Today in the Gospels, we hear the story of the young man who comes to Christ to ask Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Christ responds not with an answer to his question, but with a test of the young man’s faith, saying, ““Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.” In other words, the young man’s encounter with Jesus Christ becomes a question about recognizing, not only who Christ is, but who we are truly called to be.
Who you believe Jesus is will make all the difference in your life regarding your identity and your ability to find a way out from all the common dead-end patterns of brokenness that result from sin and a life lived without knowing and obediently following the One true God as He’s revealed Himself to be as the Savior of the world.
We often hear people today making Jesus into something that He simply cannot be—friend, teacher, prophet, best human who ever lived. Many choose to reduce Jesus to something less than God because if He’s just another man—however great—then they owe Him no answer, no obedience, no accountability, and can make of Him whatever suites their lifestyle.
If we dumb Jesus down and make of Him primarily a “friend,” or ‘moral’ figure, as some groups do today, if we make Him according to our likeness, our desires, then we’ll struggle to submit ourselves to Him and the authority He’s entrusted to His Church, which will impede our rescue from our fallen human nature; we’ll prevent ourselves from becoming all that God wills us to be as godly men and women. If we fail to recognize Christ’s holiness, then we’re likely to struggle to take seriously His calling for us to become holy. If we fail to recognize His divinity, then how can we recognize our calling to deification/theosis through communion with Him.
All such revisionism and remaking of Christ into our likeness fails to account for the reality of Christ’s own revelation as the very Logos (Word) of God. C.S. Lewis put it this way when it comes to the question of who Jesus is: “liar, lunatic, or, Lord.” No man could do the miracles that Christ did in plain sight before countless eye-witnesses, unless He were also God. No man has power over the elements of nature, unless He is also the Logos (the Word of God), who is the Creator of those elements. No mere man, who is only man, can raise the dead on his own command. A lunatic would talk and speak of amazing and strange things, but his witness wouldn’t be true; alone, he would work no miracles.
The only true option is to see Christ as He’s revealed to be through the mystery of the Incarnation: the God-man, who enters into human nature as man and redeems it as God, restoring us to life, defeating sin and death, making us fellow victors through new birth in Him, and the continued striving to repent and live out and grow in that new life in head and heart.
This question of Christ’s identity hits us head on in today’s Gospel. A young man comes to Jesus relegating Him, addressing Him, as a “good teacher.” Ironically, while at the same time addressing Jesus as a mere man, however ‘good,’ he asks Jesus a question that only God can ultimately answer: “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”
This explains Jesus’ pointed response to the young man, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.” Jesus is not, as some revisionists and humanists today say, suggesting He is not fully God; instead, Jesus is convicting the young man of his error, as if to say something along these lines: “you can’t have it both ways: If I’m merely ‘the good teacher’ and not Lord and God, then I can’t tell you what your soul lacks. If you can see Me with the eyes of faith, then know that I am the Messiah, God incarnate, who sees into your soul.’
As Fr. Iustin Popovic of blessed memory says of this passage, “No one is sufficiently good to be able to give the greatest good: eternal life. Only the Perfect Good—and that is God, the God-Man—knows and has the Perfect Life, Eternal Life, and can give it…”
Having set the record straight, Jesus proceeds to give the man instruction, referring him to what every faithful Jew would know: to keep the commandments. But in his youthful pride, the young man tells Jesus that he’s done all this “from his youth,” and ventures to ask the Master, “what do I still lack”? Wow, what pride! He still doesn’t realize Whom he’s addressing.
Here Jesus reveals further His true identity to the man as the Messiah, the God-Man who is eternal life: He sees into the man’s soul as to where his true loyalties lie: his wealth. The young man is looking for legitimacy, looking to be told that he’s arrived, looking for Jesus to affirm him on his terms, to be the Jesus made in the image of the rich, young man. But Jesus reveals this to him; He shows the man who his true god is, his wealth, saying, “Go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.” We read that he went away from Jesus dejected; for he loved his wealth more than he loved God.
For this reason, Christ gives us this warning: “I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” The Lord isn’t saying that having wealth is a sin; there’s no hidden Marxist ideology here. Rather, Jesus is reminding us of this other truth: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The New Testament teaching is not that we’re to give a tithe to the Lord, as was the case in the Old Testament, but rather, that everything we have is to be offered up to God, hence Christ’s invitation, “Go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven…” Tithing is just a start to help us begin to understand this truth, to cultivate a thankful heart towards God, to find freedom from the idols of false security.
No, it’s not a question as to how much we have, but how tightly we hold on to that imaginary security, that idol, rather than entrusting ourselves, our families, our well-being, our present, our future, to God. For this reason, the Church admonishes us, rich and poor, if we don’t want to give away all that we have, then freely tithe from our income, give a “first fruit” to help build up the Kingdom of God and support the work of the Church in changing hearts, in converting and healing souls, in helping others journey into the Kingdom of God.
God doesn’t demand of all of us that we sell everything we have and give it to the Church, but He teaches us here that it’s incumbent on each one of us to deny ourselves, to give up those false idols, whatever tempts us to put our trust in materialism or could cause us to make of Jesus something else than the God-man, the Logos (Word) of God, Who He’s revealed Himself to be.
We don’t need a ‘watered-down Jesus’ or a Jesus conforming to our likeness. As Orthodox, we reject all such historic and modern revisionist efforts to “re-imagine” Jesus Christ. We affirm that Christ is our Lord and God, the only Savior of mankind.
Christ God sees into the heart of the young man in today’s Gospel. He sees what he’s still lacking, and He sees in our hearts too with a desire to heal and save us. Today, Christ gives us an opportunity to relinquish our vain attempts to follow Christ on our own terms, to make of Him what we wish. Instead, He invites us to build up treasure in heaven as we ground our identity in Him and entrust ourselves to Him who is Eternal Life. So, we submit ourselves today and our vain efforts to control, to the One who alone can save us, the One who alone can see what we’re still lacking; the One who offers us a new way, so that we can continue to become the men and women of God He in His love and mercy has called us to be.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Mission
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Epistle: I Cor. 15:1-11
Gospel: Matt. 19: 16-26
