Be Careful What You Ask For by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

  So, this is how the story goes (Mark 10:17-31 from the Message Translation for those following along on the Web). A rich young man, a good and faithful man, runs up to Jesus one day and asks Jesus, “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him to keep the commandments: “Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your father and mother.”

    The young man says, “That’s easy, I’ve been doing that all my life.”  You see that was the young man’s big mistake. He should have stopped right there. There were Ten Commandments in his day, ten laws that were clear cut – follow the law and you are in good shape with God.

    But for some reason, that young man, knew, in his heart, it was not good enough. I think he had been hanging around with Jesus too much. I think that man had a sense that there was more to this Jesus story than just following some strict moral laws. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that you should not take what is not yours, neither property, nor the life of another human being nor the wife of another man.

    But you see, this young many had everything. He was wealthy. He had a big house, lots of servants, and land; a fleet of camels, and herds of goats and cattle. All the food he could eat and plenty to waste. And yet, he had a sense that he might not have eternal life, so when he had a chance to ask Jesus, he did. He could have just gone along, minding his own business, trusting that following those commandments was enough. Instead, he had to ask: “What more can I do?”

    BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU ASK JESUS A QUESTION. BECAUSE YOU MIGHT JUST GET AN ANSWER.  Anybody out there ever had that happen?

    You see, I think the young man KNEW. He knew that there was more to this life of following Jesus than just following some moral laws. He knew that it was more than what you do not do. You do NOT STEAL, you do NOT MURDER, you do NOT COVET.  It’s about what you DO.

    Jesus said, “Alright, then, if you really want to take this to the next level, I will tell you how to do it. I will tell you how to live in the presence of God not just in this world, but for all eternity, SELL everything you have, and GIVE IT TO THE POOR. Then  come and follow me.  BAM!

    Don’t you just imagine that wealthy young man wished that he could take his question back?  It’s like one of those elaborate domino set ups   And once you start it, you wish you could stop, because you realize that you really did not mean to start it. You wanted to add one more piece. Or you meant to get your video camera. Or you accidentally bump it, when you are almost set up, but not quite done and then you have to start over.

    I think that’s how the rich young ruler must have felt when he asked that question. Darn it! I was feeling pretty good about myself and my life.   Don’t you think he wanted to just suck that question right back into his mouth. I am following all the commandments. And I have a good life.

    Why did I have to mess this all up by asking Jesus: “What more must I do to have eternal life?  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR! BECAUSE IF YOU ASK JESUS A QUESTION, HE MAY JUST GIVE YOU AN ANSWER, AND then you have to decide whether or not YOU ARE GOING TO LISTEN TO HIM.

    From the story we are not so sure about the young man. Because you see, Jesus tells him:
“There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.”
22 The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.
He went on to tell his disciples:
27 Jesus was blunt: “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you let God do it.”

    There Jesus goes again, telling us, we can do anything, if we just trust God.  We can do anything with God. But the young man in the story went away really sad, because he had built up a personal storehouse of plenty of material wealth. He did not want to let go of his physical treasure. He felt that those things gave him pleasure and security. He could not imagine that greater pleasure and security could come from letting go of all that stuff, helping people who were homeless and hungry, and putting his trust in God and God alone for his security.   We couldn’t map his mind around that.

    We’re told that the early Christians, in the book of Acts, held all of their property in common. They sold what they had, and put everything together and lived in community. They gave money to buy food for those in their communities who were poor.

    In our own day, a few radical Christians try such experiments, for awhile. It’s usually young adults, idealistic, who don’t have much to share anyway, who try these experiments for awhile. It rarely lasts long. They have kids. Life gets complicated. And they give up.

    Selling all we have, to give to the poor, and holding all our wealth in common, as Jesus challenged the young man to do, does not really seem practical.  Of course, I’m betting it did not seem practical to the young man on that day either. And yet Jesus absolutely dared to ask him to do it.

    Why?  Because it challenged him to let go of ownership of his stuff, and to put his trust in God.

    You see, when we say we want to follow Jesus, then he challenges us to remember that the whole earth belongs to God. It is a gift that God shares with us. None of it belongs to us.

    I am not being philosophical. I am dead serious.  This Earth does not belong to us. God is the creator. God breathes life into each one of us. Everything we have, is a gift from God. We didn’t earn it. And it can be taken away from us at any moment.  We know that, we’ve seen it happen.

    We are stewards. It’s a religious word.  Being a steward means that we work for God. God allows us to take care of this earth, but it belongs to God.   God gave it to us to take care of.

    That’s why Jesus could say to that young man, “So, you want to follow me? Well then, trust me. Give away everything and really follow me.”  Anyone wish they had stayed in bed today?

    So what does this story mean for us?  Well if we take it literally, we could sell everything we have, and give our wealth to the poor and then we could live and work alongside the poor to work for more just systems in our world. A few Christians in our day are called to do that, and I commend them for living out their calling.  And there are people among us doing that.  I admire people who have that calling.  But it’s a tiny fraction of our Christian Community. 

    For the rest of us, we take baby steps, and maybe some grown up steps, to simplify our own lives so that we can share our wealth with others who have less. We try to see the connections between our own actions and how they affect the rest of the world.  In this way, we follow Jesus, and change the world.

