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[Music] The Man Who Came and Went. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Let us listen now to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 10,

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beginning the reading at the verse numbered 17, Mark 10 at verse 17. As Jesus was starting again on his way, a man ran up, knelt before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked him.

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"No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not cheat, honor your father and mother." "Teacher," the man said, "ever since I was young I have obeyed all these commandments." With love, Jesus looked straight at him and said, "You need only one thing. Go and sell all you have

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and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me." And when the man heard this, gloom spread over his face, and he went away sad because he was very rich. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Jesus said, "Whosoever cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." And the greatest happiness and joy of my life is to tell people that Jesus said that, that he meant it 2,000 years ago when he first said it, and that he means it tonight.

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I should be very frank and open with you and say that it warms my heart when you greet me on the campus. And I feel a deep satisfaction and inner peace when you come to me for counsel or advice. And I was delighted yesterday when some of you introduced me to your parents or off-campus friends with the words, "This is our Dean of the Chapel." And I am moved when you ask me to be part of the happiness of your wedding.

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But there is nothing that delights me or that I enjoy more than sharing with you what I have learned from God and from God's Word. I understand myself to have but a single gift, and that gift is preaching. And therefore, the greatest delight and happiness of my life is to preach. I love to tell you of the wonder of the welcome of Jesus Christ, of the glory of invitation which he extends to you,

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and of the opportunity for peace here and always which is yours because of him. And it's precisely this that gives me difficulty tonight. Because you see, the passage of Scripture which is before us tonight, well, it's just not a very upbeat passage. It's not very happy. It's not very welcoming. It's not very encouraging.

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I suppose that of all the stories I know, both inside the Bible and outside the Bible, this story starts better and ends worst, more than any other tale I can think of. I mean, here is a young man who comes with the right attitude. It says he runs up to Jesus, very enthusiastic.

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And he comes with the right kind of courage. Some came to Jesus by night, not him. He comes in bright daylight. He comes boldly. And some come with trivial matters, but he comes with ultimate concerns. What must I do to inherit eternal life?

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He's a rich young man. He's a popular young man. He's already been elected a ruler. And he has about him the spirit, the esprit of youth. But he doesn't see these things as of primary importance. He's concerned with ultimate things, things like eternal life.

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So he comes with this glorious question. It's the right question. And he asks it in the right way, with reverence. He says, "Good master." Jesus, of course, teaches him that words of praise are to be directed toward God, and Jesus is right. But there is about this man's mistake, even there, a kind of reverence and awe, which is beautiful to see.

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And he comes to the right person for the answer to his question. He comes to Jesus, who has brought man and God together. So he comes, and everything about his coming is right. I mean, you can't ask for a better beginning to the story than the beginning that is given to us here.

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But the story ends with his going away in great gloom and sorrow. It says, "Jesus, looking on him, loved him." And it's easy to understand that when one considers all the joy and enthusiasm and interest that are in the young man when he comes. And then, suddenly, this dark, dark cloud, he goes away sorrowful.

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In Dante's great poem, "The Inferno," Dante is led by his guide Virgil to the very gates of hell. And over those gates are the words, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." And as Dante is standing there at the gates, he notices certain individuals about the gates. And they are crying out with long, sorrowful moans.

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And he asks Virgil who these people are. And Virgil replies, "These are people who are not good enough to go to heaven, and not bad enough to be condemned to hell. They cannot be praised, they cannot be blamed, and so they wander in a kind of never, never existence here about the gates of hell." And as Dante looks at them, he sees a long, winding procession of faceless people marching beneath a flag that bears no emblem.

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And in the midst of this lonely and ghostly procession, he sees one. Well, these are his words, "It was the shade, or it was the ghost, of the one who made the great refusal." This is the way he describes the rich young ruler. The one who made the great refusal.

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He was the man who came and then went. And there's no joy in the contemplation of his story. That's the reason I don't like to preach on the theme. I've been thinking about it all week long, as to whether I should bring it here tonight.

