Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; July 28, 2024
Readings: Mark 10:17-22 (children’s talk); Doctrine of Life §66; Secrets of Heaven §141
The Lord told that rich man, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21). It’s pretty clear that He doesn’t expect us to follow these instructions to the letter. At least, that had better be the case—because if He wants us to literally sell all that we have, then none of us are listening to Him.
The thing is, He still meant something when He said these words. When we look at a teaching from the Word and say, “the Lord can’t mean for me to take that literally,” we sometimes then proceed to put that teaching away entirely. “I don’t have to take it literally” turns into “I don’t have to take it seriously.” But the Lord doesn’t say empty words. When He says things that don’t make sense on the surface, He’s inviting us to think carefully. What does it really mean to sell whatever we have?
Whatever it means, it’s probably pretty important that we do it. After all, the Lord gave this instruction after He was asked, “what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). The rich man asked the Lord, “how do I get to heaven?” And the Lord answered, “sell whatever you have.”
Our next reading is from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, from the book Doctrine of Life. This reading gives us a simple overview of the deeper meaning of the things that the Lord does and says in the story we heard from Mark [read §66].
The first thing this passage notes is that the Lord is said to have looked at the rich man and loved him, because that man was able to say that he had kept the commandments from his youth (Life §66; cf. Mark 10:21). It’s important not to gloss over this moment. The love that was on the Lord’s face was an affirmation that this man had done something right. The rich man’s claim might strike our ears as overconfident and maybe even conceited—“oh, I’ve always kept all the commandments all my life.” It was certainly a big claim, and probably not one hundred percent true. This man had lots to learn. But he had done something right. Keeping the commandments really matters. Even if the upshot of keeping the commandments is that we become a little too sure of our own goodness, it’s still far better to keep the commandments than to break them.
Of course the Lord loves us whether we keep his commandments or not. When we do the right thing He looks at us with joy and with love; and when we do the wrong thing He looks at us with sorrow and with love. But the story from Mark calls attention to the look of love that came onto the Lord’s face when the rich man said that he had kept the commandments—and the reason for this is that when we obey the Lord we turn towards Him, and we perceive the love that shines from Him. When our backs are turned to Him, we don’t see His love.
But let’s go back to the instructions that the Lord gave this man. The reading says that to sell what we have is to withdraw our hearts from our riches; to take up the cross is to fight against our lusts; and to follow the Lord is to acknowledge Him as God (Life §66). Those instructions are easy enough to understand. We’re not going to spend any more time today talking about taking up the cross and acknowledging the Lord; those ideas will have to wait for another sermon. I want to focus on the instruction to sell whatever we have.
By these words the Lord means that we should withdraw our hearts from our riches. Fair enough—that makes sense. If our stuff is more important to us than heaven, then our stuff is what we’re moving towards—not heaven. To fix this problem, we don’t have to literally get rid of our stuff: we simply need to put heaven above our riches. We need to value heavenly things most. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).
These ideas are borne out by the conversation that immediately follows today’s story from Mark. The Lord says to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (10:23). Then, because they’re astonished, He clarifies: “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God” (v. 24). Riches aren’t the problem: the problem is trusting in riches, or investing our hearts in our riches.
Of course, it’s easy to say that heaven is more important than our stuff. It’s obvious that this is the truth. Whether or not we believe this truth in our hearts is another matter. Our actual priorities are the ones we act on. Do we value heaven in practice, when we’re not sitting in church? Often this comes down to seemingly small choices, like whether we make time for prayer and the Word of the Lord, or choose to give that time to things like chores, or social media.
An interesting thought experiment is to consider how much of your stuff you would be willing to part with, for the sake of a neighbor who had been injured. Would you give them a band-aid? Band-aids cost money. But not much. It’s unlikely that anyone would balk at parting with a band-aid. What about more expensive first aid equipment? Would you give up whatever activity you were in the middle of, to drive your neighbor to the hospital? If they were truly destitute, would you pay their hospital bill?
Now let’s do the same thought experiment, except that there’s no neighbor involved—what’s at stake is simply heaven, and your integrity with the Lord. If keeping the Lord’s commandments cost you a hundred dollars, would you part with the money? What if it cost ten thousand dollars? What if it cost you your house, or your job?
