10-13-2024 Is Jesus Really Good?

Today's Gospel is a version of "be careful what you wish for." Jesus challenges us about whether we still consider him 'good' when we realize exactly what he requires of us, his followers.

Transcript

Alright y’all. Bucket up. We got a deep one today. I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Rev. Scott McAndless, who serves as hospital chaplain, in Cambridge, Ontario, for inspiring parts of today’s sermon. 

There is a question that Jesus would like to ask all of us this morning. It is a simple question that is easily overlooked in this reading. Jesus asks: why do you call me good?

They start out with it as an assumption. ‘Well of course Jesus is good!’ He’s kind of the star of the whole series! Even those who have trouble with the church, or with Christian teachings, know that they may not admire Jesus’ people or at least some of them, but they don't question for a moment the essential goodness of Jesus. But do you notice how that was the very first thing that Jesus challenges someone on here? 

A man runs up to him, kneels before him, and asks him, “Good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus doesn’t engage with the man as a potential disciple--despite the extreme devotion he had displayed. Jesus doesn't even attempt to tackle the thorny question he asks, or at least he doesn't attempt to answer it before he first clears the air about the assumption the man is making--probably without even being aware of it--that Jesus is good.

Jesus’ full response is: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

The way we tend to hear it, separates those two parts of the sentence from their context. We primarily hear the second part, which makes it seem as if Jesus is denying any sense of his own divinity by speaking of a sharp divide between himself and God. God: good (check); Me (Jesus) need to confirm that good part. 

And then rather than explore Jesus’ question, Why do you call me good?, he immediately shifts and steers the conversation toward the law. Jesus says: you know the commandments: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.

Jesus makes clear by doing this what he meant by his response. He is saying that God has already told this man what is good in the commandments, so why is he looking to Jesus to tell him what's good? If he's not going to listen to God, why would he listen to Jesus.

Oh, but the man insists he has listened to God; he has lived according to the commandments. “Teacher,” he insists, “I have kept all of these since my youth!” Now, this may seem kind of boastful in our culture today, but it does fit with the common understanding of scripture at the time. The law was not generally seen as a list of obligations that you had to follow down to the letter. It wasn’t something that if you slipped up on some minor requirement, you would be doomed. No. People understood that the law set up guidelines that you could follow. Guidelines that would help you, and help the community, live a good life. The issue was not perfection in how well you observed the details. The goal was to live a good life by following God's guidance and so what this man is doing is insisting that he has found and lived according to the goodness that God has offered. He now has come to Jesus because he believes that this teacher is good and can lead him to an even richer and deeper goodness. He's basically doubling down on his assertion that yes, yes, Jesus is good! And you know how Jesus responds to that…Jesus looks at him with love. He honors this man for aspiring to a greater goodness and a deeper understanding, a deeper understanding of God, and for one moment it's like the two of them are on the same wavelength--both searching for what is truly good –

and then?

And then everything falls apart.

Just moments later this man leaves Jesus and he leaves in a state of grief and shock.

The moment of infinite understanding disintegrates.

But Jesus’ question was both insightful and important because this man has apparently now decided that Jesus is not so good.

So what's going on? What has gone so wrong that what Jesus says drastically changes this man's opinion of the good Jesus?

Jesus tells him that there's one thing more that he can do to expand on the goodness that God asked for in the law. Jesus says. “go sell what you own and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven--then come follow me.”

Now on one level this advice is not at all at odds with the teaching of the law. The law of Moses absolutely teaches that one should not covet; one should not be overly attached to earthly wealth and possessions.

In fact, the law strongly encourages--even requires one to give to the poor. And now what Jesus demands is that this man do even more than what the law requires of him. He asks this man to sell everything.

To divest himself of his earthly possessions in order to support the poor. And that is something that the law never demanded. And it did not do so for one very good reason.

And it had nothing to do with an inherent goodness of wealth and possessions. It was only because, it was generally understood, that you had to think beyond your own needs since you had people depending on you—namely, your family and your household. We can relate to this, can’t we? You couldn't divest yourself of everything. Not even for the very good reason of supporting the poor because you had a family that was counting on you to provide for them.

So actually, it's no wonder that this man is totally shocked by what Jesus says. Jesus demands a good that exceeds the requirement of God's law and that would appear to destroy the very basis of morality in that society-- the sense of obligation to your family.

If you gave away all of your possessions, you could no longer fulfill your first obligation. The good that Jesus asks for is at odds with the ethical requirements of that society, that culture, and this becomes more clear at the end of the passage when Peter mentions how the disciples have left everything to follow Jesus. Is that, is that not like ‘big brotherly, family system. ‘Hey, we did it!’ This confirms that they have left house and brothers and sisters and mother and father and children and fields. In other words, the disciples have abandoned all of those things that created obligations. Things they would have been required to keep as a means to care for their families.

And in so doing, the disciples did what the young man cannot do.

They abandoned the very foundation of what it meant to be good in that society.

So, you see what I mean when I say that the fundamental question in this story is: Why do you call me good?

Jesus goes out of his way to demonstrate that he's actually not good--not according to the standard for judging goodness in that society.

No wonder Jesus is surprised that someone assumed that he was good.

