Twenty-eighth Sunday of the Year, B 
 

      It was often the case, in the Gospels, where not only the enemies of Jesus, but also His own disciples, would complain that our Lord spoke in parables and riddles.  “Tell us plainly,” they would demand, “who you are and what you’re about.”  To what purpose, Christ seemed to be saying in response; so what if I do tell you plainly that I am one with God the Father, sent from Him to demand the allegiance of all, if you have no real intention of obeying me?  What good is there in that?  Just more knowledge to ignore.

      And here in today’s Gospel our Lord speaks subtly to the rich man who calls Him “good teacher” and then asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.  “Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”  Another riddle.  But a subtlety that becomes clear as this passage develops, for our Lord is about to demand of this wealthy man something that a mere “good teacher” has no right or authority to demand.  But first, Christ plays the role given Him by the rich man; Christ the good teacher reminds him of the commandments of God that are to be kept diligently.  “Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth,” is the very confident reply.  Then, just before the shocking and crushing blow of a demand that only God could make, the Gospel tells us that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him….”  What the rich man is about to be challenged with is, then, an act of love:  “You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 

      Is it possible that love, divine love, could be the motive behind such a demand?  Undoubtedly, since our Lord Himself spoke it and then went on to explain the particular difficulty about wealth – not bad in itself – that it was the very thing between this man and his eternal destiny, blocking his way to the Kingdom of God.  “Children,” Jesus says to His followers, “how hard it is to enter into the kingdom of God!”  And Jesus goes further, singling out the burden of money – that “[i]t is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  And the followers of Christ were astonished and wondered out loud about the possibility of anyone then being saved.  Thankfully, Jesus reminds them of a power far beyond that of a rich man, confidant in his adherence to the law with the assumption that his wealth is the sign of God’s favor:  “All things are possible for God,” Jesus says.  Yes, amazingly possible, so “possible” that it has been made evident in the Church over and over again…

      I give you one inspiring example:  a man, a saint, whose feast day we recently celebrated, the famous Francis of Assisi, a good example, I believe, both because of his extraordinary popularity, and because of the fact that he was in many ways, before he answered the call of Christ, much like the rich man in today’s Gospel, much like, even, perhaps, you and I.  He was young, ambitious, the son of a wealthy merchant and doting mother; Francis was extremely popular even then, and he had high ambitions for himself, traveling along, he thought the road to glory.  Until, that is, he bumped into Christ along the way – always a rather troubling experience, Christ having a way of knocking us off balance, shining a light into our souls that reveals about us many things – motives, attitudes, priorities – we’d rather not like to examine.  But Francis fell under the “spell” of Christ, and he began to be transformed… radically.

      However, he started off rather badly.  Perhaps he had this very Gospel story in mind when he began to try do as Christ had challenged the rich man to do:  he started giving away things; the only problem was that these were things belonging to others, namely his wealthy father.  (Yes, it’s always rather easy to “generously” give away the belongings of others.)  His father, furious, dragged Francis before the Bishop of Assisi for right judgment on this matter, and here is where occurred perhaps the single most significant thing in Francis’ early life of following Christ:  he admitted his wrong, stripped himself naked in the public square, handed everything he had over to his father, and walked out of the town, finally, now free, to follow Christ.  If the rich man in the Gospel “went away sad” because he had just too many possessions to get rid of, here with Francis we note a joyful divesting himself of everything so that this young man, destined to be a famous saint, would not be lacking in that one thing Jesus spoke of, that lack of love on Francis’ part that is the only proper, ultimate and Christian response to Christ, looking at us as our Lord does with those piercing eyes of divine love, fathoming the depths of our hearts and revealing to us who (or what) our false god really is. 

      This, I realize, seems brutal.  How much easier it would be to just have a few commandments to keep, a few obligations to fulfill, you know, keeping the religion category of my life up to snuff!  And then, Christ confronts us in St. Francis, in today’s Gospel:  “You are lacking in one thing,” and the challenge of love for God – above all else – is before us.  In the surprise at this demand of love, and what it just might entail in one’s life, let us remember that “all things are possible for God,” and that it was the rich man who went away sad, and that it was St. Francis, who without a single possession in this world, became the Saint known especially for his joy.