Good? Enough?

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  Jesus doesn’t like being called good.  In Mark’s gospel, he also doesn’t like being called God.  Many of us share that humility of Jesus deflecting a compliment; I say humility, but even saying that sounds virtuous enough that some of us might not even be able to hear that.  Maybe I should say instead that many of us share that anxiety of Jesus that deflects a compliment, the insecurity, the caution, the self-doubt or questions that can, in a way, be synonymous with humility without the virtue-signaling of calling ourselves humble.  Jesus doesn’t like being called good.  He can receive 5,000 people’s gratitude for a miracle of feeding and sending them home with leftovers, but it’s that one disciple’s voice saying “we can’t do this,” that he remembers and that scripture records.  Jesus can receive the praise and adulation of “Hosanna,” but when asked if he is good, a ruler of his people, a messenger of God, a liberator, a champion of humanity by Pilot just a few days later he demurs, “you say so.”  How many times can you hear praise but be stuck in the one tiny slight offered either by another or, equally as often, yourself?  How many times can you deflect a compliment, or not know which way to go, or refuse to accept your strengths focusing instead on all that you wish was better?  If this sounds familiar, then good news, you’re being a good disciple.  You’re following Jesus’s way.  How many of us have at least some small voice wanting, shouting in our heads saying “well, not really, and that’s not good enough, and I just don’t know, I think I have more questions than faith, and I’m sure everyone else here might be, but not me, I could do better.”  Jesus had that question too, “why do you call me good.”  And then he goes on to demonstrate how good he is.  Maybe you do that too.

  You, good faithful people of West End, know the commandments.  You know not to murder, and how to be faithful in your relationships.  You know to pay for what you use and to not deceive or defraud another in business dealings.  You have—or are—working out what honor means to you when it comes to the people who raised you, and you know that the greatest of these is to love the Lord your God with all your heart.  You like to riddle your pastor with questions like “but what is all my heart?” and “how do I love something that I can’t understand” and “why do we use this language of Lord, and what is God anyway?”  But yet, you know the commandments.  You know the work.  The number of murderers and thieves in our midst is, I believe, pretty low, so good job you non-murderers and non-thieves.  That alone might be good enough.  That’s what the law of God demands. 

  But wait, there once was a man who chased Jesus down and nearly out of breath kneels in the dirt and tells Jesus that he’s done all these things, but it doesn’t feel like enough.  And in that moment, Jesus—so says scripture—loved him.  Jesus loved this man for saying, “yes, and can’t I do more?”  Jesus, like many pastors I know, loves it when a capable, gifted person says, “what more can I do?”  So, Jesus gives him an instruction specific to him—this is an important point often missed in this story—the instruction to this man to dispose of all of his earthly assets and give the proceeds to the poor is an instruction to this one man.  This is not a commandment like the one’s Jesus, and I just quoted from God.  This is not a universal instruction.  This is not everyone go sell everything and give all the money to the poor, this is a specific invitation to a specific man whom Jesus knows is gifted with human treasure.  In contemporary ministry, most pastors I know don’t admonish the wealthiest in the congregation to sell everything immediately.  We do, however, still have specific invitations to these individuals.  While we don’t ask our most financially savvy to give everything away, we do often ask them to be on the finance committee, or on the Board of Trustees, or to chair the capital campaign.  We don’t ask you to give away all your money, but we do ask you to give away a great deal of time—an equally precious asset—and expertise—which, let’s be real, required both time and money to acquire.  We do ask for pledges.  We do ask for planned giving.  Give to each as they need, ask from each as they may give.  All things come from you, O Lord, and of you own gifts do we return a portion to you.

  The challenge Jesus issued this man causes the man distress in that moment and he goes away in grief.  How often have you known that you’re making a big ask of someone?  Do expect a yes right there on the spot?  Or are you hoping for a “this is very interesting, let me think about and sleep on it.”  Or do you consider anything except a “no” as victory?    The man in this story went away grieving, but we don’t know what he did after that.  In psychological terms, we often think of moments of real growth as a switch to the depressive position.  Accepting the reality of what we need to do in order to outgrow the fantasies we’re harboring comes with some grief, some moodiness, some inner conflict and a lot of emotion.  You parents know this most of all.  You know the emotions that come at pivotal moments of development, those terrible twos when it starts dawning on your precious perfect child that the entire world doesn’t revolve around them; that resignation or affect shift that happens right around the time they’re beginning school; the famous adolescent and teenage years when sex, sexuality, gender, and hormones all make tropical storms look like a light drizzle.  We don’t know what this man did with his grief.  At this point in the story, I don’t think Jesus knew what the man was going to do either. 

