Discipleship and detachment

In today’s Gospel Mark paints a vivid scene of a rich man meeting Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. The aristocrat is eager, impetuous, and effusive. The prophet from Nazareth is calm and practical as he meets the seeker’s enthusiasm with the challenge of the kingdom. When the rich man throws himself at the feet of Jesus and addresses him as ‘’Good master’’, Jesus declines the flattery and tells his supplicant that God alone is good. When the man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus gives him the standard rabbinical answer-keep the commandments. However, this man has sincerely tried to keep the Law all his life; clearly, that observance is not enough. It is his dissatisfaction with mere observance that has led him to run to Jesus.

Jesus looks on the rich man with love; he wants this blameless enthusiast to become one of his disciples. So the challenge is made: ‘’There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’’ The cost of Christian discipleship is heavy for this prospective disciple: he must renounce his security and the prestige that his wealth brings him.  When he sells everything, he owns, he must not give the money to his family or friends, but to the poor. If he does this, he will have treasure in heaven. That treasure will be his new security.

  The sorrowful departure of the would-be disciple that Jesus loved is one of the most touching scenes in the Gospel. He is too attached to what he has to become, attached to what Jesus asks. When he goes, and we hear no more of him, Jesus turns round to tell his disciples how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.

  The disciples are astonished at what Jesus says, mainly because they accepted the traditional Jewish morality which taught that wealth was a sign of God’s favor. But Jesus insists on his new teaching: it is hard for anyone to enter the kingdom, but it is easier for a camel to pass through the tiny eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. That vivid picture of the impossible increases the disciples’ astonishment. The question now becomes: who can be saved? The answer is that nobody can achieve that on the basis of human effort, for salvation is due solely to the power of God. Everything is possible for God. 

The story of Jesus’ encounter with the rich man and Jesus’ teaching on wealth are issued as a challenge to us today. We live in a society that measures success in terms of economic growth and security, a society that rewards the rich with more riches. Nothing succeeds like excess. The danger is that our own values can center on power, profit and property. If we are what we are devoted to, our real identity is revealed by what we worship. We can all become the devoted disciples of consumerism, powered by desires that will never be satisfied. 

The Gospel asks us to pause and reflect about this matter, to look at ourselves critically in the light of Jesus’ values. If our identity is locked into our possessions, who are we when our possessions are taken from us? We are afraid that if we have nothing, we are nothing. Like the rich man in today’s Gospel, attachment to our possessions can soon lead to our being possessed by our attachments. When this happens, we are no longer free to accept the invitation of Jesus. Attachment to material goods can steal our freedom to choose. 

Jesus wants us to enjoy inner independence, so that who we are is not dependent on what we have. His disciples are identified by their relationship with him and by their relationship with their neighbor. Detachment from possessions frees the disciple to pay attention to others, and Jesus says that in doing that the disciple will have a whole host of ‘’brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land.’ When the rich man left Jesus, he returned to his possessions; if he had become a disciple, he would have inherited a new family. This man without a name ended up the poorer.