curing excess: guest blog one

I find myself, after many years, living in a completely western society.

I also find myself running into a familiar foe. I’ve seen him before and I haven’t always been able to deal with him properly nor have I always wanted to. Call him what you will but he’s commonly known as excess. You know, “I’ve got to have two of those”, when one or none is ok. Super size it and the American dream of getting everything we want and more with no responsibility or consequence. A dream, I might add, that we consistently sell to the world and thereby create an illusion of life in this country that causes people to despise their own. Christians are hardly immune either. Don’t get me wrong. It’s ok to have things but there is a line that we too often cross. We stop giving because the “economy” is bad but we really just want to save for ourselves. We become so bloated with stuff in our lives that giving becomes a chore and we reach a point where we don’t care about anything or anyone except getting what we “need” and have a “right” to have. We become the opposite of followers of Christ.

I was reading over the story of the rich ruler that Jesus encounters in the Gospel of Luke. Some translations say rich, some young, some just ruler, but they all point out that he was a man of standing and was surely well to do. I'm sure he had his areas of excess. Not only that, but he was pretty religious as well. He kept the Law. So this guy had it made and to top it off he wanted to add eternal life to his list of accolades. So naturally Jesus is the guy to ask. At least he knows where to look, right?

Jesus responded to this guy by telling him to sell everything he owned and distribute it to the poor and the guy got sad and walked off because it's hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom. Now we could leave it there and say, “I’ve heard the story”, “I’m not rich, I’ve got nothing to sell”, but I think Jesus is looking deeper. Maybe sell everything really means, well, everything. Maybe Jesus wasn’t just talking about stuff, but his very self. The poor in the Greek version of this passage also refers to people who are not only economically poor and physically afflicted but also spiritually destitute. Maybe this guy didn’t get it. Maybe we don’t get it. Our cure for excess is Christ, obviously, but it’s also selling ourselves to Him and giving ourselves to the poor, in every sense of the word. In the Kingdom things happen backwards for us. Giving somehow equals gain. Death is life. Poor is rich. It’s a weird place. The simple truth is this: if we give ourselves to the poor, (you decide what that means for you), we’ll cure our problem with excess and we might just find Jesus there and eternal life as well. As westerners we have become accustomed to having life on demand and are usually unwilling to settle for less. Hence our current economic situation. So when Jesus invites us into the Kingdom our interests begin to clash and that is very uncomfortable. Take time to slow down, read this story for yourself, draw your own conclusion and meditate on how your interests clash with the Kingdom. I recommend www.blueletterbible.org for studying. I've been challenged lately to really look at who Jesus is really and what he asks of us and therefore find myself in light of that. Then pour out into the world.

(the following was submitted by Chris Collins, you can read more of his stuff at his blog)