Sitting around the dinner table at the men’s retreat I led in Californian a couple of weeks ago I was watching what is called male bonding.  It could have easily turned into a testosterone contest.  But, these men, who apparently didn’t want that either, diffused it all with humor.  In particular, an engineer and a lawyer took to sparring with each other and I just sat back enjoyed the jokes.  Like the one about an engineer who died and went to hell.  He didn’t like the conditions much so he built a state of the art air conditioning system that proved quite effective in cooling things down.  Off in heaven, St. Peter decides this guy must have surely ended up in the wrong place and begins negotiating with the devil for his release.  The old devil knew a good deal when he saw one, however, and wasn’t about to turn loose of this brilliant engineer.  Before long, the engineer found himself caught in the middle of this heaven and hell tug of war.  Finally, after hearing the devil’s refusal to release the engineer one too many times, Peter threatened the devil, “Well, then, I guess I’ll just have to sue you.”  To which the devil replied, “Where are you going to get any lawyers?”

As it so happens, that engineer is not the only one who ever found himself caught in a tug of war between what is heavenly and what is truly hellish.  The scripture we’ve read today tells of a very talented guy who finds himself in the same struggle and who mirrors for us what each of us ultimately faces.  After asking Jesus, what he had to “do to inherit eternal life,” to end up in heavenly rather than hellish places, Jesus just told him to be good.  “Obey all of the Ten Commandments,” Jesus said.  To which the man replied that he had been busy doing since he was a young man.  It’s worth taking note of a couple of things in the way Jesus deals with this very religious man.

First, it’s important to note that Jesus is really setting up this whole situation to drive home another point altogether.  He is not setting back all of the work of his grace on its heels by saying that a person can actually achieve a moral goodness adequate enough to win a place with God.  That was the work he had come to accomplish on our behalf.  That is ultimately what he wanted this man to see.  But, he had to lead him to it.  So, he tells him, “go live a good life.”  All of which leads to the next thing that ought to grab our attention.

If this guy is so good, why is he so miserable?  What is it that’s missing?  As we are about to find out, he’s not only good; he’s been very good at making good money.  Moral goodness and financial wealth!  What more could anyone want?Well, whatever it was, it was what was leading this guy to Jesus that day.  And, that is what led Jesus to talk to the man about his money, or more specifically, his need to keep such a tight grip on it.  “You lack one thing;” Jesus said, “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  And, it’s at this point that this spiritually poor first-century man begins to mirror the common dilemma of many of us twenty-first century folks.  Morally good, financially well off yet, obviously, still frightened by something about his eternal destiny.  Caught in this tug of war between his passion for heaven and his passion for what keeps him from it, he’s asked to make a choice between the two.  We ought to pay careful attention to whatever it was that left him in a state of total grief as he walked away from Jesus. 

Isn’t this an interesting concept?  We spend so much time and energy trying to figure out how not to lose our grip in life and here Jesus is telling us that the key to life is learning how to lose our grip.  What’s going on, anyway?

Well, let’s be clear, first about what Jesus is not saying.  Jesus is not saying that he loves poor people more than he loves rich people.  As though the more you lose the more you’re loved.  While that should seem self-evident, the truth is that in our culture you have to swim upstream to believe that.  By unredeemed instinct and by the teachings of too many so-called evangelists these days, we’re led to believe that financial wealth is the clearest sign of God’s blessings. 

So, let’s be sure we have this basic of the gospel clear in our minds.  What Jesus did on the cross was a clear demonstration that God loves the whole world equally.  (John 3:16)  There are times when God has chosen specific people, such as the Israelites, for a specific purpose.  But, when you look closely, it wasn’t because they were more loved.  Whenever God chose anyone it is always for the purpose of using them in order to communicate his love to all men.

There is no way in the world I could ever love one of my children more than the other because of the wealth they did or did not accumulate although I am growing more certain all the time about how that will play out.  I have no doubt which of my two sons will be loaning the rest of us money some day.  And, I have no doubt none of that will ever matter in determining how much I love either of them.  I’m a sinful man with warped values when I’m at my best.  And, my best can be pretty bad.  Surely, a holy God is even more equal in giving his love to his children than I am when I am at “my bad” best.

If we know how to manage it so that it does not manage us, material wealth can surely be a blessing.  But, its presence is not proof that God loves us more or it’s absence proof that God loves us less.  If we need a good witness of that, we need only look at Jesus who died without so much as a shirt on his back.

Secondly, this scripture is not saying that a person can earn their way to God by behaving better than others.  For all the benefits of behaving well, not even our worst behavior can stop his love and our very best can’t earn it.  In fact, the apostle Paul would later devote a good deal of his teachings to that very subject.  The very reason God gave us his laws was to demonstrate to us our inability to maintain a standard of holiness that would get us into heaven.  (Romans 7:7ff)  The other day when I saw the lights of the patrol car stopping me (for the first time in fifteen years I might add), the only thing of which I was immediately reminded was that, no matter how well you drive, eventually, it’s not good enough.  The officer actually took some mercy on me when he discovered that he was late on the draw.  My wife had already beaten him to it.

