Matthew 19:13-30; John 3:1-21; 19:31-42 (NIV)
I don’t show up in the gospels until the very end, when I take the body of Jesus and put it in a tomb in the garden. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t spend any time with Jesus. I wasn’t there every day, like the disciples, but I was there often.
Let me tell you about the day I was there the day that Jesus took a child and told the crowd that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.
A dozen thoughts flashed through my mind about the kingdom of God and becoming like a child. What qualities of a child should one adopt? A child in our culture had no value at all. Oh, we wanted them to grow up to take care of us in our old age. And we did love our children, but children in general had no particular value.
So how should one become a child? Was it the powerlessness that Jesus wanted us to show? The dependence of a child? The humility of a child? Perhaps the joy of a child? The care-freeness? When I was a child I would climb a tree and look at those below – those adults doing their adult things. Sometimes I would envy them, because they made decisions for themselves. Other times I would feel sorry for them, because the decisions they made didn’t always work out the way they wanted. A child’s greatest decision might be what to do with friends, how to spend their time.
Of course, being a child wasn’t always as simple as that. Many children had to work with their parents in the fields, work nearly as hard as their parents. Others worked in their shops. Some were apprenticed out to learn a trade. Those children had to be adults long before their time.
But I really didn’t have a lot of time to wonder what Jesus meant because before those thoughts cleared my mind, a well-dressed man appeared and threw himself at Jesus’ feet. That was a bit shocking, because Jesus didn’t appear to be anything other than a peasant itinerant preacher. All his power lay in his words, and words were no weapon against the law of Moses or the wealth of the rich. Later, we came to realize his words couldn’t stop a crucifixion either.
Kneeling at Jesus’ feet, the young man asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
First Jesus asked him a question. “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only One who is good.”
But then he gave the standard answer, one any rabbi would have offered. “If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
Now there are a lot of commandments, hundreds of them. So the man asked a logical question, “Which ones?”
Jesus ticked off some of the Ten Commandments, and then he added, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now that’s later in Leviticus, not with the Ten.
“All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”
What Jesus told him had nothing to do with the Law of Moses.
“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Now something you need to understand – we believed, indeed, we had been taught from birth, that God blessed the rich because we were somehow superior. We were the religious leaders, the ones who knew the law and obeyed it to the letter. And because we were so obedient to the law, God looked down on us and smiled. If there was indeed a kingdom of heaven, we were certain to be admitted.
That made that man’s question even more remarkable because we all knew that he already had the evidence of his ticket to heaven by virtue of being rich, having many possessions.
The young man went away, head down, looking sad.
I went away very confused. To be sure, most of the disciples barely had the necessities of life, but none of them ever spoke of selling everything they had. They had left everything they had, but they had left that everything with family members – their parents or grown children, their wives, close friends. I had heard that one of them had been a tax collector, so he would have had some resources, but Jesus hadn’t asked him to sell everything, just to follow. Granted that meant leaving everything, but his family would still have had whatever he had left.
My friend Nicodemus went to see him one night. He went at night because he wanted to find Jesus alone instead of with a huge crowd around him. They talked, and Jesus said some things that confused him, like about being born again, but he didn’t tell my friend to sell what he had.
So why this man? Why did he tell this man to sell everything, when he had not made that a requirement for anyone else?
Then Jesus did go on to say that it was just about impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom. He used that saying about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. (I learned from Nicodemus to take Jesus seriously, but not literally! We talked about that a lot.)
And then, because the disciples and everyone else around gasped in response, the teacher reminded us that what seems impossible to us is not necessarily impossible for God. And then he promised them replacements for everything they had left behind.
Oh, this man confuses me so much! How am I supposed to understand what he means?
Once he told a story about a man who had such a good crop that his barns wouldn’t hold it all, so he built new barns. The he told himself to eat, drink, and be merry, or something like that. But that very night he died, so what did he get from his new barns full of grain?
So why did Jesus condemn him? Did Jesus expect him to have given it all away instead?
And maybe that is the key to my puzzle. Maybe it was the use of the possessions that concerned Jesus. If the man with the barns had not tried to keep it all for himself . . .
So I thought a lot about what he said. I went back to hear him several times. I didn’t hear about his arrest and the trial until it was all over. I couldn’t have stopped it. I didn’t have that kind of power. But I didn’t want his body cast out like garbage. What could I do?
My wife and I talked about it. “You have a tomb in the garden near Golgotha. Take the body there.”
Of course, Pilate didn’t believe that Jesus had died so quickly. He sent for the centurion.
“You’re telling me that the man is already dead? It usually takes two or three days! How long has he been dead?”
“Yes, my Lord, I know. Just to be sure, after they took him down, one of my men pierced his side with his spear. If the man wasn’t already dead, he is now.”
Pilate shook his head. “So what are you going to do with him?”
“I’ll seal him up in a tomb I have in a nearby garden.”
“All right.” The governor turned to the centurion. “Go with him and make sure it’s tight.”
Nicodemus met them at the cross with a mixture of myrrh and aloes. They wrapped the body with the spices in linen cloths and laid it in the tomb. The three men then rolled the stone in place.
“And that,” said the centurion, as he gazed at the stone, “is the end of that. He will cause no more trouble.”
For consideration:
General Questions
1) How does this story follow its Scripture?
2) How does this story expand its Scripture for you?
3) What is the message of this story?
4) How does the message apply to us today?
Specific Questions:
5) What do you think Jesus meant about the kingdom of heaven belonging to children?
6) When Jesus told the man to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and come and follow, did Jesus mean that for everyone or just for that one man?
7) What did Joseph mean about taking Jesus seriously, but not literally?
8) Each of the gospels has a somewhat different ending for the crucifixion. Does that matter?
