28th Sunday of the Year
Generally speaking, in the Jewish tradition both wealth and wellbeing were regarded signs of God's favour. The books of the Old Testament are filled with promises of prosperity to those who follow God's law. The other side of the coin of course was that those who fell on hard times were seen by society as being punished by God for some misdeed or other. While Job does not figure in person in today's readings, his well-know plight brilliantly illustrates today's lesson: here was a man who was known by all his contemporaries as upright, honest man. This to the Jewish mind was a contradiction: here was a man who did no wrong yet lost everything. Job was viewed by his contemporaries as a social freak. He became a tourist attraction in his own day. Crowds went out from the city to view this extraordinary manifestation squatting on the city dump. And the baffling factor, the thing that drew the crowds was: "Here was a just man who lost everything." In this sense then the Jewish religion was very materialistic. Of course it is a very short step indeed from saying that wealth is a sign of God's favour to saying: "If I become a wealthy man, I will surely be saved." In other words, I can save myself. God is there merely to applaud my great achievements.
It is against this background that Jesus proposes a new morality. When Mark's Jesus speaks about entering the kingdom of God, He's usually not referring to "getting into heaven", or stumbling over the line at the 'pearly gates'. Almost always, the Gospel concept of the "kingdom of God" alludes to God working with power in our everyday life. That means when Jesus proclaims, "The kingdom of God is close at hand," He's actually reminding His hearers that God is present here and now working among them, so close they can put out their hands and touch God's presence.
Far from being evidence of God's favour, Jesus tells his followers, wealth can actually come between a man and his God. Mark tells us that the crowd were dumbfounded by this new teaching. Of the young man he tells us, his face fell for he was a man of great wealth. The question quickly becomes 'who can be saved?' The answer is that nobody can achieve salvation by human effort. Salvation is a gift from God, not something earned by mankind. With God, everything is possible.
We ourselves live today in a society that has a lot in common with the Jewish society of the first century. Success is measured in terms of economic growth and security. Then, what that collapses, or when the bubble bursts, what have we left? Well, I should hope, our integrity, grounded in our Christian faith.
We become what we are devoted to. 'Where your treasure is, there too will your heart be.' Our true identity is revealed in the shape of those we admire. This is the whole rationale behind the canonization of saints. These are the people worth imitating. However, consumerism proposes to us an alternative set of models for our imitation. Empty-headed celebrities, be they singers, musicians, footballers, are paraded for our admiration. Their only claim to fame is that they managed to shed any value system that might just have humanized them. They are both the victims and creator of a consumerist society. Proponents and victims of consumerism are both driven by desires that will never be satisfied. The gospel asks us to look critically at our circumstances. If our identity is locked to our possessions, who are we when our possessions are taken from us? We are afraid that if we have nothing, we are nothing. Like the rich young men in today's gospel, attachment to our possessions can soon lead to our being possessed by our attachments. The tail is then wagging the dog.
Jesus wants us to enjoy our inner independence, so that we are not dependant on what we have. His disciples are identified by their relationship with him and their relationship with their neighbours. In the story of the rich young man, Jesus teaches in parable form that material possessions are merely means to an end, not the end in themselves. The sadness of the rich young man lies in the fact that he lacked the wisdom praised in our first reading: the author "reckoned no priceless stone to be Wisdom's peer for, compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand."