Jesus looks at us and loves us Proper 23B

 

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him…”

“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”  Hebrews 4:12-13

 

The “word of God,” logos in the Greek, is commonly understood to be scripture. Also, as God’s word, as in Genesis chapter 1 where God literally speaks creation into being. And yet, by the end of verse 13 logos also means “an account” or “a reckoning.” A judgement. And yet again, we also understnd logos, Word, also means “Jesus” as the incarnate or enfleshed presence of God.

 

The author of this treatise To the Hebrews chooses her words carefully, and chooses “logos,” a word that, theologically speaking, carries a lot of freight and a lot of meaning. When I first read these two verses while on silent retreat as a newly minted priest, just as the writer asserts, it shook me to my very core. In this context it is speaking of a moment of profound judgment: do I or do I not live according to the Way of the Lord?

 

Reverberating in my recent memory that day, I recalled Elie Wiesel, one afternoon, pausing in our conversation which took place between my graduation from Seminary and being ordained a priest, and suddenly saying, “Kirk, I could not do what you are about to do. I could not be a rabbi. I could not possibly bear to take on the responsibility for a congregation of people.” I felt the earth tremble under my feet, the universe shift, and realized later, that was the moment I really understood what my life was about to become. If Elie Wiesel, mentor and teacher, could not imagine taking this on, I thought, who was I to think I could do it?

 

The author of Hebrews gets it just right: the word of God is active, is living, is sharper than any two-edged sword and can pierce to the very center or one’s soul to judge our thoughts and intentions.

 

Meanwhile, a man stops Jesus, kneels before him and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” After a brief conversation about the word of God and how we ought to live, we are told Jesus looks at him, loves him and says, “Sell all you have, give it all away to the poor and follow me.” I have some idea how that man must have felt. I suspect at one time or another we all have felt the word of God piercing us to where it divides spirit from soul, joints from marrow. He was shaken to his core, and, we are told, walked away grieving, “for he had many possessions.” [Mark 10:17-31]

 

Jesus loves him, and this is what he tells him. This is the only individual we are told Jesus loves in the entire Gospel of Mark. Mark uses the word “love” sparingly, and only in the context of the two Great Commandments: To love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself. The disciples, we learn, are equally shocked. If this is what he says to those he loves, what will he say to us? Besides, we already left everything behind. What more can we do? And can it really be that difficult for those with massive wealth to inherit eternal life?

 

Yet, it is out of love that Jesus knows what gets in this man’s way of living eternal life here and now: his many possessions are occupying too much of his time and effort. Jesus knows that it is not true that “He or She who dies with the most toys wins!” Rather, she or he who loves God and loves neighbor, all neighbors, here and now is already living “eternal life,” right here, right now.

 

Amy-Jill Levine, in her book, The Difficult Words of Jesus (Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2021), does a masterful job of interpreting this difficult text among others, and I urge those interested in the Word of God to read her book for themselves. For interpreting the Word of God is a demanding task. And as we have learned at Noonday Prayer recently, to read and interpret the word of God we need to first allow the text to confront us; then be transformed by the text; only then will we be comforted by the text. If we look to scripture only for comfort, we will only hear what our own ego wants to hear.

 

If we allow the text to confront us and transform us, then we might begin to hear Jesus, who asks us all to follow him, to say that you cannot earn, deserve or inherit eternal life. Rather, we need to live eternal with him, here and now. And that, as St Paul lays out in the First Letter to the Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, which we have also been reading at Noonday Prayer, will mean different things for each of us. That is, what the man in the story is needs to do is not necessarily the same thing you or I need to do when the Word of God takes an account of who we are and who we can become.

 

We don’t know what the man in Mark ultimately decides to do. I know I have walked away from certain situations grieving the loss of a job, or a relationship, only to conclude some time later that I really did need to make a fundamental change to move on; to live eternal life with Jesus here and now in some new and different way. This only happens if we let the word of God, be it scripture or Jesus himself, confront us and initiate a fundamental transformation that brings us to a new and better place.

 

Levine does, however, imagine that this man reappears in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is arrested. For in Mark, and only in Mark, we learn that “a certain young man was following Jesus wearing nothing but a linen cloth. The soldiers caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.” [Mark 14:51-52] That is, he truly gives it all away!

 

Levine goes on to say, “There are multiple speculations on who this man is and why he is there. I’d like to think he is our questioner, who sold all he had, gave it to the poor, and in this last attempt to be with Jesus, divests of everything. We can imagine his fate. In doing so, we might imagine our own. Should our epitaph be, ‘He had everything,’ or ‘She had it all’? Might there be better inscriptions?” [Levine, p.30]

 

How about, “Jesus looks at us and loves us.”

 

May God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirt confront us daily with the Word of God so as to transform our lives, that we might become those people whose comfort is in living in the Way of the Lord; living eternal life, here and now. Amen.