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There's nothing in the story that we can really like. In the first place, we run smack into an announcement, an energetic announcement, of the necessity of obedience to the commandments of God. And that makes us all uncomfortable. I have a friend who always refers to Jesus as the world's greatest salesman.

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And I'll be quite frank with you, I don't understand why he does that. Anybody who was crucified when he was 33 years old, well, I just don't think you can classify him as a great salesman. And certainly, in the episode before us, we don't see any great sales techniques on the parts of Jesus. I mean, we may not know a great deal about salesmanship, but we know that the way that you sell is to make things easier, not harder.

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And here's a young fellow who comes ready to enter into a sale, ready to make a deal. And the first thing Jesus hits him with is, "You've got to keep the commandments." And the second thing he hits him with is, "You've got to give up all of your money." That's no way to sell anything.

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We think to ourselves, "Now, if we had been there, we would have handled it in a different way." I mean, we would have brought him right into the church and perhaps put him on a few committees, finance committee probably, because he already had a little gold. And sure, he has some rough corners, but those things will wear off as time goes along. But Jesus doesn't do that.

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He says, "Jesus looked on him and loved him, and yet immediately he confronts him with, 'Keep the commandments and give up everything you've got.'" Now, what kind of love is that? Well, it's the only kind of love that Jesus knew anything about. You see, whenever Jesus talks about love, he talks about holy love.

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And holy love, God's love, is not a permissive love. It's not a spineless love. It's a love that demands. You occasionally will encounter people today, even modern theologians amongst them, who will argue that love is the summary of the law, and you can do away with all the commandments of God now because all that it takes to be a Christian is to be loving. They'll even go so far as to suggest that you can violate some of the commands of God, provided that you do it in a loving way.

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They will argue, for example, that adultery is quite proper under certain circumstances as long as you are guided always by love. They have grossly distorted our Lord's understanding of love when they say that. Jesus did not see love as eliminating the law of God. He saw love as fulfilling the law of God. To Jesus, love did not take away the necessity of obedience. Love accentuated the desire to obey.

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So when this young man comes and says, "I want to be a disciple of God. I want to know eternal fellowship with him," Jesus said the first thing that would come to his mind. "All right, then, if you love God, do what God commands." That's where love begins, with obedience. When I was in college, our fraternity owned a little blue Ford truck, Model T.

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Although it wasn't as expensive as it is now, it was quite expensive even then to run one of those things. So we decided it would be wonderful if we could figure out how to run it on something other than gasoline. We gave to a few of our science majors the task of developing some new product, and they went to work and quickly came up with something which they guaranteed to work. We filled the tank and took it out on the street in front of the fraternity house and turned on the ignition.

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It just ignited like that, and everything just started right off. It went down the street just as smooth as you can imagine for a distance of about 125 feet. Then it coughed a couple of times, exploded, caught fire, and burned to nothingness. It never moved a foot after that time.

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Now, the difficulty was, you see, when Mr. Ford built that truck, he said, "This truck operates on gasoline." He sent certain instructions with it as to how it was to be used. We chose not to follow the instructions. The result was disaster.

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God sends perfect instructions with us. He has made us, he has fashioned us, he knows what is best for us. One of the supreme expressions of his love is his sending along guidance as to how we are to live life. To fly in the face of that guidance, to reject the instructions of God, is to turn on his love. It is an act of disobedience. It violates love.

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That is the reason that Jesus says first to this young ruler, "If you are going to love God, then you have got to keep the rules." We don't like to hear that. We like to hear about love that accepts, love that forgives, not love that says, "Keep the rules." It doesn't seem to upset the young ruler at all. His reply to Jesus is a very quick one.

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He says, "I have kept all the rules ever since I was a kid." Of course, that shocks us a little bit because we know it is not true. We kind of think to ourselves, "He doesn't have a very good handle on himself if he really thinks that his record is perfect." There is both exterior sin and interior sin.

