NOTES for Mar 10:17-27
The account of the rich man who asked the Lord Jesus Christ how to inherit eternal life is one of the best-known texts of the New Testament. Over the centuries it has inspired countless ascetics to follow the path proposed by Christ, while at the same time provoking sharp protest from many others. About fifteen years ago, in the late 1980s, this passage was one of the most difficult; it prompted nearly half of the questions asked by people reading the Gospel. The reason, of course, is Christ’s words: “give away everything you have, and come, follow Me.” These are certainly difficult words, and they are far from easy to fulfill, especially if understood literally. In a time of universal poverty and property that existed only “for show,” Christ’s call could not but arouse fear.
It must be acknowledged, however, that practically everyone who comes to Christ faces the need to take some step that is difficult for him. There is always something important to you that must be given up for Christ’s sake. The spiritual effort this requires is necessary: Christ says that it is by precisely this effort that the Kingdom of Heaven is “taken.” Viewed without prejudice, this is quite understandable. If a person lives without knowing Christ or following Him, he almost always finds an idol that occupies the central place in his life. Much of the spiritual relationship that, according to God’s design for humanity, should belong to God is transferred to this idol. A person serves this idol, uses it to weigh and determine his actions, places his hope in it in difficult moments, and expects joy from it. Many different things can become such an idol, sometimes rather elevated things, but very often it is wealth. This is why the Gospel so often contrasts service to God with service to mammon.
And Christ says: “leave everything!” He calls the rich man to renounce wealth, and to renounce it decisively and completely. The disciples, like everyone who reads the Gospel, tried to apply Christ’s words to themselves and were horrified. They saw how difficult Christ’s call was. We are all horrified in such cases, but in reality what causes the horror is not Christ’s call, but our inability to follow it. At such moments we encounter the abyss within ourselves, and it truly is terrible. The Lord clarifies His thought by saying that the issue is not wealth in itself (elsewhere He will say that a person’s life does not depend on the size of his possessions), but trust in wealth. One who expects help and joy not from God but from what he himself owns cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. These words of Christ direct our attention not to the distribution of property, but to an inward, spiritual renunciation of possessing it.
Yet the disciples are not satisfied by this explanation from the Lord Jesus and continue to be greatly astonished. Yes, they understood that the literal call to give everything away is addressed to the person for whom wealth has become an idol, but it is no less difficult for everyone else to renounce their own idols. The Lord answers them with great words that contain the whole essence of Christian asceticism. Yes, we are called to the impossible. We are called to leave everything and love our enemies, to bear the cross and be hated by everyone for Christ’s name, and all this is beyond our strength. With human beings this is impossible, the Lord says, but all things are possible with God. This is the great revelation of the New Testament: having called a person to perfection, God does not leave him alone with his weakness, but Himself leads His disciples. This is why Christianity is not a beautiful but abstract ethical teaching, but the way of Life.