MARK 10 (PART 2)
Read Mark 10:13-31
Much of Mark’s Gospel is about faith; about trusting in Jesus as Lord and saviour. Back in Chapter 9 we saw that Jesus, in teaching his disciples, picked up a little child and said, “whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me” (9:36-37). Here he returns to the subject of children. People were bringing children to Jesus and the disciples were shooing them away, but Jesus said, “let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these”. And then, “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it”.
Children are not to be excluded from the Christian community because they exemplify the attitude required of a true disciple of Jesus. Children are very trusting and so should a disciple be. So far in Mark’s Gospel we have seen the religious hierarchy and even the disciples seeing Jesus healing and performing miracles and hearing his teaching and yet not fully trusting him. The religious authorities actively distrusted him; the disciples, despite being with Jesus, were still reluctant to trust him absolutely and unconditionally.
Jesus’ teaching is that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven you must have faith; you must trust Jesus to do it for you, because you cannot get there by your own efforts. But people are very reluctant to trust Jesus, and that is illustrated in the next section, the story of the rich young man. He asked Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. This is a perennial question, even today. People who are interested in Christianity and the promise of eternal life often ask, “what must I do?” And the answer, that there is nothing you can do, you must have faith in Jesus Christ, can be a stumbling block. People think that they will get to heaven by being good. We see that here with the rich young man. It is his wealth that is a barrier to his faith. He thinks he is ‘doing’ all the right things and that should be sufficient for him to inherit eternal life. The thought of losing all his money makes him turn away from Jesus. He trusted in his wealth, not Jesus. And that is a real issue for many people today. They are content in themselves because they have wealth, power, fame and all the trappings of success. To them, that is far more important than trusting Jesus. It is no wonder that Jesus said that it was so hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.
At this point the disciples despaired because they thought it was impossible to fulfil these conditions and reach the Kingdom of God. But Jesus, as ever, gave them the right perspective. They were thinking in human terms like the rich young man, “what must I do?” But it is not what we do, it is what God does. And it is God who enabled us to inherit the Kingdom of God by raising Jesus from the dead after Jesus paid the price of our sins on the cross. It is impossible for us to reach the Kingdom of God by our own efforts, but nothing is impossible with God.