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Perhaps he has been all right on the outside, but he certainly had some improper thoughts on the inside. It is interesting that Jesus, who must have thought this same thought, doesn't say anything about it. He makes no response at all to what the young man says. Why? Because the young man goes on to say, after I have got a perfect score up to this point, "I still lack something."

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Jesus knows that even though he thinks he has got a perfect score, there is a feeling of inadequacy in him. So Jesus zeros in on that feeling of inadequacy and doesn't go back to point out the mistake. But we are not like that. Let's face it. The conversation goes like this.

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"What do I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Keep the commands." "I have done them perfectly ever since I was a kid." And we say, "Oh, come on!" [laughter] And the problem is, you see, that as soon as we say, "Oh, come on,"

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we are indicating that we understand there is such a thing as secret sin. And if we understand that, then we have to understand the reality of it in our own lives. If we are quick to say about him, "Look, nobody's record is perfect," nobody includes us. A long time ago, when people had leprosy, it was considered to be not only a disease but a sign of sin.

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And they went about crying, "Unclean! Unclean!" Well, we look at ourselves and we don't see ourselves rotting away. We know some people who are rotting away, some people on whom we look down. We understand them to be caught up in a disease that is tearing them apart morally and ethically,

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but we don't see that in ourselves unless we look deeply into our own hearts and begin to notice there a few of the telltale white spots. We don't always honor our fathers and mothers. We murder people with our words.

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We take the clothes off people and seduce them with our eyes. We covet the grades or the accomplishments or the wealth of others. We should cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!" But we don't cry it.

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And all the saints of the Church rise up against us and say the only thing worse than having leprosy is having leprosy and not admitting it. We're like people who look up and see some great Christian lives like galleons out on the sea. And the sun shines off their sails and the waves smack against their hulls

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and they cut great furrows in the water. They're noble ships and they're out in the deep, white, clean, wide water. And we sit and look at them from our rowboats in the shallow swamplands by the shore where the smoke and the pollution are heavy. And we want to sail out there, but in our hearts we know that this is where we are

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and somehow or other we don't seem to be able to separate ourselves from everything that holds us here in the fetid backwaters of life. And you see, looking at the rich young ruler and saying, "Oh, come on!" Well, if there's any modicum of honesty in us at all,

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we have to look at ourselves and say, "Oh, come on!" We don't like to do that. And we don't like to confront an uncompromising Jesus either. If I might pursue this figure of the ships for a few minutes,

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that which holds us there up against the shore in the oily, polluted waters, that rope of sin which ties us to what we don't want to be tied to, sometimes it's a very long rope. Sometimes we can go up a channel and pass a couple of headlands and some lighthouses and some buoys

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and get pretty far out into the bay before we stop short. And what happens to us then is what happened to the rich young ruler. He looks at his circumstance. He sees himself not being able to go any further. He thinks he's kept the commandments and he's still not getting there, so he cries out, "What do I lack?"

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And Jesus turns his boat around and he comes back and he goes up that same channel and he passes those buoys and he passes those lights and he passes those headlands and he comes right up to where a rope anchors that boat to the shore and he says, "You've got to cut loose here!"

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And for the young man, it was money. "Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor and then come and follow me." "That's your problem," Jesus says. "Cut loose here!" Now, he's not saying money is wicked.

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Jesus had some disciples who were very rich. Joseph of Arimathea was rich. Nicodemus was rich. And Jesus never said to them, "Go and sell all that you have." There was one occasion when a lawyer came to Jesus and asked almost the same question

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that the rich young ruler does. And Jesus proceeded to talk to him about loving your neighbor and used the Good Samaritan story to illustrate his point. Jesus doesn't say this to everyone, but he says it to this man

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because, you see, that's his particular problem. Jesus is the great physician, and a good physician does not give the same pill to every patient. He gives the treatment to the patient that the particular patient requires. And to this patient, he says, "You need surgery."

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He suggests this at other places. He says, "If your right hand offends you, cut it off." "If your left foot offends you, cut it off." "If your right eye offends you, tear it out." "It is better to be a cripple than to go into hell whole."

