In Jesus we Encounter Wisdom
Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday – 13 October 2024
You may be able to remember a time when you had to make an important, but difficult decision. This might have been a situation where you were being pulled in different directions; or when the heart was saying one thing and the head another; or when there was a dilemma about doing the right thing, and yet it appeared to call for super-human strength to commit to do it. This Sunday’s Gospel reading is full of drama and an agonizing decision to be made.
Remember the story of King Solomon. He was invited by God to ask for whatever he wanted and after careful discernment he asked for the gift of wisdom. The first book of Chronicles says that Solomon’s choice pleased God greatly and God gifted him with extraordinary wisdom. We are prompted by the readings this Sunday to consider what we would ask for. In the great decisions that we have had to make in our lives, we might consider that it felt like we needed the wisdom of Solomon.
Solomon is understood to be the author of the book of Wisdom from which we have our first reading for Mass this Sunday. This reading praises the virtues of wisdom. King Solomon found the help he needed as he struggled with the questions of life. He found wisdom. Sadly, the rich man in the Gospel who chose to keep his many possessions, lacked true wisdom, and, in the end, went away sorrowful.
Note the zeal and unusual earnestness in the young man, who the Gospel says, ran up to Jesus and knelt before him. His kneeling was a gesture of petition and profound homage. He addressed Jesus with great respect. He recognised a goodness in Jesus. Everything about the way he approached Jesus says that he acknowledged Jesus’s competence to answer the question burning on his heart.
This rich young man’s question is a form of the ultimate question on every person’s heart. Even if not everyone gets to actually put the question into words, we all want to know what is the meaning of life. What is the purpose of my life? Where will my life end up? The Jews of the time might have naturally thought that eternal life is gained by observance of the Law of Moses, but the fact that this man comes up to Jesus to ask for guidance suggests that he was dissatisfied with this traditional answer. He sensed that there must be more to it.
When Jesus told him to keep the moral law, the commandments given by Moses concerning our conduct towards fellow human beings, remarkably he was able to say that he had faithfully kept them. Would that we would be able to say that we are equally virtuous.
What followed is one of most extraordinarily beautiful lines in the whole of the Gospels. Jesus looked at him and loved him. It is the only time that the Gospels explicitly speak about Jesus looking with love on an individual. Surely, it could have been expected that this gaze of love would have captivated the man’s heart and moved him to surrender all his earthly attachments. But it seems that the man was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t notice Jesus’s looking at him with love.
Jesus then pointed out the one thing this man lacked, the one thing that was an obstacle to him entering into life, and told him to sell everything he had and give to the poor, and to come and follow him. We could well question why Jesus asked him to do this radical thing. Most probably it was because Jesus knew that this man was bound by his possessions; he was attached to the security that they gave him; they were the first priority in his life and prevented him from fully keeping the first three commandments concerning the love of God before all else.
If before, the verse about Jesus looking at the man and loving him could be said to be the most beautiful line in the Gospels, what follows is the saddest, most tragic verse. The Gospel says that at Jesus saying this, the man’s face fell, and he went away sorrowful. St Mark explains this was because he had great possessions. This is the only recorded instance in the Gospels when someone whom Jesus called, did not give up everything and follow him. All the others that we know about, left everything, and followed Jesus. Remember James and John, the sons of Zebedee, how they left their boats and fishing nets. Remember how St Matthew left his coins on the table in the customs house and followed Jesus when he called.
The second reading for Mass this Sunday from the Letter to the Hebrews speaks about the nature of the Word of God. We hear that it is alive and active; it is penetrating, revealing, and demanding. The Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword; two-edged because it reveals God to us and us to ourselves. It makes us conscious of that place in the heart where God is and where he speaks to us.
The Gospel passage shows the action and effects of the Word of God in the life of the man who ran up to Jesus and knelt before him. In listening to this Gospel, this living and active Word of God speaks into our lives even now, today.
The young man who ran up to Jesus with a question burning on his heart is a good symbol of us; he stands for us. We kneel before Jesus, recognizing in faith his identity and goodness. We ask the meaning and purpose of human life and about eternal life, the immortality that every human person yearns for. We are trying to keep the commandments. Jesus looks at us and loves us. Jesus, the Wisdom of God and the Word of God gazes deep into our souls and asks us to give away those worldly things that we cling to for identity and security.
As we listen to the Word of God this Sunday, we examine ourselves. What is the one thing that Jesus asks each one of us individually to give up, the one thing we lack in order to be full disciples of Jesus?
What are the “many possessions” that keep us from giving ourselves totally to God? What are we clinging to? They could be material things, ambition, status, or relationships? What would it take for us to follow Jesus without reservation? In the Gospel passage Jesus went on to focus on the danger of material possessions and riches, not because they are the only obstacle to us in our spiritual lives. They certainly were the problem for the rich young man, and they are a common danger for all people, but we need to consider that for each of us, it could be something different that we lack. It could anything that prevents us from seeking true wisdom, the wisdom that leads to true wealth, what Jesus calls ‘having treasure in heaven.’
In Jesus we encounter Wisdom, the living and active Word of God. As he did with the rich young man in the Gospel today, he looks upon each of us with great love. That look of love, that loving gaze, is a personal invitation to give up everything to follow him.
The challenge to prayerfully consider, in the light of Jesus’s loving gaze, what is the one thing we lack, must not be taken lightly or too easily dismissed. We are on a pilgrimage and each of us needs to cooperate with the grace of God to receive salvation. But neither should we despair. We do not have to go away sorrowful. Jesus tells us that while it is impossible for us to be saved by our own efforts, all things are possible with God.
Can we dare to hope that this rich young man later reconsidered and returned to follow Jesus? Perhaps, he was like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Perhaps he became one of the pillars of the early Church. We dare to hope that cooperating with the grace of God, for whom all things are possible, we too may be saved.