Possible for God

Mark 10:17-31

For mortals it is impossible.  But for God, all things are possible.

Just this week, a chance encounter in the Trinity chapel reminded me of this truth that Jesus teaches. Elsie Fountain told me the story of her granddaughter. Hit by a truck while waiting for the school bus at age ten, she’s now living evidence of the impossible: graduating from high school, preparing to study medicine.

As Elsie told me the story of what happened that day, I saw angels and heroes, agents of God, everywhere: People who, just by doing the one thing they could do - or more than they thought they could do – helped God make a miracle: emergency squad drivers who may have broken land speed records to ensure that she got to a trauma center in time to save her life – and stood up for her to ensure that she stayed in the right hospital. Surgeons inspired to exceed their own best estimate of their skills by this child’s story – and by her family’s dedication. Praying family and friends and strangers; teams of supporters who forced the medical and insurance systems to do life-saving work.

Her life is a miracle; her thriving now is evidence that indeed, the things that are impossible for mortals are possible for God.

This story has stayed with me all week. Not just the amazing emergency work, but the back office moments that also create the miracle: a family, a grandmother, selling and signing away all their assets: mortgaging their homes, cleaning out retirement funds, selling it all to give this child life.

I heard that in the gospel story again this morning, when Jesus says, “Go, sell what you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

The man to whom Jesus first said that went away grieving because he had many possessions. Because it’s hard to give it all up. It terrifies me, this idea of emptying out my life, selling my home, my furnishings, my beloved books, the sweaters I love to wear, my car. Giving it all away and owning nothing. I can barely imagine it, and when I do, it’s scary. I can’t contemplate it seriously with any kind of comfort or confidence.

Jesus knows this. “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” he says. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven!

You don’t have to be rich the way Bill Gates or Michael Bloomberg are rich to find it difficult or terrifying to sell, to give away, everything you have. (Although if you do, please consider not only donating to, but helping out with, our rummage sale next month!) Giving up everything is hard when you’re living on a lot less money or possessions than you’d like to have.

No wonder the disciples – most of them from less than wealthy backgrounds, probably – demand to know who can possibly be saved under these conditions. And Jesus tells them that they can.  You can. I can.  Yes, it’s impossible for us, but all things are possible for God.

Most of us here never have, and never will, actually give away or sell everything we own. But Jesus is speaking to each one of us, still, with the same invitation he gives the man we heard him speak to this morning. Because when he says to that one rich and faithful man: “there’s only one more thing to do, sell it all and follow me,” he is offering an extreme and powerful invitation to trust, and to love.

The thing that was missing from this man’s faith, from his clear and lifelong dedication to God, was radical trust. Because we don’t – can’t – entrust ourselves entirely to God while we are trusting our possessions and our assets.

In all honesty, I depend on my microwave and refrigerator and Wawa a lot more than God when it comes to daily food. I depend on my phone and my house for security and direction in practical everyday terms.

I invest my wealth, such as it is, in independence. That’s what all of us are taught to do, every day, every hour we interact with the twenty-first century American world. But Jesus is inviting me, us, you to DEpendence.  To depending on God – deeply, vulnerably, with a radical trust – because I have given up trusting in any other thing.

Getting to that risky, holy, absolute trust and dependence on God is more expensive for some than others. For some of us, it does, in fact, cost everything we have. For others, giving just that much more than we know we can afford will bring us into that radical trust.

Jesus just wants us to do this, whatever it takes, however much it costs. And not to scare us, either. The invitation to give it all up – to depend entirely on what God makes possible – is only the doorway into the even bigger invitation to follow Jesus. It’s an invitation to share the extraordinary, life-altering daily habits of loving and being loved by God more than we can ask or imagine.

Giving it all up is an act of love. That’s the thing I’ve often forgotten when I read this story and worry about how hard it would be. But when Elsie told me her granddaughter’s story this week, I recognized that giving it all up is actually natural – not easy, but irresistible – when we are caught up in love, like the love of a grandparent for a beloved grandchild fighting for life. And Jesus is inviting us into that kind of relationship with him, with God: mutual love as close and life-giving and powerful as the love of a grandmother ready to put it all on the line for her grandchild.

We don’t give our possessions to God to do good works. We give to God, and to others, for the good of our own souls and hearts, to love and be loved by God as our own hearts’ flesh and blood.

All of that – all the love, all the trust Jesus is asking – is still impossible for mortals. But it’s possible for God. God gives the trust and the love we need.

God prepares us for this long before God asks it of us.

That rich man who went away from Jesus grieving because he had many possessions was a man who was already tithing, already committed to God’s commandments and mission, regular in worship, consistent in living his faith. Jesus recognizes this in him, and sees that he’s ready for the big ask. Sell it all, and follow me.

And he grieves because it will be a real sacrifice. He’s acknowledging the loss he’ll face in order to accept the great gift and invitation he has been offered. But God has been at work all his life, creating in him the love and the trust he’ll need to take this step now, hard as it is.

Whatever love and trust God is asking of you today, God has already prepared you for. Not so that it will be easy to take the risk, or make the sacrifice, but so that you can do what you know will be difficult. So that you can trust that much, love and be loved that much, and do what you know will be impossible.

Because for God, all things are possible.