  Often, we think of this parable and imagine that the man in his grief didn’t follow Jesus’ instruction.  That he went away and, in his grief, gave up on Jesus rather than giving up his possessions.  I don’t know that I agree.  I think this man could have more likely gone away to sell everything, to give everything away, to pick up his—his­—cross and follow Jesus.  Knowing that what you are about to do is both good and right and also hard and you don’t want to is a good cause of grief.  The emotion of grief would be concordant with the acceptance of what he knew he needed to do in order to grow into the person he wants to be.  If he was going to ignore Jesus—banker that is he, CEO know it all that he’s used to being—don’t you think the emotion would be more like annoyed, or dismissive, irritated or event self-assured.  Grief, real grief, comes when we accept our responsibilities.  And from that acceptance then comes healing and wholeness and something that is so, so good.

  Jesus goes on to tell us about all the things that are impossible for us and all the everything this is possible for God.  Maybe this is why he doesn’t admit to being good or God earlier in the story.  Maybe there’s something in who Jesus can accept himself to be that goes along the lines of being not quite good, but good enough.  We might use the words decent, fine, upstanding, or faithful; we might use these words when we really can’t stomach the idea of being called good.  You’re a good artist, oh no, I’m really just trying to learn.  You’re a good partner and caretaker, oh no, it’s not about me, anyone would do what I’m doing.  You’re a good Christian, oh no, I can’t say every word of the Apostle’s Creed and I think church can be really harmful and I don’t understand why, what, or how.  We, like Jesus, love to deflect, to hold tight to the trappings and baggage that hold us back.  We store up the wrong riches, we don’t know the sum of all that we are, we cling to today’s fantasies because they’re so much safer than growing into whatever reality may be needed.  Jesus has some words for this too.

  Of all the recorded relationships Jesus has with individuals in scripture, I personally love Jesus and Peter.  They are so intimate, the best of friends.  They know each other’s’ mothers and Jesus at least loves Peter’s mom’s cooking.  They are sometimes alone in scripture—usually offstage when the sun sets, and Jesus goes off to a deserted place to sleep or pray.  Peter is witness to some of the most transformational—and transfigurational—moments of Jesus’s life.  Neither is remembered as having been married or having a partner.  They speak like best friends do, bluntly, some heatedly, often in a shorthand that the other disciples find baffling.  So, it’s little wonder to me that toward the end of the story we hear today, a story of being good enough and wanting to be more, a story of growing up in faith and self, a story of love and loss, that it’s Peter who pokes at Jesus.  “Look,” Peter says after listening to Jesus wax on about camels and eyes of needles and heaven and salvation.  “Look,” Peter says, and you can almost hear his eyes rolling as he’s pulling at his friend’s hemline to get him off his soapbox.  “Look,” Peter says, “all of us have left everything and followed you” as if to say, “it’s not that hard, we’ve talked this before, don’t give me that story of a camel and a needle again.”            

  And just as he did earlier to the unknown man who had done as the commandments require, I imagine Jesus looked at Peter and loved him so much in that moment.  Hadn’t Peter been good?  Hadn’t Peter done good?  Isn’t Peter good enough?  And speaking directly to Peter, but just loud enough so that everyone else could hear, looking directly into his best friend’s eyes, Jesus says “truly I tell you”—which in contemporary relationship speak roughly translates to, “my love, here’s the thing”—there is no one who has left home or any old relationship to form a new relationship with me who will not be blessed.  And as blessed as you will be in this moment, even more will you be blessed for eternity.  Why?  How?  Because heaven is a place for which we pack lightly and, free of our trappings, are able to dance.  Hell, on the other hand, is a place we drag all our baggage and where the weight of all we couldn’t let go pulls us down.  In this age and the next, heaven and hell are not destinations but ways of living.  Let go of things that no longer suit, and the blessings of lightness will a hundred-fold in this age.  Hold tightly to outmoded expectations or someone’s definition of you or to any of the things your mind says when I say each of you are good, and the weight will certainly hold you down, it may even crush you when it becomes much too much to bear.

  Is anyone good but God, maybe not.  Does God require anything of us but to try, most likely not.  Did God create us to be perfect, certainly not, God created us and called us good.  If God called you good, who are you to refuse?  If someone else calls you good, why refuse the God in them?  Jesus reminds us that God alone is good, but I think his humanity, his humility is clouding his memory.  Good Jewish boy that he is, Jesus knows his scripture.  Jesus knows the first words God spoke after creating humankind in Their Divine Image is that we are good, and in that God is well pleased.  You are good, Jesus is good, because God says so.  God is good because Jesus says so.  All of creation is good and good enough when we see who we are and whose we are, when we accept the struggle of growing up and growing into, when we can get the timber out of our own eyes and see each other as the goodness and the good enoughness God created each of us to be.