“My Little Wooden Box”
Luke 18:18-30
When I was a young
boy, my grandfather helped me build a little wooden box in his woodworking
shop. I wanted this box so that I would
have a place to keep my most important possessions. Inside my wooden box I put my Boy Scout merit
badges, my Eagle Scout patch, and all the band medals and ribbons I had earned
in Jr. High and High School, plus some little knickknacks that I really
liked.
I put this stuff in
my little wooden box because they are very special to me. I worked hard to earn these things. Even now at this very moment, my little
wooden box is safely stowed away in my office closet at home. Even when I have moved, I have ensured that
this little wooden box stayed with me, refusing to put it in the moving van,
but instead putting it in the front seat of my truck so that it might be
transported safely and not get lost or damaged in moving boxes.
Do you have
place where you keep you most valued possessions? A little box you keep at the top of your
closet or under your bed, maybe a safe, a file cabinet, or desk drawer? Someplace that is yours that no one has
permission to get into? You know, you
would think that as adults we should be able to let go of things that we
possess, or at least not be so attached to them, but as you and I know that is
a lot easier said than done.
We also know that just because we
are older doesn’t mean that we stop accumulating possessions, they may not be
possessions we keep in a little wooden boxes, but they are possessions
nonetheless, possessions that have only just gotten bigger and more
valuable. For me, they are my house, my
cars, my 27” Toshiba television, my Craftsman lawnmower, not to mention my
collection of Star Wars figures and airplane models. Even when we went to seminary, we put the
money we made from our first home in a CD for safekeeping, which we used to the
home we have now.
We all have
ways in which we are rich with possessions, with earthly treasures, with things
that are important to us, things that are meaningful to us, and things that are
worth value to us. We have earned these
things through hard work. And our wealth
of possessions may not include money at all.
They can even be things we have a right to have like life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness, or things we have come to believe we have right to have
like our educational degrees, our social and economic class, and our religious
beliefs.
Our possessions are things that
bring us prestige and privilege in our society and in the world. They are things that we are not so willing to
give up, things that we wouldn’t dare get rid of, and certainly things that we
would never think of just giving away.
But that is exactly what Jesus told the ruler to do with his
possessions.
We don’t know
much about this man who meets Jesus. We
don’t know his name, how old he is, or even where he comes from. All we do know is that he is a ruler,
probably a ruler in a synagogue, but nevertheless a man who, as a ruler, had
gained a considerable amount of possessions, which only added to his prestige
and privilege in that society.
When we meet the ruler, he had
just heard Jesus say to his disciples, “Let
the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as
these that the
Well, this
made the ruler very curious and he said to Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?” For the ruler,
everything that he had acquired over the years was the result of his works, the
things that he had done, things that he had accomplished. And now to hear that there was another thing
to acquire – eternal life – was more than he could pass up.
After all,
he certainly had the credentials didn’t he?
He was good enough wasn’t he?
Hadn’t he kept all the commandments from his youth? They were his merit
badges and medals, signs of his goodness and hard work. Things he kept in his little wooden box under
his bed, which he would pull out every once in while to look at to remind
himself how good he was. Now he wants to
add one more prized possession and accomplishment to his little wooden box –
entrance into the
Jesus’
response to the ruler teaches him, as it does us, that entrance into the
kingdom of God is not something that a person can get, take, or acquire on
their own, not by working hard enough, and not even by being good enough, for
“no one is good but God.” True goodness
is only reserved for God. Salvation is
from God alone.
Yet, there
is something else that Jesus’ response teaches the ruler, which gets at the
heart of our text today. In his response
to the rich ruler, Jesus directly confronts the ruler with the one commandment
that is keeping him from the prized possession he is seeking, the one
commandment that the ruler has failed to obey: “You shall have no other gods
before me.”
If the ruler
really wants “to do” something to gain entrance into the kingdom of God and receive
eternal life, he must not only live in complete obedience to God’s will and
God’s commandments, he must also live in a new and radical way, a way that
embodies the truth of God’s kingdom.
If the ruler
wants eternal life, he must rid himself of all that takes the place of God in
his life. He must make a complete reversal of his own status. He can no longer use his conventional
understanding of prestige, privilege, or possessions to distinguish and
separate himself from others, because these things no longer apply in the
What does
the ruler have to do? The very thing he
doesn’t want to do. He must be willing
to give up the possessions that he is not willing to give up, he must get rid
of the possessions that he otherwise would not have gotten rid of, and he must
give away the possessions that he would have never thought of giving away.
In
the end, the ruler cannot “do” what he must do to be a disciple of Jesus. The pull of his possessions is more than he
could resist. He is unable to become
poor in order to be enriched by God and have treasures in heaven. For the ruler, the cost of discipleship is
too great a price to pay. In the end, he
cannot let go of the things he has in his little wooden box. They are more valuable to him than all the
bounty, treasure, and abundance God gives.
My
friends, as Christians, we must take very seriously Jesus’ imperative commands
and be willing to rid ourselves of the things that take the place of God in our
lives, the things that give us a false sense of what it means to be truly
blessed by God. We must be able to
recognize the things in our life that keeps God at a distance and only
partially influential in our lives. If
faith means anything, it means a complete and total commitment and surrender of
all that we are and of all that we have.
Michael
Lindvall, in his book “The Christian Life,” tells about a Germanic tribe called
the Franks, who were converted en masse to Christianity. As they were converted, a large group of
Franks, numbering in the thousands, were taken to a river for baptism. The Franks understood what baptism meant on
one level that they would now be following a new king, Jesus, but on another
level they had no idea what baptism truly meant. The story is told that as the warrior Franks
waded out into the river to be baptized, they were always careful to hold their
swords above their heads out of the water.
Of course, they didn’t do this to keep their swords from getting wet,
they did this to keep their swords from Jesus.
Lindvall
then writes, “It wouldn’t do then; it won’t do now. This Jesus asks for everything. You can’t hold your sword out of the
water. You can’t hold your career out of
the water. You can’t hold your idle
pastimes out of the water. You can’t
hold your checkbook out of the water.
Everything has to go so that it can rise again. Nothing can be held back.”
Indeed, as
Jesus says, it is truly hard for
those with wealth and possessions to enter into the
To follow
Jesus means that we can’t hold our little wooden boxes out of the water. It means that we have to begin living in a
radical new way, in a re-oriented life directed towards the standards of the
kingdom of God and away from the standards of the world, to humble ourselves
and embody in our lives the compassion, mercy and love of God, especially to
those in need, those who are the least, the lost, and the left-out. It means that everything has to go so that it
can rise again. Nothing can be held
back.
I, of all people, know that it is not
easy being a disciple of Jesus Christ. I
fall short of God’s glory everyday. But
Jesus’ final words to his disciples gives me hope and assurance, because Jesus
promises us that when we follow him and do the things God requires in our
response of faith and obedience, we will have already entered into the kingdom
of God, and we can trust that we will receive in this age and the age to come,
the greatest possession and treasure of all, eternal life.
Come to
think about, I don’t think that’s going to fit in my little wooden box
anyway. Amen.