An
Exegetical Reflection on the Gospel of the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in OrdinaryTime,
Year B, Mark 10:17-30, October 15, 2012
TODAY’S GOSPEL BEGINS with the most basic and
decisive question: “What must I do to share in everlasting life?” (Mark
10:17). Christians should not only ask
themselves this question; even more important, they have raise it every day, so
they will always have a right direction in their lives. Indeed, we ought to
have a reason for living—and a correct one.
But in so doing, it is important to get the sense of the question. The inquiry does not assume that eternal life
is a reward for our work. Both in
Judaism and in Christianity, eternal life, life with God, life in the Kingdom
of God—this is a gift. We do not work
for it. But this offer of God requires
our response. How do we respond to his
offer?
It
is unfortunate that many continue to hold false views on the relationship
between God’s offer and our response.
For some, God is a God who is a heavenly bookkeeper. He keeps a ledger in which good acts are
entered on the credit side. They think
that as long as the trial balance shows that the credit side is weightier than
the debit side, they will inherit eternal life.
For others, the relationship is basically concerned with the
“As-long-as-I-do-not-harm-anyone” mentality.
As long as they do not offend their neighbor, they are of the belief
that God will reward them. It is like
saying that a good driver is one who has never been involved in a vehicular
accident, or that a good engineer is one whose projects have never been destroyed
by earthquake.
When
we hold these or similar views, we are like the man in today’s Gospel. At first blush, we would think he is an ideal
man. Because love of God is obviously
expressed in the love of neighbor, all that Jesus asked him was about the
second segment of the Decalogue (Mark 10:19; cf Exod 20:12-16). And the man said he kept all these since
childhood. Nobody could be more ideal! But before we venture to imitate him, we
could probably ask: has it occurred to us that we fulfill the commands simply
because we live in comfort? Would it be
different if we were living in deprivation?
Or, have we consciously made a decision to follow them, or we are able
to follow them simply because we do not have the opportunity to do the
opposite? We do not steal, for example,
simply because there is nothing to be stolen?
The truth is, we can follow many commands of the Decalogue by doing
nothing.
But
the Gospel is about doing something. In
Mark, a Christian must go beyond the Old Testament morality, and therefore we
have to take a further step. Not only
that we do nothing against the commandments; even more important, we imitate
Jesus, following his footsteps. That is
discipleship. And that what is
distinctively Christian. (To follow the
Ten Commandments is not distinctively Christian. The Jews have them. The Muslims observe them.) But discipleship is about renunciation of
our selves. Eternal life is for those
who are ready to lose their life: “Whoever would preserve his life will lose
it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will preserve it”
(Mark 8:35). And our Gospel, being like
the previous Sunday’s, which is found in the Markan section of the instructions
on discipleship, is a commentary on this text.
In this particular periscope,
the renunciation of self includes, for this young man, the renunciation of his
possessions. That is the price to be
paid for following Jesus. Possibly,
Jesus saw in this man’s attitude to wealth a big obstacle to the challenge of
discipleship. In any case, there is
always a need to give response to the offer of eternal life. It is unfortunate that we have so many decent
people who call themselves Christians but have not embraced discipleship. They have not gone beyond the Old Testament
ethics. For them, not harming anyone
else, or fulfilling the external signs of being Catholic—that is already
enough. They lack something: the
renunciation of themselves to allow the Spirit to work in them.
Of
course, it is often argued that as part of our renunciation, we contribute
something to the poor. But often we do
this in terms of our definition of what renunciation shall consist of. Often enough, as long as it does not cost us
much, we allow ourselves to be deprived of something—our spare cash. Inside, however, we do not really want to let
go of our comfort and fabulous lifestyle, even when these constitute a
hindrance to our search for real life.
We are like the man in the Gospel who could not accept the challenge of
discipleship because we really hold on to our possessions. Not surprisingly, Jesus told his disciples:
“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23). And to make sure that his disciples heard it
correctly, he added: “My sons, how hard
it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is
easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:24b-25).
Clearly, discipleship is not
about doing nothing; on the contrary, it is about doing something: it requires the renunciation of ourselves,
even including what we treasure most, so that our ultimate value will be none
other than Jesus and his kingdom. Only
then can we walk in accord with God’s will, and, having truly responded to
God’s offer in grace, experience eternal life.
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