NOTES for Mat 19:16-22
The dialogue between Christ and the rich young man in today's Gospel is one of the best known and most disputed passages in the New Testament. It provokes strong emotions in most people, for we immediately become frightened that such a call might also be addressed to us, and that fulfilling it would be as difficult for us as it was for this young man. No logic works at such a moment. It is pointless to explain that this call is not addressed to everyone, since in that case, ideally, there would simply be no one left to buy the property that everyone was selling. It is pointless to recall that the Lord Himself says that whoever follows this path gains incomparably more than he loses. Fear of parting with our possessions grips us to our fingertips. We so stubbornly see property as the source of our existence and dignity...
This is exactly what the people of Israel experienced after leaving Egypt. Slavery guaranteed a “subsistence minimum,” and so it proved more desirable than such difficult freedom. We too remember sausage costing 2.20, at least those of us old enough to have known it, not because it was good, for it was exceptionally nasty, but because it was the spectre of security: one could quietly eke out an existence in a tiny burrow and avoid the labour of trusting God.
This is precisely why this call of Christ is so important to us. Even if He is not personally calling you at this moment to sell your possessions, it is still a call addressed to you. A slave differs from a free person in being unable to part with his master. If you cannot part with the spectre of security and with owning property, then you are its slave, that is all. What we see here, then, is a particular instance of the call to freedom in Christ that resounds throughout the Gospel.