None of this is to say that you ought to go around paying strangers’ hospital bills. That might be a wise and charitable thing to do, but it also might not. The point is that it’s easy to enjoy being generous—as long as no one’s asking us to give too much. Picturing yourself giving what you have for a good cause probably feels good. But is there a point at which you begin to feel that something within you resists the thought experiment? “That’s too much—I couldn’t part with that much.”
The Lord makes it pretty clear that heaven is worth everything that we have. He says:
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26)
What are you actually willing to part with, for the sake of heaven—or for the sake of the love that fills the heavens?
So far we’ve been talking about parting with our stuff—our worldly possessions—and maybe also our time. But the riches that the Lord says we mustn’t trust in can also be understood to mean spiritual riches. In the spiritual sense of the Word, “riches” symbolize knowledges of good and truth (HH §365, et al.). These things are like treasures to us. The Lord doesn’t ask us to get rid of any genuine spiritual treasures. But some of the truths that we treasure are only half-truths. Some of them aren’t truths at all: they’re ideas that we hold dear, but in the end, there’s no place for them in the home that the Lord is calling us to. We all have our own ideas about the ways our lives are “supposed” to go. When life doesn’t go that way, it’s easy to feel cheated. But where did those ideas actually come from? Were they founded on the Lord’s own promises? We all have our own ideas about what it looks like to be good, and how much our religion can reasonably require of us, and what it means to be a man or a woman or a spouse or a parent or a neighbor. If we find that the Lord, in His Word, teaches something different, are we willing to part with our own ideas? Are we willing to sell what we have?
By the way, nobody—least of all the Lord—says that this kind of thing is supposed to be easy. In the story from Mark, the man heard that he should sell whatever he had, and he went away sorrowful (10:22). The Lord saw this. He knew that that man would struggle to accept the truth that He needed to hear. The Lord spoke the truth anyway. He also looked at that man and loved him (v. 21). The Lord’s mercy is forever. His patience is forever. He will not be angry with us if it takes us a long time to find the willingness to sell all that we have. And in the meantime, every little step counts for something. Every time we look at the way life has gone and say, “I guess the Lord’s plan was different from my plan,” we’re inching in the direction of giving up what is our own—and that’s good.
There is yet another way of understanding the instruction to sell all we have—another idea that’s even deeper and even more challenging than the ones we’ve talked about so far. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told: “That [this man] should sell all that he had, and give to the poor, signifies, in the spiritual sense, that he should put away from himself and reject the things of his proprium” (AE §893.4; cf. §934.2). Proprium is a Latin word that sometimes gets copy-pasted into English translations of the Heavenly Doctrine. One of the best ways to understand this word is to recognize that it is the origin of the English words “property” and “appropriate.” Our proprium is what belongs to us—what is our own, and nobody else’s. It’s the stuff in our hearts that belongs to us, as opposed to what belongs to the Lord. The Lord says that we should put away and reject the proprium, because the proprium is fundamentally selfish (cf. SH §154). When we’re immersed in the proprium, we feel that we’re the center of the world. The beliefs and behaviors that belong to that mentality need to go.
The thing is, when we’re immersed in the proprium, the proprium is all we know. It’s when we’re caught up ourselves that it’s hardest to believe that anything else has value. The delight of selfishness feels like life itself. To give it up feels like giving up everything we have. We feel that the Lord wants to take everything from us. Of course this isn’t true at all. We turn now to our final reading, which is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Secrets of Heaven [read §141].
One of the wonderful truths of spiritual growth is that everything we give up, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, is replaced with something better. This is why the Lord tells us to “sell” what we have, not to give it away. To sell something is to exchange it for something we want more. When we let go of the proprium—when we let go of the conviction that it’s supposed to go our way—the Lord gives us a heavenly proprium. He gives us life, and He gives us an awareness of that life and of the joy that goes with it, and He gives these things to us as though they are our own. This is what He meant when He said, “whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).
He really does ask us to sell all that we have—He asks us to let go of the belief that what we have now is better than what He’s going to give us. He told the rich man, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21).
Amen.