Mark 10:17-31
“‘Religionists.’ Yes, I heard that correctly. She said ‘religionists.’”
In my younger college days I had the luxury of knowing everything without exception. My almost-fundamentalist upbringing coupled with formation in an intensely conservative quarter of the church only bolstered this. Heading off to college, I had answers to a lot, and - like most undergraduates - was light on questions. That is much the opposite of adult life for this elder millennial now. Such a strict faith formation only had the hope of producing one thing: a know-it-all knucklehead who craved an argument.
Thus, when the college chaplain (in her prayer of invocation) interceded for “all our fellow religionists,” I responded with more than just the quiet eye-roll that such a thing would evoke from me now.
Religionists.
The chaplain meant well. She really did. And the word as she used it and the word as I heard it were not the same. As we journey with Mark’s texts this autumn, particularly in the tenth chapter of Mark, we hear a plea from Jesus: “Whatever you do, I beg you to not be mere religionists.”
We hear a plea from Jesus: “Whatever you do, I beg you to not be mere religionists.”
Last week, Jesus discussed humanity’s hardness of heart and addiction to religious legalism, a contrast to conversion of the heart and freedom. This week, Jesus sets out on a journey where he must lead the same discussion all over again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
A man runs up to Jesus and kneels before him with the right question asked for the wrong reason. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” As though with a confirmand and a copy of the Small Catechism, Jesus goes through the list of Commandments, to which the man replies, “Check. Check. Check. I’m good.” Like so many followers of Jesus in our own day, this man was a great religionist. I’ll bet the man even had Sunday School pins, awarded for perfect attendance. But Jesus doesn’t want or need for him to be a religionist, so the man goes away grieving.
Turning to his disciples who need this parsed out for them, Jesus uses identifies the addiction to wealth, saying “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” At this point, the disciples just give up. “Then who can be saved?” Preachers proclaiming the Gospel need to be very attentive to the text. Almost always, the reference to the camel’s eye is misinterpreted as “all law, no grace.” The wealthy, the powerful, and those proud religionists will have trouble entering the kingdom or being saved, or having riches in heaven. This is not because God will not have them; it is because they will not have God.
The concept of being a good religionist is itself a god for the man who runs up to Jesus. It becomes a god for the wealthy and powerful; it becomes a god even for Peter as the pericope ends. Peter’s exclamation “…look we have left everything and followed you...” is really the same idea, repackaged. The man and Peter are saying the same thing: “We’re earning it!”
There is a point we really need to make this week as preachers of the Good News, and it’s not entirely different from last week: we will rest on anything to prove our goodness. We will follow commandments, have perfect Sunday School attendance, create a life that looks “blessed” through wealth, and even take pride in how well we sacrifice ourselves to follow Jesus.
Jesus never asks us to do any of those things. He does not want us to be great religionists.
Feed the poor.
Clothe the naked.
Visit the prisoner.
Proclaim Good News to the captive
Heal the sick.
Take.
Eat.
Baptize.
Make disciples.
These are the things Jesus wants from us. There is no longer an “earning it,” but a receiving. It is a receiving that frees us to live in a way that Our Lord instructs us, a way that will actually bear fruit in making the kingdom known. In Christ, we have been freed from being religionists so that we may live in a (finally!) right-side up kingdom of God where the very last have become first.
PASTOR JONATHON MOYERS is originally from the farm country of western Illinois, serves as pastor to the Chesapeake Country Area Ministry (nicknamed "Shore Lutherans"), a covenant partnership between Grace Lutheran Church of Easton, MD and Saint Paul's Lutheran Church of Cordova, MD. Before his time on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he served as trauma chaplain for Charleston General Hospital in West Virginia, pastor at St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Ironton, OH, and St. John's Lutheran Church of Dayton, OH. He holds an MDiv from Lexington Theological Seminary, an STM with emphasis in Lutheran Confessions and Systematics from Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University, and is currently studying in the DMin program (liturgics) at United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia.
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