Rich and Poor

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happiness, letting go, Mark, Meister Eckhart, poor, rich, spirituality, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, willingness

The longer I live the deeper and broader the interpretations of “the rich young man” story (MK 10) become. My experiences – most recently of Peru – convince me that if we are thinking in terms of financial wealth we are only scratching the surface of possible meanings. (How can all those poor people seem so happy?) While it is true that money cannot buy happiness, it can provide food and other necessities of life. At the same time, it’s easy to see that money can complicate life significantly.

Leaving finances aside, I look at the complications in my life and how much more likely spiritual growth would be if I could only become simpler: in my desires, in my outlook, in my judgments…in my life. Looking at life from a perspective of fullness rather than lack and from the spirituality of subtraction and/or detachment that Meister Eckhart preached allows the freedom that would seem to be the end of seeking for the rich young man and for us.

If only we could let what holds us back fall off of us like the water in a morning shower or the fluffy snow that I easily brushed off my car last week in order to clear my way toward home. Letting go can be such a freeing gesture of only we open our hands and our hearts to the willingness that brings us to God’s heart. It’s all about practice and it can start at any moment. A thought, a gesture – maybe even giving away a smile to someone who irks us – could be enough to start a process that might last a lifetime. Who knows?

Don’t Go Away

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calling to God, clean room, clutter, don't give up, give to the poor, Jesus, poor, possession, rich

I did spend my day on Saturday organizing and readying some things to give away.(See Saturday’s post for explanation) It was a good start but one would think I had a huge bedroom as I say that I could probably work all week to get it to pristine condition. Since I don’t have the entire week, I’ll just see what happens this morning…

The gospel today is the one about the “rich young man” who wants to know what he has to do to gain eternal life (MT 19:16-22). Jesus spouts the commandments  to him but he says he’s good with all that. He’s looking for more – not just keeping the law and being good but a deeper way of living. It sounds like he’s hungry for that. Unfortunately, when Jesus tells him to sell what he has and give to the poor and then to come and follow him, the young man just can’t do it. The last line says that he went away sad for he had many possessions.

There’s a lot of speculation about what Jesus meant by his advice to the young man. In that time and culture it would perhaps have worked to give away everything and walk with Jesus (although Jesus was still new on the scene and it would’ve been a risk). Today, a person doing that would most likely end up in shelters and/or on welfare and would be despised by a great portion of the society so the point would be lost. I do think Jesus was serious about giving to the poor; he spoke of “the poor” more than almost anything. We are definitely called to be mindful of those who fit that description – for example, the shamefully large number of children who go to bed hungry in this, the richest country in the world. But I think Jesus might have been speaking about matters of the heart here as well. In addition to the things that clutter my room, what else holds my heart so tightly that I can’t let go? Money? Status? People in my life? Work? How can I free myself so that nothing keeps me from my calling to God?

I think the saddest thing about this story is that the young man thought he had to do what he was asked perfectly all at once. He was young. When I was young I had no idea what was necessary to let go of since I was still gathering experiences and people and the life I have come to live. I hope Jesus didn’t really say the young man had to sell everything and THEN come to follow him. I think that would’ve been unfair and I never see Jesus as unfair – challenging, maybe, but not unfair. So I wonder if, after the end of the story we have, Jesus stopped him from going away – or met him again later – and had a conversation about why letting go of everything that clings to us is necessary in the spiritual life. I hope so. My advice to him and anyone else who is struggling with surrender is: DON’T GO AWAY SAD! It will get easier to surrender as you practice. Don’t go away; just work on it and take it a day at a time, a step at a time along the path. You’ll catch up to Jesus eventually as long as you don’t give up.

I’m off then to work in my room and my heart…

What’s Your Answer?

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Gospel, Jesus, letter of james, Mark, poor, rich, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There’s a great challenge in this morning’s gospel reading (Mk 8:27-33) where Jesus asks two questions of his disciples, two questions that are similar but not matching. First he wants to know “Who do people say that I am?” which obviously refers to “the word on the street” among the crowds that have been gathering when he arrives in their territory. They give him some answers but then he asks the question that is probably more what he wants to know because it speaks to the level of their faith in him. “But,” he asks, “who do you say that I am?”

I’m interested that this gospel is linked to a text from the Letter of James (2:1-9) this morning dealing with how we judge people. James says, “For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person with shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes…have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges…?”

It’s quite easy for us sometimes when we’re asked about our faith to give the easy answer of what we’ve been taught about who Jesus the Christ is but unless our faith causes us to act in ways that manifest the depth of what we say, then we are still standing on the periphery of the crowd, interested but not willing to become a disciple. The true test of this, of course, is our willingness to treat others as we would treat Christ if he were at the event where the two people James spoke of were in the room. It actually might be hard to recognize him unless we took the time to get to know him, because he might be the one in the shabby clothes. It behooves us then to stay awake to how we treat each person that crosses our path, a worthy practice for today.