What’s The Secret Answer?
Hebrews 4. 12-16
Mark 10. 17-31

The hymn declares, "In times like these, you need a Savior. In times like these you need an anchor, be very sure, be very sure, your anchor holds, and grips the solid rock. ("In Times Like These" copyright, 1944, renewed 1972 by Ruth Caye Jones)."

These are times in which it seems that people are losing their grip because they have no anchor to throw out and no rock to grip. While we are still reeling from the news of a woman brutally murdered, and her baby literally ripped from her womb, we see and hear in the news that just a few miles from here, in a neighborhood where two of our member families live, there was another horror. A man apparently beat his wife to death with a baseball bat, then taped cinderblocks to his feet and hurled himself into the family pool while their five children slept.

The USS Cole pulls into a refueling station in a bay in Yemen. A small boat comes alongside, its occupants stand at attention, the explosives on the small boat discharges sending seventeen United States sailors, and the men on the boat to their deaths. In Ramallah, in the West Bank reserve Israeli soldiers are arrested, questioned, then taken from their jail cells, beaten to death and dragged through the street. At the same time, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in another round of brutal fighting in Israel. Here in America, in every neighborhood, among every race and income, children are living in emotional and physical chaos.

We are weeks away from an election in which part of the debate is about how to spend the 100’s of billions of dollars in a projected surplus.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Who can be saved? We have given up everything! What is the secret answer that makes all of this make sense?

We should not be surprised that a man described in else where as young and a ruler believes that eternal life is something that can be handed down to him. He is so anxious to know how to get it that he runs excitedly to Jesus, kneels in front of him, flatters him by calling him good and asks for the secret answer to life with God forever. (Interpretation, Mark, p. 183) "The verb ‘inherit’ would come naturally to the lips of a man of wealth. Even as an heir must meet certain conditions and fulfill certain obligations, so this man asks what he must do to inherit life."

Jesus is compassionate, and after reminding the man that God alone is good, then says to the man, "you know what to do, keep the commandments."

"Been there, done that. I’ve kept those since I was a little boy. I have not killed anyone, I am a faithful spouse, I am neither a thief nor am I a liar. I am a good son. There must be something else, some secret answer to this eternal life thing. There is something you are not telling me." The man knows, like we know but like us sometime, he has heard them all his life. But he has not internalized what he knows. He cannot make the connection between what he has learned all his life, and what he feels relates to his relationship with God and with his neighbors.

We know Christians are called to love and serve others as Christ has loved and served us, but we cannot always figure out how to do it. People can be unlovable and ungrateful. Like the man who came to Jesus, we wonder about the payoff at the end. What must I do? Who can be saved? We have left everything for you. As we read and study and discern we come to know that eternal life is not something we can inherit. It is a gift, it is what we do in the world as a thank you to God and to Christ for the gift we have been given. But we act as if eternal life can be bought, and what we do is a down payment.

Have you ever asked a question when you thought you knew the answer only to discover that you really did not know after all? Jesus, what I’ve done up to now is OK, isn’t it? So what else. Jesus says very simply, "Give it all up. Go and sell all that you have, give the money to the poor. Then you will have an account in heaven. Then come and follow me." The man came in joy and anticipation, but now he walks away in sadness and grief. He has too many possessions and they are a barrier to following Jesus.

I wonder if he went through the five stages of grief identified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She used them to describe the way people react to learning that they or a loved one is dying. But we know that grief comes with any kind of loss. Perhaps he felt denial – that for all his possessions, there was not enough to give up? Maybe he was angry, or depressed. Did he want to negotiate and bargain, did he come back later and accept the offer Jesus made? We do not know. We do know that what he owned kept him from the very thing he asked for.

Now before we say we would have called the realtor and sold the house, put an ad in the paper and sold the car, held a tag sale, and sold everything else, and given the profit to the poor, understand that we are more like this man than we know. Just like him, we often have to do what we are called to do, but we are not sure about the commitment. We know, but we have not yet come to believe that "wholehearted discipleship cannot take place until the ties to [our] possessions are broken, ties so intense and so enslaving that [we] can only hang [our] heads and walk away grieving (Texts for Preaching, Year B, p. 547)."

