1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Matthew 19:16-26
Today is the leave-taking
or conclusion of our celebration of the Dormition of the Theotokos, who upon
her “falling asleep” followed her Son into the Kingdom of heaven as a whole
embodied person. Her translation to the heavens reminds us that
sharing in the life of Christ is not an invisible mystical endeavor but
requires offering ourselves to Him in practical, tangible ways. Her unique vocation as His virgin mother
surely required countless sacrifices in every dimension of her life. It is simply impossible to find the healing
of our souls if we pretend that what we do with any dimension of the creation,
including our physical blessings, is spiritually irrelevant.
Perhaps more than anything else, how we use
our money and possessions will reveal whether, like the Theotokos, we are focusing
on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God. That was the case for the rich young ruler in
today’s gospel lesson. When he addressed Christ, he tried to flatter Him with the words
“Good Teacher.” He did not know that the
Lord is truly the God-Man and thought of Him as merely another rabbi. That is why the Savior responded, “Why
do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God,” for He knew that
this man thought of goodness as a merely human quality that he imagined he had
already attained. He thought that he had already mastered all that God had
required in the Old Testament law and wanted to be assured that he had not
overlooked anything.
This
young man was very rich in a time when almost everyone else was poor. He must have been part of a wealthy and
well-connected family, likely on good terms with the house of Herod and the
Roman authorities. He was surely used to
people telling him what they thought he wanted to hear in order to stay in his
good graces. And since people believed
then that wealth was a reward for God’s favor, he surely did not expect a rabbi
to do anything other than congratulate him on his holiness, much less to say,
“If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and
you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
St. Basil the
Great, who gave away his great wealth to found philanthropic ministries for the
sick and needy, taught that the Lord’s strict words to this man revealed his lack
of love for his neighbors. Basil wrote
that “Those who love their neighbors as themselves possess nothing more than
their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have
preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many…For the more you
abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.”[1] The young ruler had obviously laid up
treasures for himself on earth and had given his heart to them. (Matt. 6: 19-21)
When Christ spoke to him as someone who
loved wealth more than God and neighbor and had therefore violated the greatest
of the commandments, the young man confronted the sickness of his
soul. His pride, which was fueled by his
passion for wealth and the praise of others, had led to the delusion that he
had achieved perfect righteousness by fulfilling God’s law. When told to obey a
command that revealed how weak he was before his passions, the man’s illusions
of perfection shattered. And since his faith was in his own sense of personal
accomplishment, he then fell into despair and walked away from the Lord in
sadness.
We
should not be surprised that Christ spoke with the man about his wealth, for He
gave great spiritual significance to our relationship with money and
possessions throughout His ministry. For
example, the parables of Lazarus and the rich man, the prodigal son, the talents,
the debtors, the laborers, the rich fool, the unjust steward, and the pearl of
great price all revolve around economic matters. In response to the gracious initiative of
Christ, Zacchaeus repented of his greed and dishonesty by giving financially beyond
what justice required to those he had wronged.
The Lord said that the poor widow who put two small coins into the
treasury had given more than the wealthy “for all these out of their abundance
have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all
the livelihood that she had.” (Luke 21:4)
Our
wealth and possessions are part of God’s good creation which He gives to us out
of love for our flourishing. We have all
tragically followed in the way of our first parents, however, in refusing to
offer them back to God for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes. We instead tend to use them to gratify our
self-centered desires to the point that they become our false gods. Our sense
of security and identity, as well as our hopes and fears, are often more
grounded in what we have or would like to have than in the Lord. What matters is not how much or how little of
the world’s resources we possess but whether we are finding healing from the
passions that so easily keep us from becoming living icons of the gracious
generosity of Christ to our neighbors, for He offered up Himself without reservation
for the salvation of the world.
The
Lord’s command to the rich young ruler forced him to confront his addiction to
wealth and power. While He did not give
that same instruction to everyone, He calls us all: to lay up treasures in heaven, not on earth; to
serve God, not mammon; and to “seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness” with humble faith that He will provide everything we need. (Matt. 6:19-34) He calls us to eucharistic living, which
means offering not only bread and wine but every dimension of our lives as we
grow in communion with Him. “Thine Own
of Thine Own we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all” includes our
money, possessions, and everything else.
The Old Testament
standard of tithing, or giving ten percent, remains the basic expectation for
how we give thanks to God for His blessings.
Malachi 3:10 is the only passage
in the Bible that encourages putting God to the test: “’Bring all the
tithes into the storehouse,
…try Me now in this…If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour
out for you such blessing that there will not be
room enough to receive it.’” Tithing is like prayer and fasting, for
we find the healing of our souls as we reorient the desires of our hearts to
God by taking practical steps. Investing
ourselves in ministries to the needy beyond the tithe enables us to become more
like the Lord in lovingkindness. As St.
Gregory of Nyssa wrote about almsgiving, “Mercy and good deeds are works God
loves; they divinize those who practice them and impress them into the likeness
of goodness; that they may become the image of the Primordial Being.”[2]
As
with any spiritual discipline, we must take the steps that we presently have
the strength to take, not out of legalism, but in order to open our hearts in
humility to become more receptive to the Lord’s gracious divine energies. When the struggle to trust in God and not in
money reveals the weakness of our souls, we must not become paralyzed by guilt
or walk away in sadness. That is instead
the time to confess our weakness as we offer whatever we can, no matter how small,
and ask for His healing mercy to help us grow in manifesting the divine generosity.
No matter how
great the struggle may be or how inadequate we may feel, we must remember what
the Savior said about the salvation of even people like the rich young ruler: “with
God all things are possible.” The
Archangel Gabriel said something very similar in response to the Theotokos’
question about how she, as a virgin, could become the mother of the Savior: “For with God nothing will be impossible.” (Luke
1:37) Then she gave her free consent to become the living Temple of God. Let us follow her path into the life of the
Kingdom of Heaven by offering every dimension of who we are and all that we
possess to her Son in free obedience. That
is what it means to be in communion with Him as whole embodied persons.
