Things That Make Us Sad

Psalm 5

Luke 18: 18 – 30

August 24, 2025

Does anyone know what this is a picture of? Now don’t be bashful. I know this is church, it is sermon time, and we are used to being fairly passive as we follow along. But today is a little bit different.

Let me give a few hints that might jar your movie memory. How about this? 1.21 jigawatts – the amount needed to send this car, developed by Doc Brown in the movie “Back to the Future” back in time. In later installments of this series, they would travel both backwards and forward in time.

How would you use such a machine? Where in time would you go? As a history buff, there are any number of great events that I would love to witness. I would love to go back and witness for a second time the birth of our daughters Ashley and Kristie. I wonder what it be like to see that once again knowing what kind of wonderful, spectacularly faithful women they would become. Maybe it would lower the anxiousness I felt when I first held them.

Or maybe, on a more economic note. Maybe I would go back to May 15, 1997. Why that date – anyone know? May 15, 1997, was the date of the initial stock offering of Amazon when they first went public. Three million shared offered at $18 dollars apiece. Ten shares, costing $180 dollars if purchased on that date, would be worth today somewhere over $500,000.00 dollars. Yes, going back in time via Doc Brown’s DeLorean could pay some pretty sweet dividends.

If one listened. If one followed wise advice. If one took a chance on a life choice that maybe seemed risky or counter intuitive at the moment.

Our young ruler in Acts 18 faces a similar moment.

This young man is probably a ruler, only in the religious sense. He may be the president of a synagogue, a respected young pharisee – perhaps a member of a local town Sanhedrin. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem; on his way to Holy Week; on his way to Calvary and the Cross.

He will pass out of Galilee, through eastern Samaria, and into the towns and region of Judea. We know he hasn’t hit Jericho, the southernmost town on the route before Jesus heads west and up into Jerusalem.

We know from Mark’s telling of the story, that this affluent young man comes into the story with some sense of urgency, kneels before Jesus calling him “Good Teacher”, and then asks really what is the great existential question of this life: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus, as he often did, first answers the question with a question and then gives first the superficial, works salvation answer that drove the obedient Jew. “What do the commandments say?” Our questioner insists that he has followed these commandments since his youth and Jesus does not contradict him. Jesus accepts the young ruler’s statement of obedience.

But then Jesus moves from mere obedience to a question of faith and relationship. “One thing you still lack,” says Jesus. “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.”

Sell all that you have. Friends, when we looked at Mark’s version of this story back in July, we tried to make it clear that this was never really about money – about how much the young ruler had and what he did with it.

And here is one of the powerful ways we know this.

This is not the first time that Jesus gets asked this question. This is not the first time that Jesus is giving a teaching about things of ultimate importance. As Jesus began this final journey, in Luke chapter 10, another significant religious official – this time a Scribe – comes to Jesus and asks the exact some question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Do you remember what followed? Jesus gives teaching connected with the parable of the Good Samaritan. What must the Scribe do to inherit eternal life – THIS TIME? He is to “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Do this, and you shall live – you shall have eternal life -instructs Jesus.

Same question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Two very different answers. To one Jesus commands loving God and neighbor and to another Jesus commands that the questioner sells off all his riches and distribute that money to the poor.

Same question, different answers – but are they really? A superficial emphasis on obedience and works salvation might suggest that; but I think there is something more important going on here. Going on, perhaps, at least at two different levels.

I believe the essential issue at stake here is one of relationship. Relationship and the sovereignty - the priority setting agenda - that flows out of one’s true relationship with God.

We don’t know how the Scribe responded to Jesus’ call for relationship; but we know how the young ruler responded. He walked away. Our young ruler, this religious official, content with outward obedience but knowing that more was at stake, walked away because Jesus had named what was really most important to him – his wealth – and he couldn’t give that up.

That is not an uncommon affliction. Jesus even goes on to say that it is harder for the wealthy to put their riches under the sovereignty of God than it is for a camel to pass through the eye oof a needle. Jesus creates a metaphor, an image, using two common things in the lives of his listeners – a sewing needle and a camel – to show just how difficult it is for wealth to be put under the sovereignty of God, not its human owner.

In Luke 10, Jesus is speaking to an individual who viewed himself as uniquely special in God’s eyes. The Scribe was a part of a religious system that taught that Jews stood in a unique relationship before God as the Chosen People. That relationship before God diluted his moral and ethical responsibilities to non-Jews.

In Luke 10 it was this arrogance, this ethnic self-absorption and aggrandizement that kept him from loving all God’s people. He had a blind spot. A blind spot that kept him from loving all his neighbors. A blind spot filled with ego and bigotry.

Our rich young ruler had a similar blind spot – his wealth. His attachment to his wealth made it impossible for him to give it up. That wealth empowered hm. That wealth enabled him. That wealth set him apart. In many ways, that wealth defined him and he just couldn’t give it up. He had a blind spot that kept him from fully embracing Jesus.

Friends, what about you? What about me? Do we have a blind spot that is keeping us from becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ? If we were able to approach Jesus and ask him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What blind spot in our lives would Jesus identify?

Maybe, like the rich young ruler, it is our wealth, our affluence, our resources that we refuse to place under the sovereignty of God. Maybe, like the Scribe of Luke 10, we suffer from the same bigotry that refuses to acknowledge all of God’s people as his beloved. Maybe we have behaviors, life practices in the dark places in our lives that we refuse to give up. Addictions of all sorts, self-serving pretensions, affairs, moral ambiguities that we refuse to place under God’s cleansing authority.

Blind spots – that is what Jesus is addressing in both of these texts. Blind spots that offer the illusion of freedom but really only enslave us. Blind spots that may provide momentary pleasure but guarantee eternal agony.

The promise is this, if we are willing to put all of our lives under the sovereignty of God, in relationship with Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirt; if we can turn it all over; the resulting life in the Kingdom of God is worth what will turn out to be, minimal sacrifices, minimal sacrifices when compared to the spiritual riches we receive n return.

If we could go back in time to our text for today, we would watch our rich young ruler walk away from the eternal riches offered to him in Jesus Christ. And THAT – I hope – would make us sad. I pray that we will not make the same mistake. Amen.