So it is with the laws of God.  Only because of them are we driven to trust Christ for the salvation he alone could give us through his holiness.  And, feeling totally lost in his own heaven and hell tug of war, Paul finally cried out, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord . . . There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 7:24-8:1)  So, all that said, what is this story in Mark’s gospel all about?  It is about who is going to win the tug of war in which we all struggle between what pulls us toward God and what pulls us away.  It’s about learning to lose your grip on what keeps you from God. 

Paul had a lot of old baggage that must have been heavy.  The book of Acts records the fact that, before his conversion, Paul, then known as Saul, participated in persecuting the church.  He was present at the first martyrdom of a Christian recorded in scripture.  And, after that, the Bible records that “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women (committing) them to prison.”  (Acts 7:54-8:3).  How many did Paul widow or orphan before he came to Christ?  How many times did Paul, after his conversion, awaken from nightmares in which he heard the screaming of the children of the moms and dads he dragged from their homes never to be seen again?

Near the end of his life, surely, some of those nightmares must have come to mind when he talked about his passion to know Christ.  Looking back on good and bad alike, Paul wrote, “Forgetting what is behind . . . I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”  (Philippians 3:12-13, reversed, NIV)  Do you see the image?  Here is a man still struggling with what once was, pulled back by it, and yet, pulled in another direction by the Christ who had also taken hold of him.  Who was going to win that tug of war?

This past weekend I took a trip I’ve been planning for quite some time.  A trip I started planning about the time my mother’s mother passed away last year.  A trip back to High Island, TX, where both my parents were raised.  It’s a place of some fond childhood memories.  But, it’s also a place where some old stuff from the past, some terrible sadness, still tugs on me from time to time.  It’s a long story, too involved and personal to tell.  But, Dawn Camp told me this week of a line from a contemporary rock song that seems to express what I feel about some of all that; “Scars are souvenirs you never lose, and the past is never far.”  Suffice it to say, I just needed to go and walk where my parents once walked and visit that little boy in my past that still seems there lost sometimes.  So, my sister and a cousin of mine all met up and we went together.  I took a walk on the beach and try to envision the waves that were rolling up on the shore as the grace of God that keeps washing over me.   

Actually, some of that stuff has served a very good purpose in my life.  I figure that every person I meet is also carrying some baggage from the past.  Every person, as I understand both human experience and divine revelation, is pulled both by the past that just won’t let go and the Jesus who won’t let go, either.  I remember one lady in one of the first churches I served who treated me in some very hateful ways.  She would sit in worship while I was preaching and very pitifully attempt to distract me.  When I drove by her house, if she was in the yard, she would bend over and show her backside to me as I passed.  I later learned that I was not the first pastor marked for her abuse.  What had sparked all of this for me was when I refused to help her in her campaign to get the head high school football coach fired.  I’ve often wondered what kind of baggage she was carrying that made her treat people the way she did. 

The story is told, supposedly true, of a woman trying to sail a boat one day.  Though the wind was up she just could not get it to move.  Some other boaters saw her distress and tried to help her.  But, it wasn’t until one of them got in the water and swam underneath the boat that the dilemma was resolved.  It turns out that when the poor lady launched the boat, she’d left the trailer attached.  No matter how high she flung her sails or how high the wind, what she was dragging beneath kept her from sailing away free.

Every time I stand to preach I wonder what people are dragging that keeps them from sailing free into the full ocean of God’s wonderful purposes for them.  I think of all the ghosts that haunt.  Ghosts worse than any Halloween could ever mimic because they are real.  Sexual abuse, perhaps, either experienced or perpetrated.  A late night drunk in college that led to a pregnancy no one ever knew about except the doctor who performed the abortion, or the girl you left pregnant to fend for herself.  Something very mean and hateful you said or did, the memory of which still echoes through the canyons of your heart.  And, since then, you’ve tried to be good and perhaps been quite successful.  But, you’ve always wondered what’s missing.  Your heart longs for God but the weight you drag from the past, buried deep on the bottom side of your heart, just won’t let you go.  Or, is it the other way around?  Is it something of which you won’t let go?

Let me be careful to say that, sometimes, healing comes more quickly when restitution is made.  Though you cannot undo the past, sometimes it helps to finally face it and pay a long overdue bill.  But, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, only these words give me comfort.  “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.” 

So, here is how it works.  Can you see imagine it your mind?  Whatever has hold on us from what used to be Christ has hold of us, too, for what he want to be.  It turns out that what was giving this rich man so much trouble was not something that had hold of him.  It was what he would not turn lose that was, literally, killing him.  Is it any less true for any of us?  Here is the gospel.  In the great tug of war between heaven and hell, Satan can never keep a grip on anyone God intends to hold.  But, we can forfeit whatever God has for us by refusing to let go of whatever past we keep trying to drag with us into an eternity for which it was not created.