Our lives will remain unfulfilled if we persist in living only in relation to what we lack. The pursuit of more things is a path that doesn’t lead to eternal life. Living according to the rule of scarcity only ensures that we never achieve peace and fulfillment. The rule of scarcity is powerful. The rule of scarcity says that there’s not enough to go around, so we’d better grab all that we can. Living according to the rule of scarcity

Living in relationship to what you have – rule of abundance.

Wealth holds many people hostage to hopelessness. Like the rich man of Jesus’ day, we often find ourselves tied down by the very wealth that we hope will make us free. We seek to keep away discomfort, and sadness, and even death by accumulating things. But accumulating possessions inevitably fails to make our sadness go away. Surrounding ourselves with things never really softens the sting of disappointment or struggle. The more we try to accumulate, the more we learn that wealth isn’t the answer to all of our problems. The rich young man came to feel hopeless precisely because of his wealth. Instead of offering him more options, his wealth left him grieving. Our popular culture is so firmly built on the accumulation of possessions that we grow further and further in debt each day. Consumer debt is higher now than it’s ever been. Credit card companies send us more and more applications for more and more credit cards. Phone solicitors call daily with low introductory interest rates and competitive offers to juggle the balance of one credit card to another. College students with absolutely no income automatically get pre-approved credit applications. What can be used as a convenience has turned into a billion dollar, high interest loan industry. Credit tempts us with immediate gratification for a delayed cost. We want things now, but want to pay for them sometime later. Just as consumer debt is at an all time high, so is bankruptcy. The lure of getting more and more ushers us to the edge hopelessness. The hunt for more things to fill our homes and our lives and the emptiness inside us only pushes us farther down the path of despair. Every year at Annual Conference we hear the candidates to be ordained answer a series of questions. One of the last questions is, “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” John Wesley himself wrote this question as he founded the Methodist movement over two hundred fifty years ago. Wesley insisted that his preachers not carry so much debt that it would be an obstacle to their ministries. The expected, correct answer to the question is “No, I am not in debt so as to embarrass me in my work.” But each time we ask that question at Annual Conference, there’s always an undercurrent of uncomfortable snickering from the conference floor. We all know full well that nine out of ten seminary students leave school with student loans to pay back. In order to achieve the credentials that we require our ministers to have, candidates for ministry almost have to acquire debt. I have friends who graduated from seminary with over forty-thousand dollars of student debt hanging over their heads, just from graduate school. And so we try not to laugh too loud, when we ask the historic question of those to be ordained, “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” But it’s a good question, not just for ministers. Are you in debt so much as to embarrass you in your ministry? The embarrassment of debt can paralyze people. Even people with high paying jobs, with good incomes, can find themselves with the dirty little secret of out of control debt. The quest to acquire possessions, to provide for our children, to buy braces and glasses and health care, not to mention food and shelter… these things create despair in families who cannot keep up. Sudden illness or injury can wipe out a family’s savings in an instant. Many of us place false hopes in wealth or the lack of wealth, to explain our happiness. The search for wealth holds many people hostage to hopelessness.

Doing right doesn’t give hope, either. No matter how cleanly we live, we’ll encounter despair in our lives. Doing the right thing is not insurance against despair. Job testifies to us loud and clear, that being righteous and faithful won’t protect us from loss of hope. Job was stripped of all his wealth; he watched as his family was murdered before his eyes; Job, whose body became infested with sores, even good and faithful Job suffered and despaired. There is no formula for living that can vaccinate us from hardship. The rich young man felt hopeless despite following all the commandments since his youth. He did everything in order to live right according to God. He saved up in his bank account of divine blessings by doing what the Bible told him to do. And still, the rich man couldn’t reach his heart’s desire: to enter the kingdom of God. I recall a particularly painful memory of church from my childhood. During the 1980’s, Longview was hit hard by the catastrophic combination of over-harvesting of the forests, federal legislation, and a national recession. Many of the families in my church depended on the crumbling logging industry to survive. One Sunday, the mother in one family interrupted the end of the worship service. With her husband sitting next to her with his head in his hands, she stood up, and through her tears she said she had something to say. In a loud, broken voice she cried out that her husband was suffering depression because he hadn’t been able to get work. She cried because they’d done everything right. They were a family with two children and a dog, for God’s sake. They were making payments on a reasonably priced home. Both parents worked, saved, and struggled to give their family stability and love. But even though they’d taken all the right steps, they found themselves hopeless. That woman asked out loud unanswerable questions about why this was happening to her family. She demanded to know why the church wasn’t helping her family more. She asked why a proud man like her husband was reduced to feeling useless. Sometimes, even when we do all the right things, we still can’t reach what we desire. Even after following all the rules, we may still find ourselves suffering and feeling hopeless.

Ultimately, hope rests in God. “For mortals, it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible,” Jesus says. In the face of despair, God offers hope. In the face of death itself, God promises life. Through Christ, God promises new life and new possibilities. Personal loss doesn’t separate us from hope in God. Jesus teaches his disciples a radical reorientation of life. When we stop hoping for wealth to save us, or a relationship to save us, or losing weight to save us, or the stock market to save us… when we finally place our trust and hope in God, we find new guiding values and new priorities. Those who are last will be first. Those who are poor are nearest to being truly rich. Such hope doesn’t erase our hardships or take away the pain of loss. Hope in God doesn’t change our debts, but it changes us. Hope in God opens our eyes to see the world in new ways. It’s hope in God that enabled millions of Christian African-American slaves to endure two hundred years of slavery in this country. Many American slaves survived generations of inhumanity by holding on only to their hope in God. Hope in God is a powerful tool of liberation. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew slaves survived by faith to see their great day of liberation. Their faithful hope in God led the way for them to be changed… changed from slaves to the liberated people of God. Our hope in God holds the power to liberate us from the bonds of debt, of loneliness, of despair. The moments of hopelessness that each of us inevitably face in our lives are moments when we may be powerfully reoriented, changed to see ourselves as a new creation. When we are liberated from our deepest fears and guilt, our hope in God leads us to new life in Christ. Hope in God makes impossible things possible. In God, we may be changed to see our lives in a whole new light.

Jesus’ message is almost too radical. Don’t just help the poor. Go, sell all that you own, and become poor. We may be strongly tempted to sugarcoat this message… to remove the radical edge to Jesus’ words. We may be tempted to spiritualize this message, or to contextualize it just for the ears of the rich young man. But if we do that, we’ll lose sight of our true hope that God promises us. This story tells God’s message for us today. “Go, sell all that you own, and give the money to the poor; then come, follow me.” Does this message take your breath away? Are you shocked, appalled, grieved, or amazed? Or have you heard this story so often that you don’t really hear it any more? Read it once again, so that you may discover the hope that brings new life out of despair. For us, some things just aren’t possible. For God, all things are possible. Amen.