How many of us find today’s gospel encounter with Jesus to be really frightening?
Do we really identify with this rich young man, or what? You know, it is very complicated for us because, he has notes and comments everywhere in the scriptures. He being this young man, we encounter him over and over again in Scripture, and we encounter him in ourselves every day. It is as if we are writing a personal journal entry when we hear today’s gospel parable.
What is it about this encounter with the Lord that so strikes us? Well, wouldn’t we all say that we strive to be good people? Come on now. We’re not out robbing and pillaging villages. We’re not the ones who are commandeering neighborhoods. We are constantly looking for how we can be better people, more generous, more kind. We get upset when ourselves, when we snap.
We do all of those things. And so, in today’s encounter with the Lord, the rich man says exactly what we say. I’ve done all these things since I was young. I really have tried to be good. So this young man, and in fact, each one of us are looking for the catch. The what if, but only the way out.
There is no catch. There is no way out except to say that the gospel is necessarily just about wealth and personal possessions. It is also about the encounter with Christ. It is about the spiritual journey and how it is that each day we follow the path of Christ calls us to. For some of us, money may get in the way.
For others of us. It can be something else. It can be the desire to be light. It could be the desire for advancement in business. It could be we want to be the most perfect, successful, beautiful one that we can be. Let me say that a different way. We want to be the one that we can control. We want to control how it is that we look beautiful.
Our successful and journey. There’s the problem. We want to be in control. What the Lord is really asking us to do today is surrender. To have an encounter with Christ that leads us to surrendering. Making that leap of faith. Trusting in God to be the source of our true wealth. Wisdom, joy, happiness. Jesus loves the rich man.
What can be better than that? Shouldn’t we all be walking around saying, Jesus loves me? I know that the Bible tells me so. The rich man is trying to do his best to be good and a decent person. And he is telling that to Jesus. But Jesus says, don’t hold anything back. I love you now. Love me.
Love God with your whole heart, your whole mind and your whole soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t let anything hold you back.
How many of us are like the rich young man? How many of us are sad at hearing today’s gospel? Not because we want to be the richest, or the most beautiful, or the most famous, but because we want to be in control. We want to hold something back. And that something back is the love, the total love of God, our father.
It is the major hurdle in our spiritual journey, and that spiritual hurdle is too high for us. So parents, my young disciples are not here today. It’s, after all, a three day weekend. But don’t parents want to be proud of their children? Didn’t we want our mothers and fathers to be proud and imagine a future for us? You know, my parents always wanted us to be able to say, my son is in the diplomatic corps.
But when I told them at age five that I was going to be a priest and never quite made it for them. And so one of my favorite moments with my father, and clearly I am not over this one, was when, after having achieved six master puppeteer, six master’s degrees, two doctorates and ordination, my father looked at me and said, I wish you were just a little bit more successful.
Thanks, dad. But in that I always want to ask parents, what is the one thing that you never say I want for my child? I want my child to be wise. I want my child to understand integrity. The path of wisdom. The path of truth. The path we heard about in our first two readings today. The path of wisdom and truth has no monetary gain attached to it.
None. It does not promise a new car. The best address or a large vacation. The path of wisdom is often the road of sacrifice. It brings with it little prestige. No bumper stickers, probably, and nothing that says, my child is the wisest kid in the school. Yet wisdom is the one thing that will allow us to make the spiritual hurdle.
It is the one thing that will allow us to truly look at Christ Jesus and say, I have encountered the Lord and I love the Lord totally. The Book of Wisdom is written in the voice of Solomon, who as a young child inherited a kingdom. But what did he pray for? Wisdom. The passage tells us that he knows that wisdom is beyond health and power, beyond splendor and beauty.
How do we attain this wisdom? How do we help our family and friends attain this wisdom? How do we help rich young men and women everywhere in the world attain this wisdom? It would be wonderful if we could send everybody off to Wisdom Camp, but we can’t. It would be better for us if we could, but naturally that isn’t going to happen.
So how do we do it? By demonstrating that we ourselves are on the true path to wisdom. By showing humility rather than arrogance. By seeking Christ Jesus in our discernment rather than success, and by seeking guidance through prayer rather than commenting on what everybody else is doing wrong. The quest for wisdom doesn’t lead to the possession of absolute truth, nor does it make sense.
Spread out all over the world, bringing down ticket agencies. But it does lead us to encountering Christ. It does lead us to the teacher of discipleship who says, I love you. Come, follow me. The wise don’t own wisdom. They simply follow it. God provides all we need. The rich young man wouldn’t let go of two of control in order to allow Christ in.
Our second reading tells us what living well means, and it means wisdom. So today, what is it that makes me like the rich young man? What is it that I really want to control? And what is it that holds me back? Keeping me from saying yes to a true encounter with Jesus Christ through loving him with all my heart.
For the rich young man and for us. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.