Go Sell What You Have
Br. Humbert McCrorey, O.P., reflects on the Gospel for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Mark 10:17-27) in our weekly video series.
In this passage from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says “Go sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.”
Why does Jesus ask the young man to give away his possessions? Why is the young man sad? And do WE feel challenged when we hear Jesus ask US to give away what we have?
It seems unfair, why would God allow us to gain wealth, cars, books, clothes – then ask us to give it away? Doesn’t that seem too radical?
Can’t we get into heaven without giving up our stuff? Jesus says yes, but its impossible for a human, only with God’s intervention is it possible for a rich person to enter heaven.
But you know what is possible for a human? To give things away. In fact, its super easy for us to give our things away. Its only difficult emotionally. We are attached to our stuff, that’s why the young man was sad and that’s why we feel challenged by Jesus’s words.
Jesus also tells the disciples “Those who give up anything in this life for the sake of the gospel will receive 100 times more now in this life, AND ETERNAL LIFE in the age to come.”
That is an amazing deal! 100 times return on investment! You cannot beat that. It seems like a good deal. Give away the things we have and God will give us much more!
But we still don’t want to do it. We can’t really trust that this is going to work. When we give up our things, who will take care of us? How will we take care of our relatives? How will we maintain our car, our house, our pets? We have worries.
That is why it is hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. We want to take care of things; we don’t want to become children of an invisible Father. Even if we believe Him to be All-powerful, its still hard to make ourself financially vulnerable. But children are always dependent on their parents, and that’s what we are. We by virtue of our baptism have become the children of God. And God is already taking care of us, in ways we don’t recognize. Like a child is ignorant of the myriad of ways their parents are serving and caring for them, we cannot even imagine all the God is already doing for his beloved child- YOU.
So children, let us become perfect! We should trust our Father. Go sell what you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow Jesus.
