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Morning Devotion for the Season After Pentecost
August 21, 2023
The Invitatory
The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: O come, let us adore him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Reading: Matthew 19:16-22
Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these; what do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
I turn to Shakespeare again and to a well known portion of As You Like It:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
The monologue is not actually about the theater. What Shakespeare intends to convey is an outline of a man’s journey from birth to the grave. It’s a religious idea in a way. An actor playing out the human drama is only an actor. At the end of the show he resumes a different, more permanent, life – an afterlife – and what he has done on the stage, in other words, in his life, is just an act. Real life lies beyond that.
The Rector often points out that the great danger of the Church is to use Scripture to instruct its members in moral ethics, as opposed to using Scripture to tell us who God is. It seems that the young man is in such a pursuit of moral ethics. His question, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” perfectly illustrates this very trap for the church.
It is fitting and helpful to view the young man in his role as the whining school boy. Jesus uses patience, irony and humor to teach and to expose him. Jesus presents the standard of goodness and then tells the man what he must do to be good. “There is only one who is good.” How off base can we be? God alone is good. Jesus’ objective is to indicate what the standard of goodness is: God is good. Actually, that should occur immediately to those of us who learned this grace: “God is good and God is great….” For no human being that we can account for on planet Earth is truly good.
And then Jesus expands this truth by pointing to the commandments that we should keep. The young man presents himself as having kept them and suggests that perhaps he is worthy of eternal life. Jesus keeps giving him enough rope to hang himself. It would be comical, if the implications weren’t so critical. Here’s all that you have to do to be good: be like God. If you can’t do that, you can just settle for trying to obtain eternal life by keeping the commandments. Easy-peasy.
It is very doubtful that this man kept these commandments perfectly; however, Jesus doesn’t even address this. Instead, He pivots by telling this man how he can be perfect, “go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Jesus understood that this man’s heart was devoted to something other than God, because he had other priorities in his life. The truth is that goodness and perfection are found only in God in Jesus Christ.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
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