Mark 10:23-30

The Disciples Astonished

Mar 10:23-30

Jesus Christ is here moralising; that is to say, turning an incident to moral and spiritual account and use. He is musing aloud. The little transient anecdote has passed, but Jesus Christ's doctrine respecting the event abides for ever, an eternal voice in the Church. Mark is the only writer who takes notice of the look and gesture of our Lord on this memorable occasion. We have noted often that Mark is the one who takes most notice of the Lord's looks, as if the devoted disciple never turned his eyes away from the Lord's expressive face; as if indeed the tongue could not say all that Christ wanted to say; as if he who would know the Lord's meaning wholly must keep his eyes steadfastly on the Lord's countenance. Although Jesus Christ is moralising, he is not conceding anything. He does not call the young, rich man back, and say, You can take this kingdom upon your own terms. Jesus Christ does not build up his party or Church or society by compromise. The Lord's Church is a Church of the Cross, a society of crucified hearts. No man is in the Church who has not been crucified. He may be inquiring about the Church; he may even entertain admiration for the framework and general policy of the Church; but he is not inside until he has entered by the door of the Cross. There is no other door. We are crucified with Christ, or we are not in his society. Who, then, is in the Church? We must lay emphasis upon this word "hardly," so as to get out of it the meaning with what infinite difficulty shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. They will barely get in; they will hardly be in at all; if they do enter in it will be by an agony not to be expressed in words. It is much to have a Lord that recognises difficulties. This Lord of ours is not one who, by a wave of the hand, passes men into the Church; he says, It is hard work getting into the kingdom of God; it is difficult to give up one world for another. Here is the one world; it is visible, tangible, what we call real (though therein we are false), what we call certain (though therein we repeat our falsehood). Where is the kingdom of God? When you have found God you will find his kingdom. The kingdom of God is not in meat or in drink; the kingdom of God cometh not with observation; the kingdom of God is not a visible framework which men can estimate and walk around and form opinions about; the kingdom of God is a new consciousness, a new selfhood, a new creatureship, a new life, the beginning and pledge of eternity. If the kingdom of God were a set of doctrines which we could buy or appropriate or understand, we might as well have that kingdom as not have it; for it amounts to nothing more than assenting to a number of things which other men have written at the dictation of other men ages past, and if there is anything in it we may as well have it. That is not the kingdom of God; that is a make-up of man's own; the kingdom of God is spiritual, penetrative, vital; changing the spirit, changing the soul. If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; the old self is not only dead, but buried, forgotten; every thought, every impulse, every desire is new. If the Lord did not recognise difficulties some of us could not live. It is hard for some men to pray; it is good for you to whom it is hard if you can get as far in prayer as "Our Father." If you put a full-stop there it will be taken as if other men had spoken all the prayer, clear away down to the resonant and grateful Amen. That is all you could do. You did that with difficulty; you are of the earth earthy; you love the world, you hug the dust, you are the victims of the senses: yet there is just one feeble ray of the upper light struggling with the darkness of your materialism, and you have got as by miracle and agony to "Our Father." It is easy for other man to pray; prayer becomes their native tongue: silence to them would be penalty; they must speak devotional language, fall into devotional attitudes, and their very sighing is attuned to a religious emphasis. But it is hard for such men in some cases to give. That is their curse; they will pray with you all day, but they will not give you anything. It is easy for some men to give time, advice, sympathy; but it is impossible for them to give money. It is easy to others to give money, but they cannot or will not give time; they are busy, busy doing nothing; busy wasting their lives; busy pursuing nothing, and overtaking it. One man's difficulty is another man's pleasure. For want of this discrimination we have talked in cruel generalities, so that they to whom another feather's weight would become a burden intolerable, have been distressed for want of that fine discrimination which separates character from character, not in vulgar lumpishness, but in fine gradation, in exquisite weight and balance.

