what makes us happy?

Why is it that we who have so much going for us are so sad?
Why is depression such a big problem in this country when we are one of the richest countries in the world?
Why is it that we who are so smart can act so dumb?

Doesn't the man in the story have everything?

He owns many possessions. He is a good man. A religious man. He obeys all the laws, and has done so all his life. He knows what's what. He is described in the other gospels as a young man, a rich man, a leader. A man, you might think, of vitality and power.

Yet he comes to Jesus as a begging. On his knees, the posture of the leper who earlier begged for Jesus' healing-and who got it-the young rich man kneels and begs for help. Something is not right. Something is missing. Jesus, what must I do to live?

Plans go awry. Hopes are unfulfilled. Like a young man who fumbles his lines when meeting the girl of his dreams, we do not do what we want. We defeat ourselves. We trip on our own shoelaces. We seem to be unable to live out our aspirations. All we do seems not enough. We can't help making blunders that hurt ourselves and others. It seems that though things should be fine, they are not. That like the man of many possessions, though we should be content, we are not.

The question is, the question the young man asked: what can I do about it?

Is there something I can get, some pill or potion, some teacher or trainer, that will make life work the way I hoped it would? Is there something I'm missing?
Nope. No, says Jesus. But he says so not in a mean sort of way. Not to laugh at the man, tell him he should be happy enough, tell him that he has more pressing matters to attend to. Jesus loves the man. The “love your neighbor as yourself” kind of love. No, you are not missing anything, he tells the man. Not a bit of it.

The problem is the opposite.

Get rid of all you've got, Jesus tells the perhaps-soon-to-be-not-so-rich young man. Sell it. Give the proceeds to the poor. Follow me.

The man came to Jesus in the first place because he wasn't feeling too well. He doesn't feel too well now, either. In fact, he feels sad. Though our Bible says he was shocked, the word Mark uses means “saddened.” So Mark writes, “when he heard this, he went away sad and grieving.” Really sad, that is. Though it is hard to say what made him sadder: that he might end up giving everything away, or that he might not. I think he does, but we'll never know.
It is easy to get distracted here by the money. Money is very distracting. It has lots of meaning for us. It seems important to us. It is one of our important things. So that the man being loaded and being asked to give away all--everything--seems like a big deal. But Jesus asked Simon and Andrew to give up their boats and careers and James and John to do the same, plus abandon their father. And we're not too shocked at that, though we might be if one of them were our children.

The point is not the money but the giving it up. Money is a problem for the young man. How do we know that? Because, when given the choice between what he said he wanted--eternal life--and money, he hesitated. It was not an easy decision. His money or his life, and he had to think about it.

The young man evidently was attached to money. Like with superglue. It was going to hurt to separate the man from his money. It makes one wonder what other things he would forsake for the sake of his possessions. The man thought he possessed many things, but it seems that in truth his possessions possessed him.

And that's the issue. It is hard to come upon the kingdom of God when there are lots of other things more important to us. You get what you pay attention to. Money is a distraction for most of us. Family ties for second place. Ethnic bonds, too. Our houses. Our livelihood. Pretty much the stuff Jesus mentions later in this passage: leaving house or brothers or sisters or mother or children or fields, as he puts it. We have set our minds, to paraphrase Jesus, on ordinary things. What we want--a good life and a Godly world--seems hard to trade for what we have at hand.

It's not just houses and fields, either. We are equally attached to fears, regrets, grudges, and disappointments. A woman becomes estranged from her son because she will not let go of her disappointment with his choice of wife. A man no longer visits his friend because he once let the friend down, and now can not let go of his shame. A couple splits up because they cannot let go of their expectations. A nation remains at war because it cannot let go of its history. A nation goes to war because it cannot let go of its shock. How is it that we find ourselves in such tight quarters?

Give it up, Jesus says. Give up our deadly grip on expectation, anger, fear, regret, field and home. But does he know how hard it is? Evidently so, for he admits that it is more than hard to come upon the kingdom of God. It is impossible. Impossible for mortals such as we, anyway. We can never shed enough of our goods and loves and hates and obsessions to pass through that needle's eye. Even if we could shed everything else, and we cannot, how can we shed our selves, our ferocious and necessary clinging to life and psyche at all costs?

Only with God, Jesus says. Without God, whom can we trust with our lives, now or forever?

We are not alone. God is with us. But we are with us, too. We have come together into this community. We have come together in this giving-up place.
A church is a giving-up place. It is so by design. It is a place in which we hear every week that we might give our lives--our lives--over to God. We hear that to hold onto our lives is to lose them. We hear that the kingdom of God on earth is a real possibility.

It is a place in which we hear every week that God offers us unconditional love and admiration, regardless of everything. So that the stuff we wish to shed means nothing in the eyes of that God. It is therefore a place of freedom.
And it is a place in which we can talk freely of our nearly impossible daily struggle to do what we hope to do. To not be sad. To not be so dumb. To not be waylaid and seduced and cowed by ordinary things.

We come like the young man, to be healed, to be cured of all those things that undermine our best hopes and intentions. We come thinking what can I do, and leave thinking what can I do without?

So that is the challenge to us all today, what can we do without in order to be truly happy? The questions simple but only you know your answer.