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And that's what he says to this young man. There's a place in your life that's tying you back, that's holding you, preventing you from being what you want to be and from having what you want to have. Cut loose here.

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Dostoevsky has a short story about a woman who dies, and she's being judged. She's hanging out in space between heaven and hell. And she hears God ask this question, "Have you ever done anything for anybody else?" And she thinks and thinks and thinks, and the only thing she can think of is one day she gave a dried-out carrot to a beggar.

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And she reports this, and God says, "All right." And with that, there's a thread that comes down from heaven, and hanging on the end of the thread is this dried-out carrot. He says, "Now you grab hold of the carrot, and we're going to begin to pull you up." "And as long as you can hold on, well, you've got a chance of making it."

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"But if you ever let go, you're in trouble." So she hangs on, and slowly but surely they start to pull the carrot up. And she's going up with it. But as she goes, she begins to notice that she's feeling heavier and heavier,

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and she looks down, and here there are a lot of other people hanging onto her skirts, trying to get a free ride, moving up with her. And she turns around and she yells at them, "Get away from here! This belongs to me! It's my carrots!" And the string breaks. What Jesus says to the rich young ruler is this,

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"You're treating that carrot as if it's all yours." "You don't understand that if you're going to be my disciple, then you have to turn the big decision-making matters over to me." "I'm not going to say to you that you have to turn your back on everything in life that you like," "but I am saying to you that I'm the one who will decide what you stay with and what you let go of."

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And we don't like to hear that. We don't like to hear talk like that. We like to take the sword of the gospel and kind of twist it so that it becomes a butter knife. But Jesus swings it like a saber, and he comes hacking his way into the very middle of our lives, and he says, "Cut loose here!"

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That's uncomfortable. To make it even worse, the place that he focuses on in this young fellow is money. And none of us like to hear anything about money. Did you ever hear about the farmer who said, "When the preacher talks about the Bible, that's preaching. When the preacher talks about money, that's meddling."

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Well, Jesus starts meddling. Of course, we try to excuse ourselves. We say, "Well, we're not rich." The fact of the matter, of course, is by the world's standards, we're very rich. There are many places in the world where you would be murdered tonight just for the value of what you're wearing, no matter what it is.

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We are the world's rich. So the story does apply to us. I had an economist on the West Coast tell me on one occasion that the basic principle of economics was that one ought to be sure to have enough saved up to meet any emergency. I've thought a lot about that.

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I have two questions. The first question is, "What is enough?" It always seems to me when I encounter people that are following this principle that enough may be defined as a little more than they have. There's always got to be a little bit more.

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They're like Midas who want to be able to touch everything and have it turn into gold. Midas is described as a miser. Have you ever noticed that the word "miser" and the word "misery" have the same root? If you're going after enough, and enough is always a little more than you have, you're never going to be very satisfied.

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And the other problem with that kind of economic counsel, about always being prepared for a rainy day and setting your sights, first of all, on financial security and making that the preeminent goal of your life, the other problem with that is this. It's hedging your bets. This young man who comes to Jesus wants to be his disciple, and he wants to give it a good shot.

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So he comes enthusiastically, and he comes with the right questions, and he comes ready to go. Except for one thing. He's kept a little cushion. I mean, he's not absolutely sure it's going to work, so he just keeps a little bank account.

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Just keeps a little bit back here to rely on in case this thing with Jesus doesn't pan out the way he expects it to pan out. And Jesus looks at him and says, "My friend, that which is your final security is your God. That on which you finally depend is your God. That which you expect to pick you up when everything else is gone, that is your God.

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And so that's the place where you've got to cut loose." I think about airplane conversations. I spend a lot of time on airplanes. And you know, you often get into conversation with a fellow sitting next to you. After he's stepped on your feet three times, you kind of feel like you know him.

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And a mistake slides into your lap, and you pick it up, and you hand it back, you know. And it's natural to say something. Now, I have never had a fellow introduce himself to me on the airport like this. "I make $75,000 a year, and I live in a $50,000 home, and it's all paid for.

