Mark 10:17-22

Detachment Frees the Christian Community

Mark 10:17-22 – The Rich Man

The following interaction with the rich man served to underline one of the points of the preceding incident: that the Kingdom was a gift beyond unaided human power, and that to receive it, persons must be open to seeing themselves as they were, devoid of all they had and controlled and, in relation to others, last of all and servants of all.

The translation accurately noted that Jesus was setting out again “on the way”, the code word for the Christian life on the creative journey towards the Kingdom.

The gesture of kneeling before Jesus had already been encountered in the story about Jairus, the ruler of one of the Galilean synagogues (5:22). It was a gesture that in the honour code of the culture put Jesus under pressure to respond graciously. The same dynamic was behind his addressing Jesus as Good Teacher.

The man’s question expressed perhaps his general attitude towards life. He talked about inheritance, as though eternal life could be inherited by right. Among the wealthy of the society, inheritance rights were taken for granted.

Consistent with his assumptions about inheriting, the man also asked what he must do. The question perhaps assumed that the outcome was in his own hands: he would be in control and he could bring it about if he did the right things. In his addiction to goodness, he saw himself as its author. But the Kingdom was gift, gained precisely by letting go of control and learning instead to trust God.

He also used the word must. “Must” is about obligation, and would seem to have indicated that the man’s approach to his own righteousness did not proceed from freedom but from imposition by God. In God’s Kingdom he did not feel himself as child but servant, possibly slave, crushed under the weight of the question that seemed to conceal an underlying and unbearable angst. What was lacking was the confidence of the child, the easy taking-it-for-granted that it was loved, the secure freedom to receive love as gift and not as prize for goodness.

Eternal life was not a concept that had arisen in Mark’s narrative to date, at least in those explicit terms, though Jesus would mention those words in a later discourse (10:30). The meaning was clear enough.  Yet the concept seemed to fit somewhat with the man’s sense of anxiety. For him the sense of being alive, more fully alive, was not something that he believed possible, even if imperfectly so, in the present. It would only be for afterwards, an extrinsic inheritance divorced from the inner experience consequent on personal human growth.

Jesus’ response seemed unexpectedly abrupt in the light of the man’s graciousness. However, it may have reflected Jesus’ rejection of the whole honour system, and was directed more at that system than at the man himself (though in many ways he thoroughly embodied the system).

Jesus refused the title good, saying that it belonged to God alone. This can sound like pettiness on Jesus’ part. What was behind Jesus’ response?

One possible interpretation among many is that the man’s addressing Jesus in that way was an unconscious reflection on his part of his need to have a recognised authority figure to make significant decisions for him, a reluctance to accept the responsibility entailed in making a personal conscientious decision for himself. No one could do that for him, not even Jesus. God speaks to people in the depth of their conscience and personally reveals goodness and truth to them there.

Jesus tried to lead the man to listen to his own conscience. He assumed that the man was already aware of the commandments: they could guide him.

What was particularly significant, however, was that Jesus inserted another imperative into the catalogue of the Decalogue. He added: do not defraud. Why? Probably the reason was that, in the social organisation of the day, wealth was generally gained from land or estates, and maintained by oppression of the poor. It may not have been irrelevant that the man seemed to come from around the area of Judaea (Galilee has been left behind), perhaps even from Jerusalem. The wealthy aristocracy of Judaea owned most of the good land of Galilee, handed on as inheritance from generation to generation. The endemic poverty of Galilee was due largely to their oppression and fraud.

The man’s self-knowledge could have been seriously deficient, or he may have been an exception to the general rule. Yet either way, his question betrayed the void he experienced: observing the commandments had not met the thirst deep in his spirit. 

Jesus saw the heart of the man, recognising that, though he was a typical product of his social class, he still had an inherent genuineness. With wonderful freedom and lack of prejudice, Jesus took him for what he was and loved him. This is the only occasion in the whole of the narrative where Jesus is explicitly said to have loved.

In his love for the man, Jesus wanted to lead him well beyond the dead-end suppositions of his original question. Treasure in heaven was not a right of inheritance. It was always pure gift of God, and could only be received with the simplicity of the little child - the delighted and delighting confidence that it was a truly loved source of delight - which for the adult involved a surrender of power and an acceptance of vulnerability.

Jesus held out to him the invitation to come and follow. The answer to his deepest need was not something that anyone else could teach. It was the truth that reverberated in the depths of his being and could be discovered only by himself. But Jesus would walk with him, indeed before him, on the journey of discovery as, living and reflecting, they continued their search together: follow me.

Only at the end of the story was the man’s wealth explicitly mentioned, but it had provided the context of all that had preceded. Possessions referred specifically to lands or estates.

Jesus explicitly invited the man to discipleship. By following Jesus he could respond to the deep sense of need felt in his depths. For all his wealth, the man was poor: his wealth and the power it gave had deprived him of his vulnerability and the felt sense of littleness. Jesus invited him into vulnerability and suggested he give away what he owned.

Mark noted a profound sadness in Jesus’ comment. 

Next >> Mark 10:23-27