During the fasting of the periods of the Church, particularly during the Nativity Fast and Great Lent, we are drawn to think about our fasting, our praying, and our charitable giving. These are all good things we should be doing, along with keeping the commandments of God. But if they become an end in themselves, these tools of our salvation can turn into the object itself that we’re seeking instead of serving to focus us and bring us closer to God. It’s easy to let them become something we can just check off our list of do’s and don’ts that often feed the idea that we’re ‘good’ enough as we are because we’re doing what we’re supposed to.
The rich young man in today’s Gospel reflects one who outwardly keeps the commandments of God: he’s kept himself from adultery, he’s not stolen, he’s not cheated his neighbor or born false witness, and, he’s honored his father and mother. In the eyes of the world, this is a ‘good,’ upstanding young man. He’s got all these things checked off his list.
This is what we want for all our children. This is what we would like to see in other people, that is, to meet someone who is ‘moral’, ‘good,’ someone ‘God-fearing.’ This young man, knowing that he’s followed the tenets of the Law, comes confidently before Christ and asks Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.” The reaction he receives startles him: he’s not told, “Oh, you’re already set or given something easy to do. No, instead, Christ God challenges Him to get to the heart of the matter, saying, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is God.”
What? You mean I’m not already set for the Kingdom of God; my opportunity to content myself with my external adherence to the commandments is not enough? No, there’s a deeper truth at work here. Christ is making the point that St. Paul makes in today’s Epistle: “For by grace you have been saved and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God and not of works lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
Salvation is not a ‘right’; it is a gift of grace, of God’s goodness towards us. This is why the correct response and attitude toward God is one of thanksgiving, gratitude. We cannot save ourselves; we are not ‘saved’ by our works, by being ‘good.’ As Christ points out to us, if that were the criterion, no one would be saved because One alone is good and that is God.
The philosophy that one is automatically going to heaven if one is ‘good’ in the eyes of the world is an ever present challenge to us. It isn’t a question of insufficient ‘goodness’ as much as one of trying to put a square peg in a round hole—it just won’t work. The Pharisee, we’re reminded, stands in the temple and prays, “ ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18), but King David, an adulterer and a murderer was said to be “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). The Pharisee exalts himself in his pride; he things he does not need God; whereas David, repentant of heart, humbles himself before God, declaring his utter abasement, and God draws him to Himself.
The problem of the rich young man is not what he’s done or not done, but that he neglects the conversion of the soul within because he has another god. Christ God sees into his heart and for that reason, addresses the very thing that will keep this man from being able to follow Christ and be with Christ: his riches and the hold it has on him. Jesus Christ makes it clear to us here and elsewhere in the Gospel, as He does in the first of the Ten Commandments, that we can have “no other gods” but Him for He alone is God.
We cannot embrace the life in Him, communion with Him, if our treasure is not in Him but in our possessions, in the world, or in our sense of our own ‘goodness’ or self-sufficiency. If we prefer the things of the world and only follow the ‘externals’ of God’s commandments, however helpful they can be to the God-fearing man, then we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. This truth is behind the words of Christ when He says, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”
God knows how much of a hold our sense of material well-being and our self-righteousness can have on us and how it can insulate us against the need to put our trust and our faith in Him, to realize Who it is alone that can save us, heal us, and grant us eternal life. In fact, the disciples go on to ask Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” Christ’s response? With God all things are possible.
The young rich man goes away sad from his encounter with Christ because he realizes that the very thing that grips him and motivates him and defines him: his material well-being, is precisely that which he’s asked to give up to inherit eternal life—so strong is its hold on him.
A remedy to a stingy heart is to follow the admonitions of the Church in the Fast and be generous to the Church and to those in need so that the ministries of Christ’s Church can be built up and expanded. But this is, again, easier in the way that fasting is easier, prayer is easier, the doing of things that make us good, than sometimes surrendering our idols, our gods, our souls to the One true God, who calls us into communion and relationship with Him, who demands that we set nothing else before Him, because, to do so keeps us from the life that is only in Him. God in His love and mercy desires to we come to inherit eternal life. To do so, you and I must surrender ourselves, our riches, our self-reliance, anything and everything that we use to rely on ourselves and not on God who alone can save us.
And so, we have an opportunity this Sunday to ask ourselves: Is there anything in my life that I love more than God, that if asked, I would not be willing to surrender, to give up? Have I put any other gods before him: My time? My priorities? My pride? My earthly possessions?
Whatever that something may be that seems impossible for us to give up, we remember Christ’s other words today, “The things which are impossible for men are possible with God.” May we plead with God this holy season to relinquish to the Savior of our souls, Him who is eternal life, those things which we need to give up in order to put Him and His Church first in our lives and to begin to truly live. God is ready to receive us, to heal us, to save us. This is the greatest gift we could receive from Christ God this season.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Annapolis, Maryland
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Epistle: Ephesians 2:4-10
Gospel: Luke 18:18-27
