October 14, 2012 | 8:00 a.m.

Possessions, Possibilities, and Persecutions

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 119:1–16
Mark 10:17–31

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Mark 10:27 (NRSV)

You are the giver of all good things. . . .
We are takers, who take from you,
day by day, daily bread,
taking all we need as you supply. . . .
And then taking more. . . .
Turn our taking into giving . . .
giving as he gave himself up for us all.

Walter Brueggemann
“We Are Takers” in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

These are the New Testament call stories with which we are most familiar, stories in which Jesus says, “Follow me,” and without hesitation, the nets, boats, family members, and livelihoods are left and Jesus is followed. The story we read this morning is also a call story, one in which Jesus says, “Come, follow me,” and instead of following, the one who was invited goes away.

Mark tells us a bit about that man. He is eager; he runs up to Jesus and kneels at his feet. He is earnest: sincerely interested in the good news that Jesus has been preaching, he asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. He is righteous: from the time of his childhood, he has kept all the commandments of God. He is rich: Mark says that he had many possessions. All in all, he seems like a really likeable man. Eager, earnest, righteous, and rich—these are all favorable traits, aren’t they? What could be lacking?

And yet Jesus says to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own. Give the money to the poor. Then come, follow me.” Upon hearing this, the man was stunned. This wasn’t the response he was expecting from Jesus. In fact, this wasn’t the response that the disciples were expecting from Jesus. Even though they themselves left all their possessions to follow Jesus, they too were shocked by Jesus’ response. After all, according to Jewish tradition, wealth was considered to be a blessing from God, a sign of divine favor, so much so that in his final address to the people of Israel, Moses told them that if they obeyed all the commandments, the Lord would make them abound in prosperity (Deuteronomy 28:11). It just didn’t occur to them to criticize the wealth of a righteous man.

Surprisingly then, Jesus says to them, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” He goes on to say, “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.” An audience, for whom a camel was probably the largest animal they would ever see and the eye of a needle the smallest opening through which a thing could fit, would quickly get the point—that Jesus was speaking of a total impossibility. Perplexed and exasperated, the disciples ask him, “Then who can be saved?” If even a person whose righteousness has merited a wealth of possessions cannot acquire eternal life, then who can? To that question, Jesus responds, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

When something impossible for humans is made possible by God, we call that a miracle. And this seems to be Jesus’ point: it takes a miracle, not merit, to be saved. Unlike material wealth—which a person could hope to acquire and possess as a commodity—eternal life, or salvation, Jesus seems to be saying, is something qualitatively different.

In an essay about different kinds of possessions, Dutch economic historian Arjo Klamer makes distinctions that I think are illuminating. Not all possessions, he points out, are commodities. While we usually think of tangible, material commodities that can be measured as economic capital, there are other less tangible, immeasurable kinds of capital that are nonetheless generative of value. There are social capital and cultural capital. In a sermon I preached several weeks ago, I talked about social capital, a term coined by sociologist of American religion Robert Wuthnow. It is, if you recall, the capacity to generate social values like friendship, trust, respect, collegiality, responsibility, and solidarity (Arjo Klamer, “Property and Possession: The Moral Economy of Ownership” in Having: Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life, edited by William Schweiker and Charles Mathewes, p. 344). Membership in a group is a social good, and if you invest your time, resources, and energy into it, by doing things like going to Christmas gatherings, going to Coffee Hour, giving compliments, writing thank-you notes, caring for people, and spending time with people, you build up social capital, yours and the group’s (p. 344). Some people argue that social capital is the most important kind of capital a person or an organization can have.

There is another kind of capital: cultural capital. Cultural capital is “the capacity to inspire and be inspired” (p. 344). You might recognize cultural capital in visiting a museum, sitting in this Sanctuary, listening to beautiful music, walking a labyrinth, attending a worship service. It is what enables intellectuals and artists to have moments of creativity and insight. It is what enables us to experience the grace of God (p. 344). Some might argue that cultural capital generates the most important values of all, because it gives meaning to our lives.

If we only think of capital in terms of those things that can be commoditized, counted, and measured, we might fail to recognize and adequately value social and cultural capital. Even though they cannot be measured, social and cultural capital are nonetheless real, felt, and palpable. Caring and being cared for, praying and being prayed for, experiences of inspiration, moments of awe, feeling the grace of God, though immeasurable, are nonetheless powerful enough to make a difference in our lives and in the world. And though social and cultural capital are different from, they are not indifferent to, economic capital. Economic capital can be used to generate greater social and cultural values.

Some of you may have heard Lillian Daniel preach this past year. She was one of our guest preachers at the 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. services. Besides being a preacher, Lillian is also a writer. Her first book is called Tell It Like It Is. It is a book that reclaims the practice of testimonies in the church. She writes about the New England Congregationalist congregation that she formerly served, where members of that congregation decided to experiment with the practice of testimony in formal worship settings. They decided that they would speak about God’s grace in the world and in their everyday lives and about the Spirit’s often subtle and sometimes miraculous workings. During the first year of their experiment, they decided that they would focus their testimonies on “giving” testimonies. As Lillian listened to giving testimonies over the year, she was struck by how holistic their approach was. She writes,

The speakers may have prepared themselves to speak about money, or a possible capital campaign, but what came out was a full story of faith that generally began or ended with the church. I don’t think they were avoiding the subject of giving to the church, but rather that they saw their lives as a whole, wrapped in God. And so a testimony about increasing one’s pledge was connected to the church of one’s youth, to the economy of the day, and to the community in which they now worshiped. (Lillian Daniel, Tell It Like It Is, p. 53)

Testimonies on financial pledging and economic giving, in the context of the church, could not be separated from and thus turned into testimonies about social and cultural capital—about the people and the values that meant the most to them.

It seems to me that the man who approached Jesus was searching for the highest good, the thing of highest value. “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” he asked. Unfortunately he did not stick around long enough to hear the rest of what Jesus had to say. He didn’t hang out long enough with the other followers of Jesus to know what it feels like to be cared for and prayed for, to stand in solidarity with and be persecuted for the sake of someone else or something you believe in. So when Jesus told him, “go,” “sell,” and “give,” so that he could “come,” and “follow,” the man did not know that were he to do this, he would receive a hundredfold capital. For “truly I tell you,” Jesus explained to his disciples, “there is no one who has left his house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” Notice that Jesus said that the hundredfold possessions would be accompanied by persecutions.

Jesus is up front about what happens when you follow him. There is an immeasurable price to be paid. By being one of his followers, a member of his body, you end up taking on the cares and concerns, the prayers and the problems, of one another. You end up committing yourselves to each other’s causes, bearing each other’s burdens, and sharing each other’s sorrows. And before you know it, your sacrifice becomes your greatest capital. There is no greater miracle than this. For God all things are possible.