October 15, 2006

By Harry T. Cook

Mark 10: 17-27

How I would love to know how this text from the Gospel according to Mark will be treated today in places like Christ Church, Greenwich, Ct., or Christ Church, Winnetka, Ill., or Christ Church, Cranbrook or Christ Church, Grosse Pointe – parishes of our Episcopal Church which sit in the lap of American upper-class luxury. I want to know whether the rector of anyone of them will stand in his pulpit today and, quoting Mark quoting Jesus, say: How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God, and then not go on to spiritualize it in some way that takes the edge off.

If the rector of anyone of those parishes does preach the face-value of that text, I will want next to know when and where he will be looking for work. If such a sermon on the text were to be preached in anyone of those places, word would soon reach the editors of The Wall Street Journal and the bloviators of talk-radio, and the rector in question would, at best, be accused of inciting class warfare, and, at worst, of being a pinko, commie socialist.

Now let us actually look at the passage as it appears in the Greek language of the New Testament, which almost certainly Jesus didn’t speak. But not to bother about that. Those in the first years of the church – say sometime in the latter third of the first century – may have heard it this way.[This is my own translation of the passage]: Those obsessed by the management or business of wealth will find it difficult to realize the rule of God.

So it is not wealth, per se, that gets one lost on the way to realizing the rule of God, but obsession with the business of its management. The word we translate wealth means in Greek “possessions,” including but not limited to money.

I encountered a man the other day outside a car wash. He was carrying a battered box and gave a clear impression that he was homeless and that the box contained all his worldly goods. He was giving so much attention to his box that he nearly got run down by an SUV emerging from the car wash.

Just three days after that experience, I was contacted by a parishioner who had not appreciated being sent a notice that the payment of his pledge to this church was overdue. The conversation was not particularly pleasant. The gist of his message to me was that the church could basically go to hell. All this business about supporting homeless shelters and soup kitchens and poor people in general was hooey. He had his own affairs to manage. According to him, the church was just supposed to be here to guarantee him the occasional opportunity to seek some reassurance of personal salvation.

Since the early Christian movement out of which the Gospel of Mark emerged must surely have been of the same or similar demographic that Jesus would have addressed – what my mentor in New Testament studies, J. D. Crossan, calls “those on the margin between poverty and destitution” – the statement about those with wealth finding it difficult to realize the rule of God could be not only people awash in the old money of Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, but the man I saw at the car wash. And it could be you and me. It’s about one’s attitude toward what one possesses – or is possessed by.

Now then, what is this rule of God? The tradition way of putting it is kingdom of God, but since we’re allergic to kings (including, perhaps, Presidents who get to thinking they’re kings), we prefer the actual meaning of the Greek word basileia, which means “sovereignty.” And “sovereignty” means “rule” or “dispensastion.”

What Mark in particular meant by “the rule of God” was an egalitarian economic arrangement that put down the mighty from their seats and exalted the humble and meek. Or what we might call “leveling the playing field.” But only those who are not obsessed by their possessions – ranging all the way from those with fabulous wealth to people of the middle class to the homeless man with his box – can realize that rule.

If that rule promotes class warfare, so be it. Better that war than the hopelessly depraved one in Iraq.

© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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