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.

We listen to a lengthy selection from the gospel of Mark, and it comes with a young man coming up to Jesus and basically asking, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus then gives him the commandments as we have come to know them. And the young man responds and says, well, I have done all of those things.

We are with Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. And what happens is there in the area of the Transjordan, which would be the lower end of the Galilee region, an area that was under the control of Herod? And so the Pharisees come and again, they’re looking for an excuse, some reason, to have Jesus condemn. And because they want him out of the way.

And so what they do is they pose this question to him to test him. And they do it very deliberately because they know that they’re in the area of hatred. And because of that, they know that Herod is the one who had John the Baptist killed, because John kept telling him that it was wrong for him to be married to Herodias, the wife of his brother.