Naked Before God: A Sermon

When I first read the lectionary readings for today, several weeks ago, a theme jumped out at me, which became the title for this sermon. Please, be comfortable, we are all going to keep our clothes on here. But I saw this Gospel passage in a new way, when I read it in company with Psalm 22 and several other texts. I’m not going to include all of the texts, but the one which became the lens for this sermon was from Hebrews 4:13:  “And before God no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

In this Gospel passage, the rich man, one who has kept all the commandments since his youth, kneels before the “Good Teacher.”  Jesus does not accept the label “Good Teacher,” for “no one is good but God alone.” So there is a challenge right at the beginning of this story. Jesus, whom we believe came directly from God to be human with us, does not accept this title bestowed on him.

It is a shock to us that not even Jesus, our example of what it means to be God’s child, can be called good.  Or maybe his objection is not so much about being evaluated by others as being good, but about what it means about one’s identity when someone other than God attaches a label to us?

The rich man kneels before Jesus, and this is an important detail, because we see elsewhere in the New Testament (and in our world today) that rich people get to live by different rules than those who are not.  They don’t have to wait in line, they get the best seats, they wear the best clothes every day. They certainly don’t have to kneel very often to ask questions.

When Jesus tells him to “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,” he is unable to let go of the material goods that the world uses to define him, the identities that tell him who he is. He is not free to follow Jesus because he is clinging to those identities. Jesus loves him anyway, even as the man turns away in shock and grief, and Jesus shows his deep understanding of how hard it can be to trust and depend on God when we have other resources on which to rely.

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

Jesus’ disciples found this very difficult to understand, because they knew how important it was in their time to have material resources in a world without any “safety nets.” Not having money, not being able to earn enough to support your family and pay your taxes, meant you might have to sell yourself or your children into slavery, or for women, that you might have to sell your body to strangers, or that you might be homeless and begging by the side of the road or at the temple gate, completely dependent on the willingness of those more fortunate to share with you what you need in order to stay alive.

It meant losing the sense of security that comes with having enough money to know that you would always be able to pay your bills.  Selling all of one’s possessions to give to the poor would mean you would also become poor, that all the things that made you comfortable and defined you in the eyes of the world would be gone.

The disciples knew about these implications of what Jesus was asking this man to do, and they wanted credit from Jesus for their own sacrifices, the things they had given up in order to follow him. I think they also wanted assurance that they would be OK every day and forever, but following Jesus did not and does not mean that we know for sure that we will always be safe, comfortable, well-fed, medical needs taken care of, respected and seen as valuable, productive and responsible members of society. 

I’m not sure how reassuring it was for them to hear Jesus say that those who leave everything, including family, for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of the Good News, will receive hundredfold—but with persecutions. He is reversing the world’s criteria for honor and respect, for rank and privilege, and all that it means to be first.  And in the next paragraph, Jesus foretells his death and resurrection for the third time.

In Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes as he is dying on the cross, after having been shamed, flogged, spat upon, naked and his clothes the stakes in a gambling gave, in pain, thirsty, we hear the pain of not sensing the presence of God, not being able to do anything to escape from suffering, feeling abandoned even by God and desperate for relief.

Being faithful to God does not include any guarantees of safety, comfort, needs met, honor from society, or even a constant sense of feeling God’s care and love.  But even in that much pain, the psalmist alternates between expressing suffering and expressing trust in God to rescue, provide and comfort.

Prayer moves us from understandable focus on our situation to focus on who God is and what God does because God loves us. When Jesus prayed this psalm, he was at the end of the journey of trusting God wherever God led—and then a new journey began, within the hearts of those who love him.

What is the Good News for us in this passage? How would focusing first and foremost on our identity as beloved children of God change how we live? How we do church here at Ginter Park? How we participate in the Body of Christ worldwide and through all time?

I am not advocating that we reject the identities and roles that we associate with being who we are as members of family, church, work, citizens. They serve necessary purposes. But we stay in touch with that primary identity through spiritual practices of worship, prayer, community, trust and study that can help us to live with and from the belief that you and I, and all of our brothers and sisters are God’s before we belong to anyone or anything else.

This is our solid foundation for all that we do and say, how we function in the world in ways that demonstrate that God is important to us. We can find freedom in being faithful, in remembering always that we are first and foremost God’s beloved children, created in God’s image, for God’s purposes.

I love to imagine what might happen to New Testament people after their encounters with Jesus. We never hear anymore about this man, as we never hear about many of the people Jesus taught or cured. In this case, I wonder if he went away, full of grief that lasted longer than the time it took him to disappear from the story, and kept thinking about what Jesus had asked of him.

Maybe he kept thinking about what drew him to kneel before Jesus, his hunger for assurance of eternal life, and about the shock he felt when Jesus told him he needed to give up everything that made him who he was in the eyes of the world. 

Maybe the grief kept haunting him, changed how he felt about all that he had. 

We hear many stories about people who work very hard, even obsessively, to amass great wealth and power, and then one day they realize that they have accomplished everything they set out to do—and they feel empty, lonely, and recognize that maybe they we’re looking for the wrong thing. 

One story in our Christian tradition is that Francis of Assisi, who grew up in a very wealthy family, and who is described as enjoying all the pleasures of his time–Italian food and wine, the music, rich friends, and fancy clothes. But the sight of a beggar moved him to give away to a beggar all the profits of his day in the market, all that he got for selling expensive cloth on behalf of his father.

As you can imagine, his father was most definitely not pleased when Francis came home without any money and told him why. Eventually, the conflict between the two of them reached the point where his father took him to court and tried to force him to abandon his inheritance, reminding Francis that even his clothing belonged to his father.

In response, Francis took off all of his clothes (in court) and threw them down in front of his father, claiming that from then on his only father would be “Our Father in Heaven.” And no, I don’t recommend taking off all of your clothes in court, but when God calls to your heart and you do things that people around you don’t understand or approve of, you are naked before God as Francis was before the judge and his father.

Maybe the man in our Gospel story reached the point where he recognized that following Jesus, even if it meant getting rid of all that he owned, was worth any sacrifice. Maybe he didn’t. But I’d like to think that after he had a chance to think about it, his heart drew him to that extravagant gesture of letting go of all the identities that come with wealth.

Maybe when he heard about Jesus’ death and resurrection, or the events at Pentecost, when so many were filled with the Holy Spirit and the church was born, he thought, “maybe it’s not too late to follow that man” and his life changed forever, one step at a time.

Maybe the encounter with the love of Jesus, however long it took him to realize it, changed his heart and his understanding of who he was, and his love for God and keeping his focus on Jesus carried him through the physical and social discomforts he surely felt as he sold his house, emptied his bank accounts, and said goodbye to all that he had been until that point. We will never know for sure, but I like to think that this encounter was the beginning of his story, not the end.

In one of the devotionals that I receive by email, this quote from Julian of Norwich, a 14th-15th century woman who received visions of Jesus and spent the rest of her life writing about them has touched my heart deeply. She is quoting words that she heard Jesus saying to her:

You must learn to understand that all your deficiencies, even those that come from your past sins and vicious habits, are part of my loving providence for you, and that it is just with those deficiencies, just the way you are now, that I would love you.

Therefore you must overcome the habit of judging how you would make yourself acceptable to me. When you do this you are putting your providence, your wisdom before mine. It is my wisdom that tells you, “The way you are acceptable to me, the way I want to love you, is the way you are now, with all your defects and deficiencies. I could wipe them out in a moment if I wanted to, but then I could not love you the way I want to love you, the way you are–now.”

 

Image Courtesy Nancy Waldo