"How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." Then is it easy for poverty to enter that kingdom? It is as difficult for poverty to get in as for wealth to get in. There is no virtue in poverty; there is no vice in wealth. The more the good man has the better. I pray that every good man may become just as rich as he can bear to be, and yet retain his piety, because the more he has the more the poor have; he is only treasurer, steward, custodian for Christ. How hardly, with what difficulty, shall they that have any kind of riches enter into the kingdom of God! Do not limit the word "riches" to the word "money." There are many kinds of riches, and all kinds of riches constitute difficulties in the way of spiritualisation. The poorest, commonest kind of wealth is money. Some are wealthy in morality. They can never see the kingdom of God. No "good" man can enter the kingdom of God: his goodness will be the ruin of him. Here is a young man who has kept all the commandments; not a day or a week, but all his life; handled them with consummate ease, made familiars of them, pets, idols; done them over and over again, could not help doing them, liked to do them. Was he in the kingdom of God? He was not within millions of leagues of that dominion of light and love and liberty, growth and progress and beauty, sweetness and security, benevolence divine. The difficulty is that some persons cannot distinguish between morality and Christianity. Morality is a question of manner. Etymologically, "morals" is a word which means manners; it means indeed manners that might be limited by attitudes, relations of an external and mechanical kind. Does piety of the true sort, then, exclude morality? Nay, verily, it includes it and glorifies it; puts it in its right place; divests it of all propitiatory value, and looks upon it as a necessity, arising spontaneously out of vital relations with God. It is not to be exhumed, it is to be emitted as flowers emit their fragrance. Persons who are rich in their respectability are not in the Church; persons who can sneer at the ill-behaviour of others are not in the Church; people who can point a finger of scorn at an erring life are not in the Church of Christ; people who are so noble as never to forgive have nothing to do with Christ, and ought never to mention his name by way of profession. There are men who are theologically exact enough to preside over a theological perdition, but who are not Christians; they can hold grudges in their hearts against other men. The man who can hold a grudge cannot pray; no prayer can get through a throat stuffed with that wool. We know nothing about this kingdom of God as revealed in Christ until we are prepared to be crucified in every finger, in every hair of the head, and to have spear-thrusts all over the life. Who, then, is in the kingdom of God? O thou cruel question, ring on! we cannot answer thee. Some are rich in ancestry. They are the most difficult persons in the world to deal with; they are nothing in themselves, but, oh, how grand they are in their predecessors, who in their turn were nothing, but grand in their progenitors. The most curious part of the psychology of such a case is that such people are often as humble as humility itself in ninety-nine points, but on the hundredth point the sky is not blue enough to shine upon them, and the sun acquires his dignity through lighting them to their occupation. All this must be cut off, or there will be no kingdom of God. Little mechanical morals, musty antiquated respectability, and even intellectual genius, and money, must all be cut off, one after the other, or all together: such tumours overswell the man, so that he cannot crush himself into God's narrow door. This is Christianity.

Look at the poor disciples! "They were astonished at his words;" and again ( Mar 10:26 ), "And they were astonished out of measure." What a difference between the Lord and his followers! Jesus Christ spoke from an altitude that made the whole universe on a level; but those who were dwelling a thousand worlds lower down in the great house of space were amazed and bewildered, embarrassed and overwhelmed, by everything the great Lord said. This is not wholly to be deprecated. Even astonishment has a part to play in our spiritual education. When we have reached the nil admirari stage of development, at which we wonder at nothing, we might as well have the extinguisher placed upon us, for the universe is played out, and creation is underfoot, a thing without value, fascination, or utility. Blessed is he who keeps his astonishment young, fresh, expressive; happy in perpetual festival is he who still loves the wayside flowers, and who when he sees the first violet exclaims as if he had seen a new planet. Do not let little things lose their charm; do not allow spring to come back with her lapful of simple beautiful field-flowers and you take no notice of the largess; welcome the vernal queen. What she brings is from heaven: all flowers grow there; here they are exotics: let them take you back, by progress, beauty, suggestion, unspoken sympathy, to their native clime: flowers are the thoughts of God. At the same time our piety must pass beyond the stage of astonishment, and find its rest in the point of service. Christianity must renew its youth by giving itself away for the benefit of others.

How impossible it is to crush all self-consciousness out of men! No sooner had Peter heard this discourse, so tender in its eloquence, than he began to say unto the Lord, "Lo, we have left all." Think of Peter's "all"! How long would it take to write an inventory of that fisherman's "all"? Yet he pronounced the word "all" with such elongated emphasis that anybody would have thought he had really made some sacrifice for Christ. How nobly did the Saviour reply; how he blotted out Peter's contribution; how he made the senior apostle ashamed of himself, as he "answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." Every man is overpaid. Here we see the right use of religious hyperbole or exaggeration. Think of a man having a hundred mothers! Jesus Christ often uses self-correcting phrases. The Lord often puts our lessons at the point of impossibility, that we may next drop to the point of reality. "An hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands." Every Christian has these; the realisation is already accomplished. All houses belong to the Christian heart; all children belong to the regenerated, Christ-expressing soul; the last born into the family of God owns creation: other ownership is legal, nominal, mechanical. The poet holds the landscape, and no other man ever did hold it; the Christian holds all wheatfields and vineyards, the cattle upon a thousand hills are his; nay, saith Paul, when we are counting up our little riches, all things are yours, angels, and principalities, and powers, and things present, and things to come, and height and depth, and life and death, are yours. We do not realise our possessions; we turn whiningly away from infinite riches, and groan because the body has certain wants which cannot be instantaneously appeased or satisfied. We must live in divine exultancy; we must find our riches in God. Herein is it true that no good soul can ever be poor; herein is the twenty-third psalm the psalm of life "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."