Proper 23 (October 9-15)
Texts: Mark 10:17-31;
Heb 4:12-16; Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Qc_CglVHioU
Preached semi-extemporaneously from Sermon Notes.
NO LONGER RICH OR POOR IN THE COMING AGE OF GOD’S REIGN
In the category of “full disclosure”: There are many times that I modify the translations of our readings on Sunday. Most of the time, Cathi (our professional assistant) is the only person to know that. I simply send my translation of a reading to her, and she puts it in the bulletins. This morning, I let you in on it, because occasionally I think it’s important for you to not only let you know that I’m doing it, but also why. This morning’s Gospel offers a good opportunity to talk about why translations matter.
When I read the Gospel, I read about the wealthy man running up to Jesus, kneeling, and asking him, “Good teacher, what should I do to inherit the life of the age to come?” In most translations, it reads, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Instead of that familiar phrase “eternal life,” I’ve translated it as “the life of the age to come.” Why make this change? (Thanks for asking!) Because it feeds into the thinking about the Gospel message which I believe we need to change . . . to upgrade . . . to revitalize.1
What do you think about when you hear the phrase “eternal life”? Isn’t it the life after death in heaven that’s promised to us? We hear that phrase “eternal life” and we automatically start thinking about going to heaven when we die. It’s what we’ve been conditioned to do in the way we’re taught about the Gospel. Here’s a different kind of example of conditioning from the world of advertising. Spectrum Internet has been using the phrase “life unlimited” in their ads. On the surface, “life unlimited” seems to mean about the same thing as “eternal life,” right? But Spectrum is not wanting to make you think about life after death. No, they are showing you images of people whose lives are somehow much better now because they’re using Spectrum Internet. Here’s the conditioned response they hope you begin to make: hear the phrase “life unlimited” and buy Spectrum Internet to improve your life now.
Spectrum Internet’s use of “life unlimited,” in other words, you might say is ‘down to earth.’ It’s not about the afterlife. And I bring it up because the rich man in today’s Gospel Reading is also likely more ‘down to earth.’ Jewish people of the first century were more ‘down to earth’ than us contemporary Christians. Their thinking was not first and foremost about the afterlife. At the heart of Jewish thinking is that God, in the beginning, made a very good creation and then humankind messed it up. So their first choice in thinking about salvation is never that God has an evacuation plan to save us from the good creation God made but we messed up. No, why would God give up on the good creation? Jews were more worried that God would give up on us at some point than that God would abandon the rest of the good creation. No, being Jewish is to always think in terms of the base line of God creating the world very good. So any plan of salvation would revolve around cleaning up the mess we made of it, not scooping good people off the mess to some otherworldly place called “heaven.”
Even today, good Jews speak about our task here and now as tikkun olam, a time of repair. Tikkun means “repair,” and olam means “age,” as in a long period of time. Tikkun olam, an age of repair. In Jewish thinking, God is calling us to be part of the fixing of the mess we made of the very good creation. That’s what our life on earth should be about.
That Hebrew word olam, in fact, helps us to transition back to the translation issue in today’s Gospel reading. In Jesus’ time, Jews used two other phrases with the Hebrew word olam, “age,” i.e., a long period of time, or “world”:
ha-olam hazeh: the “present age” (present world)
ha-olam ha-ba: the “age to come” (world to come)
The “present age” refers to God’s good creation as messed up by humans; the “age to come” refers to the time when God will reign and act to fix things. That’s why in the second part of the Gospel Jesus twice mentions the reign of God. For Jews the notions of the reign and God and the age to come are basically the same thing. The age to come is the time when God will reign on earth through God’s Messiah. This man wants to know how he can take part in God’s coming reign.
So here’s the important point about translating today’s Gospel. It’s this latter time, the “age to come,” that the rich man would be asking Jesus about! That’s why Jesus also mentions God’s reign a couple times in this passage. The man wants to know how he can be a part of the coming age when God’s reign on earth will act to fix the mess we humans made of it.
Now, think about the difference of these two translations:
• “eternal life” conditions us to think about life after death, so we understand the man to be asking what he needs to do to get to heaven. Think about Jesus’ answer. The rich need to sell everything and give it to the poor to get to heaven? How is that grace?!
• “life in the age to come” means taking part in how God’s reign begins to fix the mess we human beings have made. The man wants to be a part of that — until he learns that that will mean to first sell what he has and give it to the poor.
Last week, when we were talking about the Reconciling in Christ process and reading the passage from Galatians 3, we read that, being baptized into God’s work of fixing things, it means that all the ways in which we human beings are divided from one another begin to go away. Paul says there’s no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Another very important point of division that we’re reading about today is what? Between poor and rich. So Jesus is trying to tell that man that if you want to enter God’s reign, the coming age in which God is fixing the mess we human beings made, then there can no longer be a division between rich and poor. A rich person sells everything and gives it to the poor as part of entering the new reality where there is no longer rich and poor. Do you see?
Think for a moment about how it’s easier to find grace in the second way of thinking. For a rich person to sell everything is not a precondition to going to heaven after you die. It is the precondition to beginning to live in God’s reign where all the ways in which we’re divided from each other begin to melt away — including rich and poor! He should sell everything because the Good News of living in God’s reign is that we will no longer be divided between rich and poor. We all will be relatively equal in having enough so that our lives may flourish.
Examples:
First, the familiar story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Zacchaeus is a rich tax collector who has made his money by defrauding fellow Jews. When he encounters Jesus’ gracious bringing of God’s reign, he begins to make amends without Jesus even asking. He volunteers to do what the rich man in today’s story is asked to do but can’t.
Second, the story of the Senegalese born soccer star, Sadio Mané, who now makes tens of millions a year and gives much of it to helping his Senegalese neighbors to build schools and hospitals and more. Responding to people noticing how the screen on his cell phone was all cracked, implying that he might act like other rich people to make sure he had the latest and greatest stuff. Mané replied to this expectation: “Why would I want 10 Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? I starved, I worked in the fields, I played barefoot, and I didn’t go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing. I have built schools [and] a stadium; we provide clothes, shoes, and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips, and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me.”
Finally, consider our current economics as we prepare for a very important election: which approach is closer to closing the gap between rich and poor? Focusing on the rich that wealth might trickle down to others? Or focusing on the middle class and leveling things out, closing the gap between rich and poor? Do you see the ways in which we advocate for various economic options can participate in God’s healing and transforming the mess we’ve made? The Good News of our Gospel message is not just about the afterlife. It’s about tikkun olam, repairing the world we’ve messed up. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, October 13, 2024
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Qc_CglVHioU
Note
1. My primary teacher on rethinking how to translate “eternal life” has been N.T. Wright. For more see my webpage: https://girardianlectionary.net/learn/eternal-life-in-scripture/
