Transcript
It is easier for a camel to- no, y’all. I can’t. Just sit down. I mean, come on, y’all. It’s pledging season, and I’m supposed to preach on this gospel passage literally.
Y’all know what it says, and we can pretend it’s not really saying what we think it’s saying. I mean, really, it’s probably not anyway. There are, you know, so many nuances and little clues and whatnot. But come on. One commentary talked about how we can manage this passage, as in, try to keep it in a boundary that makes sense and doesn’t make us feel super guilty for all we have.
You know, things like maybe the young rich man didn’t actually keep the law, so it was just a way of calling his bluff. Or maybe nobody can actually keep the law. And no, nobody can give up everything, so it’s really kind of a rhetorical device to call our bluff. Or maybe this was just a commentary to this particular rich young man, but not really to anyone else like us. Or maybe it only applies to the rich, and I’m sure we can all think of someone richer than us, so we’re good. Or on the other hand, maybe it’s for anyone who has people poorer than them, and we can probably think of someone poorer, so we better start liquidation. But that’s also pretty much impossible. So we’re good.
The line that kind of stood out to me quite a bit was Jesus’s response to the poor man. Well, the rich man, but you know, when the man replies that he does indeed keep all the commandments, Jesus replies by saying, you lack one thing. What is that one thing? What does the rich man lack? The rich man who seemingly has everything, even obedience to the laws. Even Jesus’s love. After all, the only other time Mark uses this Greek form of the word love is when Jesus is summarizing the two greatest commandments.
Maybe the one thing this man is missing is the knowledge of what Jesus says to the disciples later, after that man goes away in shock and grief. Because then Jesus says, For God all things are possible. For God all things are possible. Even a camel fitting through the eye of a needle, even a rich man getting into heaven, even each and every single one of us who probably, if we’re honest with ourselves at the very most personal and intimate levels of our own self-knowing, even each and every single one of us who probably fail to keep all the commandments, who sometimes even maybe forget to follow Jesus in all ways of life and living, even we will enter the kingdom of God because of God’s eternal and omnipotent grace, mercy, and love. Because for God all things are possible. What a gift to be given. Perhaps gratitude is what the young man was missing.
And now, a quick lesson on manners. We all know how it goes. After all, just like we were taught to write thank you notes, we were taught the proper exchange for verbal gratitude. We give a gift, we receive a response of thank you, and we reply, you’re welcome. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. We receive a gift. We reply, thank you, and then we wait and wait because it seems you’re welcome has morphed into something unnecessary or redundant, or even almost crass in some cases.
This, of course, is according to the most revered scholar on this issue, Miss Manners. In fact, Miss Manners even encourages not responding with you’re welcome, especially when it comes after a thank you via email. Don’t reply to an email saying you’re welcome or after a thank you for doing a paid job, or even when it might be more appropriate to say, I appreciate your gratitude or it was no problem. Granted, some of this has to do with the nuances of the phrase “you’re welcome”. Some of this has to do with the culture around giving and gratitude, and some of this could even have to do with the global presence of manners. After all, if you do a direct translation of you’re welcome from other languages, it doesn’t always directly translate to your welcome in English. In Spanish you would say “de nada”, which means of nothing. In French, “Darién” means of nothing. Or as many of the language sites directly reference “je vous en prie” meaning I pray you for it.
And if you think about it, even in English, you’re welcome seems to almost more directly imply a space in which you belong. As an. Welcome. You are welcome. You are welcome into the space of gratitude. You are welcome into the space of this gift which I give to you, because you are worthy of receiving it. Welcome.
If God gives each of us so many gifts and we reply with, thank you, what kind of response would God give back? No problem. My pleasure. Of course. Perhaps even as I tend to do to you when you say thank you, a returned, “no, thank you”. As in, thank you for your gratitude towards me.
After all, God does all things is all things. Not because God has to. Not even because we are necessarily worthy, but because God loves each and every single one of us. And God wants to do all things and give all things to us. And when the roles are reversed and we offer our gifts to God, and God says, thank you, what is our response?
No problem. My pleasure, of course. Maybe even our response might be to give even more, or to give again, or to give something else. Have you ever kept a gratitude journal where daily, or at least regularly, you start writing down all the various things that happen in a day for which you are grateful.
I don’t call mine a gratitude journal. I call it a God sighting journal, but I’m keeping one right now to remind myself of all the amazing things and people and events that happened to me here at Saint John’s during my first year. There are a number of reasons why I’m doing this journal. First, to be very honest, it can be hard to transition to start a new call and a new community to find my new spot in a system that has already been so immensely successful for such an unbelievably long time. Way before I got here. And this journal is a reminder of all the good, all the joy that is happening in my life. Despite these challenges.
Second, it’s a good way to look back in a year or 2 or 10, or however many you will have me for, I will be able to look back at all the amazing things that happened during my first year, during the year of settling in and learning and getting to know, and also, this journal is a place for me to thank God for appearing to me in all of you and all of your ministries and all of your gifts and energy and passion and hope and joy and love. It is a reminder of all the gifts that God has given to me, for which I am beyond grateful. And as such, it is a reminder for me to not just say thank you to God, but to also say you’re welcome to God when I can see all of God’s gratitude coming through in my life. God. You’re welcome here at Saint John’s, here in my life, here in my heart.
May this pledging season, which comes to an end next Sunday, be a time for us not just to do a gift inventory, not just to look at all the gifts we have received and all the gifts we have given. Also a chance to say thank you and a chance to be reminded. You’re welcome. You are welcome here in this space with these people and God’s presence and God’s love. And you’re welcome for all the amazing things we get to do together in gratitude. Here, here is a gift from each of us to each of us through God.
Thank you. You’re welcome. Amen.