You Lack One Thing

A Sermon for October 14, 2012 (RCL B Proper 23)

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:           Hebrews 4:12-16; Psalm 22:1-15; Mark 10:17-31

Themes:        the word of God, the commandments, the one thing lacking

Title:             You Lack One Thing

Amy Carmichael was a young Presbyterian woman living with her family in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1880s. She eventually went on to lead a famous mission effort among poor children in India, but that was many years later.

One Sunday morning, while returning from the liturgy back to her home, Amy Carmichael heard a passage of scripture audibly spoken in her ears. She remembers it clearly.

They had just passed a new fountain built near the curb of the street, when suddenly the voice spoke and said: “The fire shall try every man’s work to see what sort it is. If any man’s work abide…”

She turned to look for the face behind that voice, but there was no one. Everything was ordinary. This voice spoke these few phrases to her  - and to her alone – and then it was gone.

These phrases came from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:13-14, probably the King James Version).

Amy Carmichael heard this as the voice of God speaking to her, and her life was never the same. Her entire frame of reference for life had changed in that moment. Now, somehow, deep inside, she knew that she must spend her life on works that will last, creating things  that are of eternal value (They Found the Secret by V. Raymond Edman, 1984: p.24-25).

This, my friends, is a testimony to the power of Holy Scripture.

“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12).

This word is the Logos – the wisdom, the communication of God.

We might recall this Logos from the first chapter of John – the prologue to the Gospel of John. But it needs to be unpacked a bit for us today.

According to John, the Logos of God is the very person of the Incarnate One – Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. “In the beginning was the Logos – the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). 

Of course, in the context of this letter to the Hebrews, the “Word of God” referred only to the received texts of Hebrew scripture, what we call the Old Testament.

But our context is different, and for us the Word of God is all the texts of the Bible – that sacred library of witnesses to God’s faithfulness in human history.

Let’s be clear about this: there is absolutely no substitute for reading the Bible.

There have been a number of studies which have attempted to identify correlations between the spiritual growth of Christians from various traditions and their particular spiritual practices.

Again and again, these studies have shown that there are two simple practices which are a vital part of the lives of those who are growing in their connection with God:

prayer and the reading of the Bible.  

That’s it. No great magic formula. No mystical experiences. These two simple things – and they are usually done together. Reading the Scriptures in a prayerful state, meditating upon the meaning.

My friends: there is no getting around it. The Word of God is living and active, and we need to expose ourselves to it on a daily basis.

Just look at how our Lord Jesus used Holy Scripture in his conversation with the wealthy man on the road. Look at how he used it to diagnose the deeper needs of his soul.

You know, I think we all tend to be more like this rich man than we care to think. Are you with me?  “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

We tend to come to Christ in order to figure out what we have to do to be on the good sides of things, right? To make sure that we can get into heaven when our final day arrives.

And we tend to keep the commandments. We do most of these good things. We’re not bad people, right?

But, we know that there is more. We can feel it in our gut. There is more to the story than this. There is something about life, about God that we haven’t gotten yet.

Jesus looks at us, and loves us, and says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Like it or not, most of us will never take this step with Christ because we are far too afraid of losing our treasured possessions, or our comfortable way of life, our supposed safety and security. 

But is it hard to understand why?

After all, we swim in a sea of advertising, guided by an advertising and marketing industry which spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year trying to convince us that we need certain products in order to be healthy, or happy, or cool, or whatever.

The average American consumes at least a few hundred pieces of advertising every single day.

Each one of these pieces is sending you a message, and in fact that message sounds a lot like what Jesus said to this man on the road:

“You lack one thing.” - You lack our products, our service! And you need to have it!

My friends: how are you going to counter-act, or at least balance out a little bit, all of this aggressive messaging poured into you by this relentless advertising?

May I suggest to you that this is perhaps one of the primary reasons why you and I have MORE need to read the Bible every single day than those of previous generations?

Because we have been so programmed to live as consumers that we need extra help to remember that we are –first and foremost – beloved children of God.

Daughters and sons of a gracious God who provides everything that we could ever need. 

Do you believe this? Can you bet your life on this truth?

Anthony De Mello was a great Indian Jesuit priest who taught widely about the spiritual life. And Fr. Tony shared the story of a meeting which changed his life.

He met a rickshaw driver in Calcutta named Rinsai. This poor man was dying from a painful, terminal disease. Rinsai was so poor, in fact, that he had to sell the rights to his eventual skeleton while he was still living so that he could eat!

And yet, Rinsai was a believer who was full of faith and trust and a deep, interior joy.

This is confidence and joy and peace which passes all human understanding, because it comes from somewhere far deeper (The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello, 1992: p. VIII). 

Do you want to live with that kind of trust and joy and peace – no matter what the circumstances of your life might be?

Jesus knew the truth with amazing insight, because it is in fact the poor who find this kind of life much easier to attain than the wealthy. It has always been this way.

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

But in this regard, there is no difference between the upper, middle or lower classes.

We are all bombarded with the marketing messages that tell us to buy more, more, more. 

Whether you have wealth or not, how are you going to keep yourself on the path of God, and not allow your mind to be controlled by these messages?

Let’s stick with the basics: prayer and the daily reading of Scripture.

There have been countless numbers of saints whose lives have been changed and re-directed by the word of God.

Sometimes it is only a simple phrase from the Bible, as in the case of Amy Carmichael, when the Holy Spirit pulled out of her deep memory this one verse and flashed it across the screen of her consciousness at just the right time.

Those words of Scripture were there in her memory because she had read the Word of God regularly, and so the holy words were there, implanted within her, ready for active use in the hands of God when the time was right.

Consider it, my friends, and commit to it. Prayer and Bible reading – every day.

It sounds simple, because it is! Simple but profound beyond measure, because there we are invited to engage every day with the living and active Word of God.

May it always be so among us. Amen.