    Let me give you a few examples. When I was a senior in college I became a vegetarian. One, I don’t really like the idea of eating animals. A second reason is that I read about how animals are treated. But a third is that I learned about the food chain, and that if we all eat lower on the food chain there would be more food available for starving people in the world. Now, yes, I know that hunger is more about politics than about availability of food, but I also learned that they are cutting down rain forests in South America in order to produce enough beef for our Big Macs. It takes much more of the earth’s energy to produce a pound of beef than a pound of vegetable matter. So, I decided, not to eat meat. At the time, a skeptical friend said to me, “Do you really think your decision is going to change the world?”  Like one person not eating beef is going to stop the destruction of the rain forrest.

    Well of course I knew I was only one person. But that was 27 years ago. And I am guessing I am not the only person who became a vegetarian in those years. So I think the savings do add up.

    And now a movement has started called Meatless Mondays. Have you heard of it? You can read about it as Meatlessmondays.com. Sure enough we can change the world and save our planet by eating vegetarian one day a week. Besides the numerous health advantages to eating vegetarian, we can all reduce our carbon footprint by skipping meat one day a week. You see, “40 calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of feed lot beef in the U.S. Compare this to the 2.2 calories of fossil fuel energy needed to produce one calorie of plant-based protein. Moderating meat consumption is a great way to cut fossil fuel demand.”(source: http://www.meatlessmonday.com/why-meatless/).

    It also takes more water to produce to produce beef than it does to produce vegetable matter, so it cuts down on water usage to eat vegetarian for even one day a week. We are better stewards of this Earth for all the inhabitants, by eating lower on the food chain, even one day a week.

   But there are also many people who do not have access to healthy fresh produce. That’s why urban gardens are so important. The Seagate Foodbank has one of those gardens. Yesterday, we went to work there. We thought we were going to go box up lots of those boxes of food for seniors like we usually do, but when we got there, they told us they needed help in their garden. So we helped them cut down their pepper plants at the end of the season and harvest the last of their harvest.

     In two hours work we harvested 120 pounds of peppers. They will take these out in their traveling fresh market on Monday and Wednesday. They go out to neighborhoods where senior citizens live and other low income people live, who cannot get out to the farmer’s market downtown. And they will give away lots of fresh produce to people who cannot afford to buy it.

    There are lots of these community gardens around town that need volunteers to keep them going. One of the baby steps could be that we could get more involved with them next Spring and Summer. Giving our precious time to help hungry people get healthy food is another way to live out the call of Jesus to give away what we have in order to follow him. 

    What else can we do? Kurt and I have worked to increase our giving to our church every year since we got married. And we are now giving at least 10% of our family income. It took us awhile to get there, and we have made some sacrifices. It was not easy, but it is an important value for us. We defer spending on some things so we can do this. If you drive by our house you can see that it still needs painting. I mentioned that last year.  We defer spending on some things, but don’t defer giving to the church and charity.  Becca and I buy lots of our clothes at Savers. (We kinda think that is fun.) But we will not cut our giving to this ministry because it is too important.

    Christmas is coming soon. The Lead Team is meeting next week and we will be firming up plans for our Village Christmas offering. If you are new to The Village get ready for some fun. We do Christmas big. That is, we don’t just set up a mitten tree and ask you to buy a toy for a child in need. We ask you to be sacrificial in your giving. Because you see, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, not ours.  We like to honor Jesus on Jesus’ birthday.

     So whatever we do for ourselves, we ask you to equal it in your giving to Jesus. We want to honor Jesus in our celebration of his birth. So we will take up an offering for Jesus’ birthday to help some of Jesus’ most vulnerable children and we will ask you to give generously. There are undoubtedly people on your Christmas list who don’t NEED anything, and so we will give you a chance to give to our Christmas offering in their name and honor Jesus with a meaningful gift for their Christmas gift this year. A meaningful gift rather than another sweater. Stay tuned.

    All these changes in our lives, big and small, add up: A meatless Monday, giving some time in a community garden so that others can have fresh produce, diverting our own money from something we don’t need and toward our church or another charity. They add up. It is sort of like dominoes. You knock one over and it is no big deal. But when you put a bunch together, the cumulative effect begins to make a difference. Watch this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu1qMezJRlcHYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu1qMezJRlc&feature=relmfu"HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu1qMezJRlc&feature=relmfu"feature=relmfu

    So how about you?  If Jesus asked you/challenged you to do something you might do, what might you do? What have you done to change your patterns in order to follow Jesus? Is there something you might challenge us all to do?  In a few weeks, at our anniversary celebration we will be asking you all for ideas beyond what we already are doing to change the world, so some bring us those ideas.  We’re already working for time to time with places and organizations  like the Seagate Food Bank, Food for Thought, Jobs with Justice, Equality Toledo, Second Chance, Sunshine of NWO, AIDS Resource Center of Northwest Ohio and many more.

    If you want to be challenged and be part of a community that challenges other to do something to change the world, find one out there. If you’re near the corner of the Anthony Wayne Trail and Conant Street in Maumee, come check us out.  We are following Jesus and changing the world from this little corner in Northwest Ohio.