What Am I Missing?

Christians need to get out more. By that I mean going places we normally don’t go, like a friend’s church instead of our own.

I did that this week, and the break from group-think was refreshing.

The sermon addressed the rich young man who talked to Jesus in Matthew 19. He comes to Jesus and asks the most pertinent of pertinent questions: “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” That question is just about the most important question anyone can ask. If someone were to ask you that, how would you answer?

Jesus answers the question with both a question and a statement: “Why do you call me good?” and, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

So, to address Jesus’ question, what is it that makes someone good? The religious teachers of the day thought they had the answer. To them it was the law that would make them righteous. Realizing this, Jesus plays off that idea. “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He then proceeded to elaborate the commandments he had in mind: The Ten Commandments.

For a long time I have understood – and still understand – that the Ten Commandments are the basis of a Godly life and have half-jokingly said that the government resists posting the Ten Commandments in public places because the government doesn’t like the competition (as in, “Thou shalt not have other gods before me”).

But somehow that rich young man understood something that it took years for me to learn – and something many of that day’s the religious leaders never learned. That understanding revealed itself in the young man’s very simple response followed by an all-revealing question. His question has been in Matthew 19 for a long time, but this week for the first time I noticed the question for what it is.

“All these things I have kept since my youth. What do I still lack?”

The rich young man admits something. He admits, “Something is still missing.” Keeping the law, as important as it is, just isn’t enough. Somehow, deep within his spirit, in spite of all the teaching from his youth to his adulthood, his spirit cried out within him that something was sill missing. The law is holy, righteous, and good. It is the perfect law of liberty. David said he loved God’s law. But somehow the young man knew it wasn’t enough, and Jesus affirmed that emptiness, that sense of missing perfection.

Give up on your quest for perfection through riches and recognition, Jesus seems to say. Do the good things that the law demands of us. Indeed, live by them. They show you the way to abundant living, and they are ordained as a way of life. But of themselves they can’t give you eternal life. Follow me. I am the way to eternal life. You can’t earn it, but I can give it.

The young man needed to go to a place he had never been before, and he left the scene in a state of sorrow. He needed to get out more. Just like me, someone who is glad I got out of my box for a week.