I am the rich, young ruler. I am the rich, young ruler. That was the awful conviction that washed over me as I stood in New Orleans two weeks ago and looked at the devastation of the city. I am the rich, young ruler. It is not that I don’t tithe. Between my gifts to this church, to the seminary, and to other church-related charities, I give more than ten percent of my gross income back to God. It is not that I don’t give to disaster relief for the poor. I do that, as well. But when I searched my heart for the reason why it took me more than a year to get to New Orleans to physically help the people there… to participate in any disaster relief effort… the only answer I could come up with was that I was “too focused on my own life… my own needs… my own agenda… my own desires” to interrupt all that with a trip to New Orleans. You see, I come first.
The story of the rich, young ruler is not about money… though money is one of the factors in the story… and we will come back to that later. The story of the rich, young ruler is about where the attention of the young man is focused. It is about what is most important in his life… and his answer… just like my answer… is that his attention is focused on himself. He… comes first… his comfort… his needs… his pleasure… his agenda… his wants… his desires. Even his quest for eternal life is for himself alone. This man whom they call the “rich, young ruler” doesn’t care about anyone else. Even the commandments that he has kept, he kept for his own gain.
I went to New Orleans more than a year after Hurricane Katrina hit. Because of the timing of my trip, I was able to see all the retrospective coverage on television of the storm and its aftermath. Because of the research that had been done in the twelve months since the storm hit, it was easy to see what happened and to point out many causes for the multiple failures that caused the catastrophe. The news reports were full of stories of negligence… mismanagement … corruption… and greed. By the time I went to DFW to catch my flight to New Orleans, I was skeptical about the value of what we were planning to do and how helpful we would be in a city that was apparently filled with crooks and cheats. But I had made a commitment and I was determined to see it through.
Nothing happened on Monday evening to change the questions in my mind. I merely enjoyed getting reacquainted with members of University Presbyterian Church in Austin, where I completed my internship in seminary. Tuesday morning, after a safety lecture and overview of the day’s work, we headed out to the job site together. And in the next hour, I met Michelle.
Michelle was the homeowner of the first home we gutted. She never got a FEMA trailer. She had been living in San Antonio for over a year. Michelle used to teach in the New Orleans district where her house is located. There is no school now… for there are no children to teach. The working class neighborhood is a ghost town. Very few people live there now. Every house was flooded after Katrina. Every house had standing water in the first floor for weeks. The water line is a vivid horizontal scar across each home. The people are gone. In every block, there is still a house that has a blue tarp covering the roof. Most are empty… the place is desolate. Michelle wants to return, but there is no job for her to return to. Yes, she had a life before Katrina, but living underemployed and renting in San Antonio, she does not have the money to return.
Michelle spent the day hugging us and crying. She didn’t care how dirty we got. She hugged us anyway. Over and over, she thanked us for coming. Over and over, she told us how long she had waited for help. Even though she had managed to clear her family belongings from the house before we arrived, from time to time as we gutted her home, we found things …hidden behind the mantle of a fireplace… on the window sill under a rusty air conditioner… things that were mementos of her family. As the cripple and, thus, the least valuable worker, I assumed the duty of carrying these tiny treasures to her. Each treasure brought a fresh flood of tears and a story. By the end of the day, I knew why I was there.
The next day, Wednesday, was the worst day of the week. On that day, we went into one of the neighborhoods most devastated by the Katrina flood and one where the residents were least able to deal with the tragedy. One house in three had a FEMA trailer in the yard, but the house standing beside the trailer was still uninhabitable, even a year after the tragedy. Blue tarps dotted the housetops. The house assigned to us could only be identified by the addresses of the houses on either side of it. The grass in the yard was waist high and we had to hack our way through the underbrush to the door. When the door was opened, the odor of decay was overwhelming. Damp debris littered the hallways and every room, as if a giant hand had lifted the house and turned it upside down. An open refrigerator lay across a hallway face down. Clothing lay on every square inch of floor… most still on their hangers.
Two elderly ladies… one named Jean… had lived in this house until the day of the flood. Poor… disabled… and without transportation… they were unable to evacuate. They were airlifted from the roof of their home after the flood. They had not returned to the house since that day. The doors and windows had never been opened. We all struggled that day. We never saw the two ladies, but we saw every stitch of their clothing… remnants of the food that they ate… the corpse of their dog… still chained to the gate… the rusty remains of a motorized scooter… and hundreds of family mementos destroyed by the flood… photo albums… souvenirs… artwork. Antique furniture disintegrated in our hands when we picked it up. Broken glass treasures lay under piles of wet clothing. All of it was dragged to the curb and left in the street for garbage disposal crews. The pile of debris was higher that the ceiling of the porch… all of it toxic… rancid… and odorous. Even the masks we wore could not neutralize the smell. Several members of our crew had to stop working from time to time to fight their nausea.