"Traditionally, wealth was a sign of the blessing of God. That Jesus viewed it as a hindrance to entering the Kingdom of God was amazing. When Jesus used an analogy that made entrance of the rich into the Kingdom of God quite impossible, the disciples were astonished. Though they were not wealthy, they belonged to a culture whose evaluation of wealth was challenged by the teaching of Jesus (Interpretation, Mark, p. 186). The challenge comes when Jesus turns to his disciples and says twice, because they do not get it the first time, that it is hard for the people with wealth, or anyone for that matter to enter the kingdom of God. It is more possible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

Do not take this passage to mean that Jesus did not like rich people. That is not the case. Jesus looked at the man with compassion, and he loves his disciples. He just wants us to understand that if we are owned by what we own, we miss the opportunities to use what we have to the glory of God. Each of us as some assets, it can probably be said that we all have some kind of wealth, If we can provide for ourselves and for those who depend on us for food, clothing, and shelter, we are better off than many in the world. It is the same with churches, big, medium, and small have an equal call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the homeless find safe shelter as we spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

But now the disciples have a question. If it is hard for the wealthy, and for all the rest of us, then who can be saved? Ah, says Jesus. With people it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. God can and God will create the way.

It can be frustrating, this business of waiting for God to create the way for us to follow. Peter says, "but we have left everything to follow you. We left families, careers, homes and all that we knew to come with you. What is the secret answer to finding out what is possible with God? Like the man who ran to Jesus in joy and expectation and then left dejected, Peter has counted the cost of following Jesus and he wants to know that the cost was not too high.

What is it that makes living out our faith differently than we have done it before, that makes living in hope when life feels bleak doable, that makes giving up all that we have known worth it? Jesus says, you will get it all back, family, home, everything. If you have sacrificed anything for the sake of the gospel, it will be returned to you 100 fold. There will be some hard times, then it was persecution, now it may the world’s bafflement that we have chosen to follow Jesus. People might talk, the church might go through some hard times, but yes it is worth it, so claim the renewal and strength that is promised now.

So what is the secret answer? It really is not a secret at all. We heard it in verse 27, "with mortals, it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." God’s possibilities are not about material wealth, but rather about the kind of spiritual wealth that keeps things in perspective. God’s possibilities keep us prayerful and hopeful, giving and living, loving and doing. God’s possibilities help us to know that when we sacrifice for the gospel, when we make holy what God has given to us, we are freed to really enjoy all that we have, or give away all that we have. If it is done in faith, God will bless what we do.

What must we do? Hold on to the rock. "In times like these, we need a Savior. Be very sure, be very sure, your anchor holds and grips the solid rock."

I am glad we have the reading from Hebrews to remind us that the God for whom nothing is impossible has given us Jesus, the rock, the great high priest who knows our struggles. He helps us to see that our lives of faith in him and in God are worth every bit of time we have to offer. He faced his own temptation, and held on; he counted the cost, paid it anyway; he died on the cross, and is now at the right hand of God. He is made visible by the word of God, which is sharp enough to cut both for comfort and confrontation. It opens us up to amazing things. Thomas Long puts it this way:

"This sword is so sharp that it can separate even the ‘soul from the spirit,’ dividing between what really matters and what seems to matter. No one can hide from this speech act of God; the word of God unveils every human life, laid bare before the eyes of God. The word of God takes an ordinary day and makes it ‘today,’ takes an ordinary moment and makes it the time of crisis and decision, takes a routine event and makes it the theater of the glory of God, takes an ordinary life and calls it to holiness.

"Human beings want to skip the casting call, leave the play early, wander in the lobby at intermission, rewrite the ending. The living and active word of God turns wandering human beings into principal actors in the magnificent story of divine redemption, transforms frightened people who hide in the garden and make excuses into holy partners of Jesus Christ who can through him, stand up boldly and render an account (Interpretation, Hebrews, p. 61).

We need not come before God in fear and trembling, instead we have an invitation to come boldly and expectantly. "This rock is Jesus, yes’s he’s the one. Be very sure, be very sure, your anchor holds and grips the solid rock." For two thousand years, Christians have believed that the secret answer is no secret at all. Our hope, our joy, our God-filled possibilities come from the rock on which all our hope is anchored.