people, reviling God and deploring God’s Word.

Jesus is telling the young man that if he knew God, he would know what is good and do it because he knows God.  To know God truly is to do what is good, the fruits of the knowledge of God, knowing you are known by God, and loved, and blessed, and kept for an eternity of joy in the strong arms of His salvation.  Scripture only knows knowledge as life shaping, life-directing.  From the perspective of God’s Word, information that has no effect upon your living doesn’t count as knowledge; I guess such information without effect would fall under the heading of trivia.  I hope I’m not the only one here who was good at Trivial Pursuit!

As Jesus seeks to educate the man—save him—he first points to the well-worn path of good intentions: “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother’” (10:19).  Oh, the young man knew the commandments, every Jew did.  People know the law.  People know at a rudimentary level what is called good and what is called bad, and we know there are always extenuating circumstances: a thing is wrong, except when it’s right; another thing is right, until it’s wrong.  Ah, moral clarity.  You know the commandments.  What Jesus might then have added, except for the eager interruption of the young man, was, “But do you know God?”  Well who’s asking?

Mark reminds us this is a young man.  He is not invincibly ignorant, and he has not yet gained wide or deep wisdom.  He has made a promising start; he still has far to go.  We’re all in that condition: thank God we walk together!  Thank God we walk together with Jesus, by the grace of God, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who will teach us all truth along the journey.  It’s a long journey.  Let us remember the Spirit has something to teach, and we, all of us, including me (maybe me most of all), still, always, have something to learn.

“Jesus looked at him and loved him.  ‘One thing you lack,’ he said.  ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me’” (10:21).  Follow.  That’s the way.  Don’t go away: stay and follow.  Jesus is not unsympathetic.  Jesus knows we can be hard of hearing, cluttered as we are with cares and concerns, deadlines, dreams, and dreads.  Have you noticed how often the Bible seems to repeat things?  God wants His Word to get through all the distraction, the life-static.  The young man, the rich man, heard Jesus.  The Word got through.  Give it all away.  Give it to the poor.  Oh, we can ask whether that’s practical, whether that’s wise.  We can say it’s foolish, useless.  The poor will still be there, and they’ll still be poor!  What is treasure in heaven, anyway, and why would anyone need it, there?

We can talk ourselves out of that sacrifice almost as quickly as that rich young man; only, notice he doesn’t say a thing, just walks away, suddenly heavy, sad, stunned.  Pastor and Bible scholar W. Graham Scroggie wrote, “This man wanted something better than he had, but he was not prepared to make any sacrifice to get it.”[1]  People are happy to have something better—“but wait!  There’s more!”  The sacrifice, though.  There’s the trouble.  What are you willing, what are you prepared to give up, in order to get?  Remember that pearl of rare price?  There’s always an exchange!  But how can we compare what we can see to what we can’t see?  So that young man was thinking, looking at Jesus.

Was not prepared to make any sacrifice—his own way, for example: his dreams, his values, his certainty about right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, or at least his willingness to compromise on any or all of these for the sake of personal convenience.  He was not prepared to sacrifice his own truth, his journey to himself.  And from where did his thoughts about true and false, good and bad, right and wrong come?  From where, his dreams and hopes, values and goals?  From God’s Word?  Or were they the product of the society and culture in which he was raised and rich?  Or, worst of all, some fortuitously accommodating blend of society and Scripture?  Don’t do what you don’t want to do, and as for the rest, well, God will understand.

Beloved, throw all that away, and you will be raised and rich in Jesus.

The young man knew, and Jesus knew—and loved the man anyway, still—that he was not able to make the sacrifice.  Where your treasure is—what?  The old hymn wants us to sing along, “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”  It’s the old question, always the same question: what do you want most?  The faithful do not walk by sight.  How can we want most what we cannot see?  This is a world of seeing and a life of seeing—indeed, we were made to see!  What do you want most?  People have answers they share with others, then there’s the answer in the very deepest, most private place in their heart.  Sometimes it’s the same answer.

The disposition of the heart.  Consider with me, imagine with me, dream with me the joys we will know together, in the presence of God, forever.  For what will you exchange your soul, your life?  Food?  Money?  Comfort?  Health?  Safety?  Friends?  Personal truth?  The pursuit of corporal pleasures?  Where our treasure is.  Where is our treasure?

“[C]ome, follow me” (10:21).  Who we are is not first determined by what we do.  Is that making sense?  It’s not the occasional good deed or kind word that make me a good, kind person, but a changed heart.  What we do is determined by the heart: what we are, at heart.  To whom or to what does that heart belong?  Scroggie observed that the rich young man, the comfortable man “was willing to serve, but not to sacrifice.”[2]  Often in the church over the past century or so, the emphasis has been upon the service rather than the sacrifice.  We have been happy to join ourselves to causes, believing we were joining ourselves to Christ.  The cause engages, animates, and satisfies us—the cross?  It leaves us uncomprehending, intimidated, irritated, frustrated.

“Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!’  The disciples were amazed at his words.  But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  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” (10:23-25).  Some Bible students speak of a gate in the wall of Jerusalem, called “the eye of the needle,” just wide and high enough for a person but not for an animal like a camel.  Jesus may be referring to that, but the total amazement of the disciples seems to argue against it.

They were shocked, bowled over.  I guess they had all believed, or wanted to believe, up until that point, maybe like that rich young man, that salvation was not so difficult—at least for the right kind of person, you know.  I guess they had wanted to believe that all salvation required was doing things and saying stuff, nothing really inconvenient—nothing costly for heaven’s sake!—a few simple rules for living—well, suggestions.  Maybe they thought all it took was caring about other people: so long as they cared about others.  The Gospel according to the Beatles.  They hadn’t been listening.  Nor did they know the Word of God.  If people today are biblically illiterate, should that surprise us, but for the disciples of Jesus, right there with him, to be so ill-informed about the Word of God?

“Who then can be saved?” (10:26).  As much as to say, well, what’s the point, then?!  Why bother?  If our doing and not doing, if our saying and not saying won’t, can’t save us, what hope do we have?!  Who can be saved?  No one, if we believe that salvation is of us, from us, by us.  No one, if we live as if salvation is the result, the reward, of personal worthiness, personal merit, works and words—what I have earned, my heavenly A.  My celestial 4.0.

I’ve mentioned at different times how bright John 5:24 is for me.  What Jesus next says is also bright, beautiful, holy, and hopeful: beloved, where there is holiness, there is always hope: “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God’” (10:27).  God saves.  God saves for God’s reasons.  God saves according to God’s ways and God’s plans, for God’s purposes.  Whom He saves He changes.  God makes possible.  God made a sacrifice for you.  Live your sacrifice for God.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976.  180.

               [2] Scroggie, 181.