Prop 23b.03                                                      October 15,2006

Jesus offers a more interesting, engaging,
         and altogether wonderful way of looking at the world
                  than most people know.
The simplistic religion that is so often called Christianity
         is a caricature of our faith.
Whether people embrace Jesus’ way or not
         is really up to them.
But, as Christians, we ought to know it ourselves

         – not at the children’s Sunday School level –
         I mean the adult version,
                   the uncensored director’s cut Christianity.

The best place to start is with “What are we trying to do
         and how do we go about doing it?”
The televangelist answers we are trying to go to heaven
         and we get there by being good and believing right.
But the Gospels don’t show Jesus much interested
         in this Heaven and Hell, carrot and stick religion.
In today’s lesson,
         the young man asked what he needed to do
                    to make his life eternal.
Jesus gave him the obvious Jewish answer.
Follow the law, the halacha, the very name of which means
         the way of life.

The young man was already doing that.
Yet, he felt in his heart that Jesus’ answer was too easy.
He felt something was still missing.

That got Jesus’ attention.
Here was someone looking for more
         than a passing grade.
He had asked about eternal life.
But he was actually looking for something more.
So Jesus gave him the directions to the Kingdom of God.
Jesus said, “You lack one thing. Sell all you have and follow me.”

Christianity is a way to comprehensive well-being
         for the whole person.
But there are different names for different parts
         of that well-being.
The young man asked about eternal life.
Jesus gave him th answer to that.

But the young man wanted more.
So Jesus invited him into the Kingdom of God

         – which is different.
Sometimes Jesus talked about wholeness,
         which was different still.
St. Paul talked about justification,
         and that is different still.

These different words name different aspects
         of the comprehensive well-being,
                    the happiness, the flourishing for which we long.
They are all related, all connected, and yet they are not the same

         – and they are not achieved in the same way.

It’s a gross oversimplification to reduce Christianity’s goal
         to only one good thing.
You either have it or you don’t.
And whether you have it or not depends on the judgment
         of a generally ill-tempered God,
         who audits your life like an I.R.S. agent.

So let’s keep our text to its subject.
It isn’t about inheriting eternal life or not,
         being justified or not.
It isn’t about heaven or hell.
It’s about the kingdom of God.

The Kingdom isn’t a place we go after we die.
It isn’t the afterlife of good people.
Jesus said repeatedly and explicitly the Kingdom is now, not later;
         here, not there – within us, not in the sky.
It is a spiritual state beyond obedience to the moral law

         – beyond following the rules out of hope of reward
                   or fear of punishment.
It is the state in which our will is so united to God’s will
         that we spontaneously follow God’s will,
                   do the right thing automatically from the heart,
         unobstructed by fear, craving, anger, or any ego agenda.

What Jesus calls the Kingdom of God,
         Cambridge theologian, Don Cupitt calls “radical freedom.”
It’s radical freedom because it isn’t the go run amok.
That’s just slavery to ones own psyche.
Radical freedom is the liberated soul
         free of all the ego programming,
                  all the fear, the craving, the anger.

Cupitt calls this freedom “the highest kind of religion” but says,

         “(A) fully autonomous spirituality . . . is very rare . . .
         If there is a way to achieve this,” he says,

         “then God and the human individual
         are no longer . . . two beings in apposition.
         God indwells the believer,
         enlightening his understanding,
         kindling his affections, and enabling his will.”

Cupitt says “radical freedom” is “rare.”
Jesus agreed. He said,

         “Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God!”
It is very hard because the price is all we have and all we are.

We sometimes hang up on Jesus’ spiritual prescription in today’s lesson,

         “give away all your possessions” because we can’t do that.
But, even if we could, it wouldn’t be enough.
Paul said, “If I give away all I have . . . (even) . . . my body . . .
         I gain nothing.”

The actual demand is more radical than giving up
         our house and our car.
It’s giving up ourselves.

The 14th Century mystical theologian, Meister Eckhart, said,

         “No man ever gave away so much of himself
                 that there was not left more to give away.”//
It is an endless process of surrender – and surrender comes hard.

It is so hard that Jesus said,

         “For mortals it is impossible.”
No one ever gave away everything.
There is always something left between us and God.

It may not be our possessions.
It may be our ideas, our opinions

          – our compulsion to be right.
It may be our habitual ways of acting, thinking, or feeling.

And nestled silently inside them all
         is the core of what keeps us outside the Kingdom.
It is our secret I-thoughts. “I am good. I am bad. I am beautiful.
         I am ugly. I am smart. I am dumb. I am ordinary.”

Our possessions and accomplishments are a fortress
         shielding the I-thoughts, which

         – even if they are shame-ridden, painful, and lonely –
                   are at least familiar.
They are who we think we are.
We will give up anything, before we risk our I-thoughts.

So it so hard to enter God’s Kingdom. Jesus said,

         “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God;
                   for God all things are possible.”
And that’s the good news in our lesson.

The point isn’t that we have to give away everything
         we own to win God’s approval.
The point is that Jesus invites us to follow him
         but only God can set us free accept that invitation.

We can begin our journey toward the Kingdom
         right now, today, by practicing giving something away.
We may give money, time, attention, or concern.
We just experiment with giving, practice loosening our grip –
         and then acknowledge
         that we cannot utterly give ourselves away.
It is too hard. It is beyond us.
Guilting ourselves into doing more, being better, won’t help.

Only grace can set us free. This is how:
We look at what we have and who we are,
        the things that make us ok, and we think,

        “Whether I have this or not, whether I am this way or not,
        whether I am smart or not, beautiful or not, good or not,
        I am God’s – and belonging to God is /everything.”//

Remember how today’s story goes.
The young man didn’t give everything away; then Jesus loved him.
It’s the other way around.
Jesus looked at him, loved him, and in his love said,
        you can give it all away and follow me.

Grace is being loved right here, right now, as we are,
       and being invited to live in that love
               instead of our vain efforts to make ourselves ok.
Grace can do what we cannot.

We will only trust God enough to give ourselves to him
       if we first know that God loves us
              more than we love ourselves,
              will care for us better than we can
                      care for ourselves.
Knowing that deep inside is grace.

We receive that grace little by little,
        and as we receive it, we move a little further
              out of self and into God.
We move by giving up a little self each day

        – a dollar here, an hour there,
        a bit of room in our heart for someone else.
Then other things start to slip away

       – some pride, some shame, some guilt,
               some need to control.
The walls of self thin out
        as we learn to trust God instead.

Grace sets us free from the prison of self,
        free to enter the Kingdom one step at a time,
        and with each step to become more fully alive,
                more delighted with life,
                more at home in the heart of the universe.

                                                                    Amen.