Readings (Track 1); expanded Hebrews reading here

Jesus, today’s Gospel tells us, loved the young man and offered him life. The young man loved other things, and declined the offer.

That scene is important for two reasons. It warns us of one possible outcome in our interactions with Jesus, and so is a narrative enactment of the warning on which the author of Hebrews is focusing: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” The second reason, the scene’s stress on Jesus’ love (“Jesus, looking at him, loved him”). We sometimes fear that God is playing “Gotcha,” looking for reasons to declare us guilty, and so read the text accordingly. Mark’s stress on Jesus’ love should save us from that misreading of both the Epistle and the Gospel.

Jesus loves the young man and offers him life; the young man loves other things and declines the offer. Why, we might wonder, does this scene repeat itself with such regularity that the author of Hebrews dedicates a much longer stretch of his letter than we read today to this warning (“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”). The foundational answer, I think, is reflected in God’s words in Isaiah 55:

⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8-9)

Recall Gregory of Nyssa: any god we could understand would not deserve our worship!

Now, in Isaiah 55 and Scripture in general “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” is good news. For instance, God does not “do” power like the self-proclaimed movers and shakers that fill our political landscape. But it also means that not understanding, being confused, is the normal experience of the people of this God, and we become less anxious as we approach getting used to this.

Let me unpack what I’m suggesting in a couple of ways, because this emphasis on Isaiah 55—and we could also recall St. Paul’s “For now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1Co 13:12)—runs counter to two popular ways of understanding our faith.

First, Isaiah 55 tells us that God’s not in the business of giving us the answers we want. Recall Job in our first lesson, or the psalmist’s multiple questions in Ps 22! Recall, for that matter, Jesus’ quite unnerving answer to the disciples’ question (“Then who can be saved?”…”For mortals it is impossible…”). Between our Bible (some 1600 pages) and the BCP (another 1000 pages), one might get the impression that being a Christian is a matter of having Answers. The more answers, the better!

But that’s to miss the point. Consider the Tabernacle, the place for a particular manifestation of God’s presence, described in detail in Exodus. Precise descriptions of the courtyard, the rooms in the Tabernacle, its furnishings, including the Ark of the Covenant with the two great creatures pointing toward the presence. But of the Presence itself, nothing. Or, better, when all is set up, Exodus tells us: “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exo 40:34-35). All the components of the Tabernacle: simply to guard the mystery.

Or consider the Nicene Creed. If we get under the hood, look at what motivated this particular collection of affirmations, we discover that virtually every line is to guard against a misunderstanding. So, the Bible, the BCP: resources to keep our questions alive, to pull us back from premature closure, and sometimes, maybe even often, to suggest new questions.

And before moving on, notice that Hebrews wants us to understand that Jesus fully entered into this human condition. (“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”) So Jesus on the cross makes his own the question with which Ps 22 opened. With all our questions and puzzlements we’re not in bad company.

Second, Isaiah 55 can help us guard against reducing the faith to a sort of checklist: baptism, first communion, confirmation, such that if we get everything ticked off we can go on autopilot. Baptism, for example, is as much about disorientation as it is about orientation. “N., you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” So the parents’ and godparents’ hopes for the child are no longer the only hopes—or even the primary hopes—in play.

Now, if the faith isn’t about a growing tidy set of answers or a cradle-to-grave checklist, what is it? Notice that—back to the scene with Jesus and the young man—the central metaphor is “follow me.” Follow—well, start learning how to follow—this unpredictable God whose ways are not ours. In the section of the Gospel from which this reading is taken we’ve been watching this “follow me” play out as Jesus works at reducing the distance between his ways and the disciples’ ways:

No, arguing about who’s the greatest is not helpful

No, forbidding others from using Jesus’ name because they’re not “with us” is not helpful

No, keeping little children away from Jesus isn’t helpful either.

And in today’s Gospel, notice how this plays out immediately after the Jesus and young man scene. When Jesus describes how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom, the disciples ask “Then who can be saved?” They assume that the rich have the inside track, because the rich have the leisure to study Torah and the wherewithal to ensure compliance with all the traditions.

Equally important, notice that Jesus doesn’t respond to their question by talking about the poor having the inside track. So, while some may properly hear Jesus’ command to sell everything as addressed to them—St. Francis comes to mind—it’s a misreading of the text to make that command universal or interpret it as defining a higher tier of discipleship. It’s Peter that tries that line: “Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you…’” And Jesus’ reply leaves it clear that while the disciples’ action hasn’t been wrong, it’s not going to play out like they imagine. “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

Jesus loves the young man and offers him life; the young man loves other things and declines the offer. Jesus loves us, and offers us life. Because Jesus’ ways and our ways are so different, neither Answers nor Checklists will do: “follow me.” We’ll continue to have questions, continue to be puzzled, and Jesus will continue to offer us the mercy and grace to follow Him into the awe-inspiring and life-giving mystery that is the God for whom all things—even our salvation—are possible.