13th Sunday of Luke
If the rich young ruler had obeyed all the commandments since his youth, if he was an upstanding young man, why wasn’t this enough for Jesus?
How could he be lacking anything?
Today, a young ruler approaches Jesus asks how to inherit life in the Age.
But, as the man learns, following all the commandments wasn’t enough.
Jesus asks him to sell everything he has, give it to the poor, and follow him.
It wasn’t enough just to be a good person . . . but why?
Was Jesus, perhaps, demanding too much?
If someone who had followed the law his entire life wasn’t “good enough,” where does that leave us?
Scripture: Luke 18:18-27 (click here to read)
Bottom Line: To move forward, sometimes it’s best to let go.
Discussion Questions
- For this young ruler, possessions, including land, was an identity marker of who he was. What identity markers to you have as a person? As an Orthodox Christian? As an American? Which ones keep us from following Christ?
- Giving up our identity to accept the new one given to us by God requires trust. What makes trust hard? How can trust lead to new and beautiful opportunities?
- If the new values are love, mercy, and grace, how can you share these treasures with others around you? What makes it hard? How can you overcome those obstacles?
Moving Forward
This “Age to come” is when heaven and earth are joined together (see Revelation 21), when God comes and lives among us.
Obviously evil still exists, but this Age has already, in some ways, begun with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This means that we have to abandon the values of this old world (greed, pride, money, and the rest) in order to embrace the values of this new Age (love, mercy, and grace).
For this young ruler, as for all Judeans of this time, possessions—especially land (think, Holy Land)—were big identity markers of who they were.
But this identity was of the old world, not the new one being ushered in by Christ.
What Jesus asked this man to do was embrace a new identity, one gifted to him by God and centered around Christ.
God also gifts us with a new identity and invites us also to be a part of this renewal.
So, in order to embrace New Creation, what old identities do you need to give up?
Changing Your Mind
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, I tell you that there is no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God, Who does not surely receive many times as much in the present time and, in the Age to come, the life of that Age.’” (Luke 18:29-30)