When I looked at the pile of debris at the end of the day and saw the entirety of these two women’s lives lying in the street, I found myself wondering what their last day in this house was like. As the storm raged all around them and the power failed, plunging them into darkness, did they, like the Psalmist, believe that they had been deserted by their God? As the waters of the flood crept higher and higher, cutting off any escape and trapping them inside, did they cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Once again, I was overwhelmed by the sense that it had taken me far too long to come. What had held me back? What stopped me from being in the first wave of volunteers to go to New Orleans? Only my life… my priorities… my concerns… my needs… my desires … my own decisions. It was all about me. Yes, I was the rich, young ruler.
The rich, young ruler is not a bad person… he is just a young man whose priorities are misplaced. What are the words of the song we sing at the close of our time of worship? “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God… and his righteousness.” This is the teaching of scripture… that our first priority is always to seek God… and to serve at God’s pleasure. But to do that often involves a denial of self… and reliance on self... to live fully for God. So Jesus tells the young man to sell all that he has and to give the money to the poor and to follow him. And the young man is unable… unwilling… to do so.
Let’s examine Jesus’ request. This was not the first time… and this man was not the only one to whom Jesus presented this dilemma. Each of his disciples had left everything they had to follow him. This young man could have joined them… but he didn’t. Jesus was not opposed to the wealthy… but he knew that it was difficult for the wealthy to maintain their priorities as followers. But it is not money or material possessions, per se, that are the problem… it is what money does to us that creates a problem.
Money… or should I say our material possessions… create for us a false sense of security. It allows us to buy large, comfortable homes… education for our children… health care… clothing… and food to sustain us… along with other amenities that make life more comfortable. With all of this surrounding us, we have little need of faith. We have little need to rely upon God or God’s providence to sustain us. We begin to believe that we are self-sufficient. Money also provides myriad distractions from God… the work of God’s Kingdom… and our role as Christians. It is far easier to send a check and then spend our remaining funds to rent a movie… see a play… host a fun-filled gathering at our home… and not think about those who still live without… and have nothing. It’s all about priorities… who comes first. I don’t know about you, but I came away from New Orleans with the conviction that in my life, I come first… my life… my career… my comfort… my interests… my desires. It is all about me.
It was not the money that I brought to Michelle that she needed. She needed to see Christ in person. She needed to see me… and everyone with me… working with her… side-by-side… in her house… not flinching… not turning up my nose… not judging her… not handing her a check… just being there… with her… doing what needed to be done. That day, I saw the tangible reality of hope… in a touch… in a smile… in lost treasures found… in dirty faces… in a gutted home. Christ was there.
There is a difference between doing it… and paying to have it done. One immerses you in the experience… the other doesn’t. I have been in outposts served by mission dollars and I can tell you the difference between cost-effective… efficient… impersonal… mission projects… and labor-intensive… inefficient… and sometimes less-than-perfect labors of Christian love. When I pick up a child wrapped in a blanket and, on the corner of the blanket, I find a little label that reads, “handmade by Mabel for First Presbyterian Church mission outreach,” it conveys more relationship… more love… and more caring than all the machine-made blankets money can buy. I am going to challenge each of you to figure out a way that you can connect with someone whose life has been devastated by the flood in New Orleans… or some other major disaster outside of Stephenville… without sending any money. Write to them… call them… go and work on their homes with them… worship with them… bless them with who you are in Christ. The gospel of Luke tells us, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. I don’t know about you, but I know that I have been blessed in this life… and I know I need to figure out how to be a blessing to others. I need to change my priorities.
In the spring of 1988, Michael Jackson released a song that hit number one on the Billboard Top 100 at the end of March. The song is entitled, “Man in the Mirror.” I listened to it again this week and the words of the chorus are still rolling around in my head. I want to dedicate them to the rich, young ruler in each of us. It goes: “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways… and no message could have been any clearer: If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself… and then make a change.” There’s still time. Do it today. Amen.
Mark 10:17-31; Psalm 22:1-15