First United Methodist Church
October 13th, 2024
Rev. Lauren Hall
Do Unto Others: Compassion
Nick Wallenda is one of the greatest tightrope walkers who ever lived. A few years ago, he made history by being the first person in more than a century to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. In order to gain permission to attempt the walk, he was required to wear a safety tether that would keep him from plunging to his death if he fell. The tether made his journey across the falls much safer than the daredevils who walked before him, but his walk was still challenging, since a misstep in either direction would result in failure. In order to reach his goal, he had to remain completely focused on his destination.
Although he made it across the falls without having to use the tether, he wasn’t satisfied with the attempt. He claimed that the tether threw off his balance, but I think the real reason is because the level of risk was reduced. Since his walk across Niagara Falls, he has successfully navigated across the Grand Canyon, between two sky scrapers in Chicago, and over the spinning Orlando Eye, which is a 400-foot observation wheel in Florida. He holds nine Guinness World Records and he continues to challenge himself with more and more difficult walks.
A lot of people believe that inheriting eternal life is like walking a tightrope, and it is in a way, but not in the way that most people think. The common attitude seems to be that as long as a person stays focused on their goal and doesn’t make any mistakes, he or she will be ok with God. The rich young man in our Gospel thought this way. When he approached Jesus, he was seeking a way to fine tune his life so he could be more than just successful. He wanted to be eternally successful as well.
We don’t know very much about this young man, but from our reading we see that he is polite and respectful, as he addresses Jesus with honor. The writer tells us he is rich, and we can assume from his manner and the conversation he has with Jesus that he is educated, faithful and a man of high moral character. In fact, from a parent’s point of view, he would be a perfect son-in-law. But this man isn’t satisfied with all that he already has. Like the daredevils who challenge themselves with greater and greater obstacles, this young man wanted to achieve the ultimate. And so he goes right to the source to discover what he needs to do to inherit this eternal life he’s heard Jesus talking about.
Now remember that this is a young man who has been successful in life and still sees that there is something missing. In Jesus’ time, wealth meant more than just material comforts. Many people believed that wealth was an indication of faithfulness, and it also meant having a privileged status which resulted in economic, social and political power. A wealthy Jewish family could purchase citizenship within the Roman Empire and this offered an amazing amount of protection and privileges. Paul would not have lived long enough to start and communicate with all his churches had he not been a Roman citizen.
But this is the point where we need to break away from the plot of the gospel and ask ourselves the question, what exactly is this story about? Is Jesus telling us that wealth is evil? If you are like me, this is where the story becomes a Catch 22. We don’t want it to be solely about wealth and possessions because if it is, then we are faced with the same question that the rich young ruler is faced with. Would we be willing to sell everything we owned and give it to the poor? Are we that much different than this young man?
Why this particular challenge?
There are multiple directions we can go here. Let’s consider compassion.
I think one of the main struggles in this scripture is the concept of control. The young man was prepared to hear some rules that he needed to follow so that he could inherit eternal life, but he wasn’t ready to trust Jesus with his life. He believed he was a good person, that he had done what he needed to do up to this point, and that he could deal with a few more rules if the reward was eternal life. But Jesus asked him to give up control – to give up his privilege. As long as he had money, he could decide when and what he ate, where he slept, and how others treated him. But if he gave it all away and followed Jesus, these things would be determined by Jesus, and not by him. He would lose his identity as a rich young man and be defined instead as one of Jesus’ followers. He would become vulnerable. He didn’t want that. All he wanted was to inherit eternal life.
Vulnerability allows us to experience life from another perspective. During the 60s my father traveled with a group of clergy to Cleveland, Mississippi to speak with people from both sides of the voter’s rights movement. He stayed with an African American family that was active in the movement. The young people had meetings every night about integrating the library in town. His clergy group went to talk with the librarian. She made them promise not to tell her husband. She said if they could ask the young people from the black community, for the time being to go to the library between 10 and 12, she would be sure to be at the desk to see that nothing happened to them. So they arranged for teams of 2 or 3 students to go once a week but there was a different team each time. This was the kind of work he was doing.
To us, 50 years later, this may not sound like a huge thing. But just by being there, my father took a huge risk. He experienced vulnerability in a way that he had never encountered in Connecticut, where he grew up.
He told me that he and his companions tried to go to church one Sunday. The priests approached them and asked them to leave. They said that they weren’t going to do or say anything – they just wanted to worship. The priests told them that if they insisted on being in church there wouldn’t be any worship. At another point they were really in danger because they were being chased by some members of the KKK. Fortunately, their Volvo was faster than the old pick-up truck chasing them, so they got away.
I asked him why he was willing to take these kinds of risks. He told me that he wanted my sisters and me to have a father who stood up for important values and it’s hard to stand up for something if you don’t experience it first-hand. One thing that impressed him the most was that the woman he was living with said that she had worked for white people and they were segregationists of course, but she came to know and love them and they loved her. Then she asked him how she could teach her two teen-age kids to keep fighting for their rights, but NOT to hate white people. He couldn’t answer that question, but it changed his perspective on the entire Civil Rights movement. As he discussed her relationship with this white family, she told him that yes, she loved them, but other white people had hanged her father from the tree across the street.
I know that my father was transformed as a result of this experience. In later decades he would be involved in a variety of movements involving human rights, including women’s equality, apartheid, the World Peace Council, medical ethics, and gender identity. For him the challenge of this passage was to give up security and privilege and learn to identify with those who are suffering. My challenge will be different and so will yours. But what we have to remember is that in whatever we face, the church is important, and that the church is a product of the community. Sometimes it is our job to try to keep the community true to the compassion and values that we learn from Jesus Christ.
And that’s what has to happen. Spiritual growth results from trusting Jesus Christ. In today’s scripture Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. In Jesus’ day the rich controlled the resources at the expense of the poor. I think one of the reasons we can’t enter the Kingdom of God on our own is because we want to be in control of the camel. Eventually we need to give up control and trust Christ and seek a new or renewed life so that the Holy Spirit can begin to transform us. Relinquishing that control, or submitting our lives to Jesus Christ, allows us to follow the camel through that needle. Entering the kingdom of God results in a transformation that is comparable to giving up everything that you once depended on for security and identity. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20) No matter how invested we are with resources, we cannot power our way into the Kingdom of God. In fact, Jesus says, “for mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
As our District Superintendent told us at Charge Conference, “It’s our time.” Amen.
