"You Lack One Thing" March 25, 2018

Mark 10: 17-27 Mark 10: 46 – 11: 11 There are few more archaic stories of pomp and circumstance than this morning! What does Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, as children waved Palm branches and shouted “Hosanna” have to do with any of us? In Central There are no palm trees here! Children leading a march chanting sounds a lot like yesterday’s Marches. “Hosanna” is a lovely word sung on Palm Sunday, but has there ever been another time anyone said this word? We know Alleluia is the sound of Angels rejoicing at the resurrection, but what does “Hosanna” even mean? Yet, personally, I think this is one of the most important passage for our time! According to Mark, “a person”, representing any of us, came up to Jesus asking for the secret to life. What do I need to make me happy; how can I have it all; who/what should I be; “What must I do to inherit eternal life”? According to Matthew and Luke, he was Rich and Young, with great possessions, which probably also fits any of us, but Mark just says “A Man”. Mark does include several nuances the others do not. The man calls Jesus, “Good Teacher”. Jesus’ reply is that you cannot earn “Good”. Whether we name our goal: Good, Salvation, Eternal Life, Love of God, Happiness, these are not a reward, not a prize for being the best, or avoiding things wrong. Grace, Salvation, Eternity, Goodness can only be given by God, because God is the only source of these. The man describes having lived the 10 Commandments all his life. Unique to Mark, “Jesus Loved Him”. Does not Jesus love everybody? But that is not said in the other versions, and “Jesus loved him” is not said about anyone else in the Gospel. In the Greek Culture of the 1st Century, they identified 4 kinds of Love, which you may have heard before. The first is the love we might call Affection or Devotion, it is the love between parent and child, teacher and student, Owner and Pet. The second, is what we most remember coming from Greek: “Philos” Brotherly love, the relationship between neighbors, people from the same place or experience, this is where “Philadelphia” received that name. Yet, more and more committed to our social media, technology and polarities, we have less and less connection/ less trust with our actual neighbors in this world today. The third is what our culture recognizes as being “Love”. Romantic, erotic love. That which makes your heart skip, which excites your passions, the hope that the other feels the same towards you as you feel towards them, it is passion. But the fourth kind of love, was without value in the Greek world. The Greeks were a Capitalist society that believed you needed to receive back something of value, but the 4th is what is regularly identified with Jesus, “Agape”. Christian Love is what the King James Bible described as “Compassion/Forgiveness”. Coming to recognize that it hurts me too much to not forgive, forgiveness is not so much about the other as that it hurts me too much to live without the other in my life. This is the love of God described in Hosea, for why he must redeem the adulterous spouse he had put away, why God redeemed Israel from Babylonian Exile. What 1st Corinthians describes as “a still more excellent way” than Faith or Hope or Knowledge, Arts or Truth. Something occurred to me recently, that I had never heard or thought of before. The whole of the Bible, we could summarize as God’s Forgiveness of Humanity. But listening to others describe wounds from long ago, they described having confessed to God, to spouse and children others they hurt; however the forgiveness they found the most difficult, was forgiveness of self. While all of Faith, regardless of Religion is about the Forgiveness of God; our most difficult forgiveness is our own egocentric psychological guilt, forgiving /loving / having compassion for Self. Different from all the generations of humanity before us, from Adam to the present, we imagine it to be more difficult for us to forgive ourselves, than for God to forgive! This Person whom Jesus loved, who is so like us, is the only individual in all the Gospels who leaves Jesus without receiving healing, who leaves more sorrowful than he came. This is the first reason, I believe something I have found no where else in all the commentaries and sermons, that our second reading from the same chapter, answers the first. I believe the blind man identified as Bartimaeus, is the same rich, young man who came to Jesus! In Greek, the prefix to a name “Bar” means “Son of”, so Bartimaeus means “Son of Timaeus”. In Greek Philosophy, in the writings of Plato, there is identification of a man named “Timaeus”, these are the only references to Timaeus or Bartimaeus in Literature! It is also, the only Greek reference to the existence of the Island Atlantis. According to Plato, 400 years before Jesus, Timaeus was a wise and learned scholar, who had studied and learned all about the Natural Order of the universe. According to Timaeus everything in creation could be viewed elementally through triangles, which in turn comprise Squares, Rectangles and Circles. That the perfect shape of things was when the one part, was equal to one and a half times the shorter side. Timaeus’ mathematical formula being what Dan Brown describes in The Da Vinci Code and which the Apple Company uses in all of their products. All of which identifies that BarTimaeus, was a child of Greek Philosophy, who had studied and learned all there was, but ultimately concluded: there needed to be More to Life. After meeting Jesus, I believe this healing was not instantaneous, but a confrontation of an Empty Soul, this Philosopher came to recognize just how blind he was, though he had great possessions. He went and sold all he had, giving it to others, but now penniless and blind of spirit, he sat on the roadside begging, as Jesus passed. And Mark records, Bartimaeus cried out “Jesus, Son of David, Have Mercy on Me!” Those words “Savior, Son of David, Have Mercy on Me” in Greek are expressed by the word: “Hosanna!” which all the crowds, the children and the poor begin to Cry as Jesus entered Jerusalem Palm Sunday.