Which brings us to the question that Jesus is asking you and me and all believers on this day and it is surprisingly the same question: Why do you call me good?

The world seems full of people who consider themselves to be followers of Christ--who call Jesus good--and yet we're caught up in a world filled with systems that Jesus’ very existence calls into question.

For example, we live within an economic system called capitalism and many would say it is a system that has great potential for doing a lot of good. It is a system that creates wealth, and wealth can do great things. Just think about what you say you would do if you ever won the lottery – you would give a big chunk of it to the church, right? We all would. So that the church could fulfill its mission of feeding and clothing and helping people. 

Capitalism encourages and rewards creativity and innovation. It creates employment which allows people to live. And yet we're also aware of many of the shortcomings of the system. It does tend to create abundantly more wealth for some than for others. It has a certain tendency to create entities that become really powerful and start to dominate markets in ways that prevent anyone else from profiting from their work, their innovation and their creativity. I’m looking at you, Apple.

And the truth is that with all the good and all the bad, that's the system we live with and we all are aware that if this system were to fail-- if it were to totally crash and burn, the results would be catastrophic for everybody. We all exist within this system, and as believers who live in such a system, what we do on Sunday in our prayers and in our devotions is we come to Jesus in a spirit of thankfulness for all that we have and we say, “Good teacher, what more shall we do in this world?” And Jesus, replies, “Why do you call me good? Don't you know that I have come to disrupt this system that you live in? Don't you know I have come so that many who are first will be last and the last will be first? Didn't you hear it when my mother proclaimed that my birth meant, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty? And you remember when I said, blessed are you who are poor but woe to you who are rich. Blessed are you who are hungry now but woe to you who are full now. If we are invested in this economic system that we live in that we are unwilling to see disrupted, then maybe we ought to think twice before we call Jesus good.

Because Jesus came to disrupt this very system. And not just this one. Not just our system of economics. But every single system that creates a hierarchy of privilege. Every system that allows some people to flourish while others perish. Any system that bases its value on human desire rather than human need.

We're living at a moment in time when it seems more and more people call Jesus a good teacher and yet those same people are upholding institutions in which racism and supremacy are built into the fabric of the system.

We are living in a time when Christian nationalism is on the rise, and not just in the United States. And Christian Nationalism can take on many forms. The least toxic followers of this strain of Christianity are people who are trying to be both patriotic and faithful. But in the more toxic forms, there are definitely people who believe their faith calls them into justified racism, the demonization of immigrants, violence even. Many Christian Nationalists are doing their best to enforce a social order where straight white Christian men dominate every area of society. And these same people invoke the name of Jesus and say to him,

“Good teacher, what shall we do to protect our white homogenous culture? And how does Jesus reply? He says, Why do you call me good? You know the law. The law is clear. The law says:

You shall not oppress a resident alien you know the heart of an alien for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

You remember that I said: for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

Christian Nationalists, and frankly anyone who is putting the support of systems that oppress above God’s laws that govern how we care for each other, need to understand that if you call Jesus, good, you have to accept that he's going to make you question all those things that make you feel superior or make us feel safe.

If we call him Good, he may leave us shocked and grieving when we realize what exactly he is asking us to do in order to provide for the least of these.

Why do you call me good? is the real question in today’s lesson. It is even, perhaps, the most important one of all. If we cannot or will not follow Jesus on his terms, then what is the point of calling ourselves his followers? And his terms will necessarily call into question some of the moral systems that we have accepted fairly uncritically: systems that cause harm to this world in which we live and the people Jesus calls us to love. Systems that use things like child labor…still.  Systems in which we are so comfortable, it is easy to distance ourselves from this man in the story who goes away shocked and grieving, because he is unwilling to do what Jesus is asking him to do.

Jesus challenges our assumptions about the systems by which our world works.

He challenges prejudices that pit us against one  another. 

He challenges our sense of history and the way we justify caring for ourselves even when it causes others to be cast aside.

If you are not careful, Jesus will shock you and send you away grieving. 

And yet, here is the good news to hold onto from today’s lesson. [Ok] Jesus challenges us. Jesus shocks us because Jesus cares for us and wants each of us and all of us to grow and create a world that offers that which is good--to all. 

And in this way, Jesus is, in fact a good teacher.

Anyone who has undertaken a regime to get stronger by working out, or going to physical therapy, knows that before you begin to feel strong, you will feel weak. 

That when you begin to learn something new, you will first feel dumb when you realize all that you do not know.

That investing in yourself will make you feel broke, when it’s actually making you rich.

That facing your fears will terrify you, even as it is making you braver. 

Good teachers push us beyond our comfort zone to make us wiser, more compassionate, more sensitive to the ways we practice the wrong things. And good teachers ask us to do the hard work of practicing that which we are unaccustomed to doing.

Even those, or especially those, who walk the road of sobriety, know that at first, all they could see was what they were giving up, but the longer they practice this self-denial, the more they realize how much they are gaining and how doing what they once perceived as too hard, has at last, delivered them, restored them. And given them life.[i] 

For all things, are possible, with God.

[i] Inspired by a sermon by Rev. Scott McAndless from Cambridge, Ontario