Giving Up

Mark 10:17-31

Today's passage is another one of my favorites. The story of the rich man and his inability to part with his possessions in order to follow Christ and Jesus' comment about a camel passing through the eye of a needle sort of gives me a chuckle. Maybe that's because I'm not rich.

Before you start saying, "Even Randy is beginning to use class division in his rhetoric" let me say I know lots of rich people who are most definitely going to see the kingdom of God. These people will get there because they have decided to make a commitment to following Christ, regardless of the costs.

This passage has always carried with it the connotation that in order to follow Christ we need to give up everything. I don't think that's the message at all. I believe this passage is asking us to be willing to give up everything. I will agree the rich man is being told to sell everything and give the money to the poor, but the message is not in the asking, it's in the reaction. The man was unwilling to do what was necessary.

In his point of view the man was already following the law, and shouldn't that have been enough? Apparently not. At times we are asked to give up everything in order to do what Christ is asking us to do. We cancel meetings to be with a friend who's lover just left them, we get only one hour of sleep because we stayed up all night talking with a family member who is losing their home, we give up our pocket money and skip lunch because someone who is more hungry than you asks for a few dollars to get a meal.

Christ's message is not that we have to become destitute in order to get to the kingdom of God. All we have to be is willing; truly willing because that day may come.