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And it's full of costly furniture, and it's all paid for. And my watch costs $350, and I have four kids in the finest schools, and we don't need scholarships." I've never had anybody introduce themselves like that. What they say is something like this.

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They say, "My name's Jim Jones. I'm from Cincinnati. I'm married. I have three kids. I work for such and such a company." If they somehow guess that I'm a preacher, they say, "I belong to so-and-so church." You see, what the man is doing is this.

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He's defining himself not in terms of his possessions, but in terms of his relationships. The Bible says your life does not consist in your possessions. That's the great American dream. Own as much as you can, and then you'll be as much as you are.

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The Bible, Jesus, does not suggest that at all. He says your identity rests in your relationships. And you announce your name, and you talk about your wife, and you talk about your children, and you talk about the town where you are known, and the company where you are respected,

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and the church of which you are a part. We define ourselves by our relationships to other people. And Jesus says the most important relationship is your relationship to God. You cannot serve both God and things, God and money.

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So cut loose here. [bell rings] Please turn your cassette to the other side. And we don't like to hear that.

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We don't like anybody telling us we have to decide. That's what makes us sympathetic with the young ruler, isn't it? I mean, he gets put on the spot. He comes, all ready to talk about this matter, and Jesus says, "Bye.

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Keep the commandments, give away your money, and follow me." Forward march! And he's still standing there. I mean, can't I have a little more time?

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You know the way we respond when somebody says to us, "Now decide." Well, there's a few more things I'd like to know. There's a little more information I'd like to gather. There's a few more considerations that I would like to bring into this thing

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before I finally make up my mind. We always want to put off the big decision. Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian, said that we can never get all the information. We can never gather everything we would like to know.

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And so the best thing we can do is decide in the direction of understanding that no decision is going to be perfect when we make it. If good is white and black is bad, then all our choices are gray or plaid. Well, there's a lot of truth in that.

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There's also a lot of truth in this. Not to decide is to make a decision. I mean, you may sit and try to decide whether you're going to weed the garden or not. And while you're sitting there thinking about it, the weeds continue to grow.

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And the situation about which you will be deciding will be different tomorrow than it is today. It will take a different decision. I remember when I was a kid that my great desire was to be a professional magician. And I learned how to do tricks and that kind of stuff and started to do shows,

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went on the stage professionally. And when I went on the stage professionally, I began to have-- they used to call it nervous stomach. I don't know what they call it today. But I used to get intensely nervous.

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About four days before a show, I'd start to vomit and diarrhea and all the rest of it. Because I almost disappeared before the show even started. And it would go on and on and on. And it was an agony. It was a very, very costly thing.

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And finally, one day, the doctor--and I don't know whether this was good medical advice or not-- but the doctor said to me, "Now, look, young man. You're going to have to make a decision. You're either going to do the shows and be sick

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or you're not going to do the shows and you won't be sick. Now, it's going to be one way or the other, but you've got to make a choice." I said, "Well, I don't know if there are any other doctors available. Isn't there some pill that could be given me?

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Some advice that I could follow? Some procedure that I could undertake? Isn't there some way that I would be able to do both things? Do the shows?" See, what happens to you when you try to get into that kind of a situation

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of walking down two roads at once is you disintegrate. I use that word very deliberately. The root of the word "disintegrate" is the word "integer." Integer means one.

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When you are integrated, that is oneness, that is unity. You hold together. When you disintegrate, you split into more than one. This is the root of the split personality problem.

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I know Christians who've had nervous breakdowns because they're trying to walk down one road with Jesus and one road with their non-Christian friends. And you cannot do both.

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You've got to decide. And if you make the wrong decision, well, it's like looking at the sun. After you've looked at the sun, everything else that you look at has a black spot in front of it.

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You can move your eyes anywhere you want to and there's always a black spot. You can weep, but the tears will not wash it away. The black spot is there. You've got to decide, and at the same time that you've got to decide,

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you've got to decide properly. You've got to understand that the romance of religion is single-mindedness. Any real love that you will ever know in your life is a love based on a decision and a commitment,

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and it is so in your love for God. Single-mindedness. There's fun in faith, but you've got to walk down the road a while before you find it, and walking down that road involves decision.

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We don't like people to tell us that. Of course, the rich young ruler, well, he makes the wrong decision. George Frederick Watts has a painting of it. It hangs in the Tate Gallery in London, and there he's standing

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in his silks and his satins and a golden chain about his shoulders and golden rings on his fingers, and he's just turned away from Jesus. You can't see his face. He forever is in anamnesty.

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He's one of the few people described in the Bible who goes out of the presence of Jesus feeling sad. And you know the reason he's sad, because, you see, he's seen for a moment what he could be and what he ought to be,

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and he goes out and he'll never be able to forget it. But the memory of it will be with him everywhere. You know, that's the root of the great sadness in the world. It's not the fact that people don't believe in Jesus.

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As a matter of fact, more and more people believe in Christ all the time. It's the fact that there are a lot of people who know Jesus is right, but knowing it, decide against him because the light of the sun leaves that black spot on every other thing they do.

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We believe for a long time that it was an economic law that you followed, supply and demand. It was right for one man to die of too much, and it was right for one man to die of too little,

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and then we met Jesus, and Jesus said, "Christians help one another. They bear one another's burdens," and ever since Jesus said that to us, we've never been quite able to satisfy ourselves with the notion that one man should starve to death while another has too much to eat.

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It used to satisfy us to have a conception of religion in which if you believed the right theology and worshipped in the right way, then your passage to heaven was assured, and then we met Jesus, and Jesus said, "More important than your theology and your way of worship is this.

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Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," and ever since we heard Jesus say that, we've no longer been satisfied just with correct theologies and beautiful liturgies. We thought for a long time that being a disciple meant living decently

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and in a level-headed fashion, and then Jesus comes along and teaches us that being a disciple means total commitment, means deciding and offering yourself and everything that you have, and ever since we've heard those words from him, it has not been satisfactory just to be decent and being level-headed

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as suddenly meant just being flat. We were always very satisfied with our rowboats and always very satisfied with being along the shore until we see that great ship of the Spirit out in the white water, and when we see it cutting through those waves

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with the sun sparkling from its mass, well then suddenly our rowboats look very, very small indeed. That's the reason the young man goes away sorrowful and with a great gloom on his face. Some people have said to me, "What do you think happened to him after that?

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Do you think maybe because he was sorrowful that eventually he turned around and came back? Maybe there was some time down the line when this fine young guy who had so much going for him reversed himself and came back and said, 'Jesus, I will sign on,' and got on board that big ship of the Spirit and sailed off?"

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Well, it would be nice to believe that, but the Bible gives us no hint of that. As a matter of fact, all the evidence is the other way. It's one thing when a person sins in passion or impulsively or without thought, but he had the opportunity to think it over, and he was smart enough to do the thinking.

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And he said no. He made the great refusal. And the last thing that Jesus and the disciples saw of him was his back. And that's another reason why we don't like the story, because we don't like stories with sad endings.

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You see, it's all wrong. We don't like to be reminded of the commandments. We don't like to have to inspect our attitudes. We don't like to confront a Jesus who won't compromise with us.

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We don't like people to talk about our use of our money. We don't want to be forced to decide, and we don't like stories with happy endings. Now you can see why I've been wrestling all week long over whether I should bring such an unpopular story into this pulpit tonight.

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And finally, yesterday afternoon, I decided that I wouldn't. I just wouldn't preach about it at all. Instead of that, I would take one of the great texts out of the Bible, this one. Jesus said, "Whosoever cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out."

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There's one of the great, joy-filled promises of the Bible. The rich young ruler? Jesus loved him. It says that. He looked on him and loved him. It was the young man, you see, who made the refusal.

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Not Jesus. It was this fine young person who went away sorrowing. Let us pray. O God, grant that in the moment we come face to face with Jesus,

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we'll say yes. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you

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and give you and all those whom you love and all those whom nobody loves his peace.