Matthew 19: 20-22

‘If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ Matthew 19:20-22

A young man had approached Jesus with a deceptively simple question: ‘What good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ The answer he got was a standard one for a Jew of the time: ‘Keep the commandments’. The young man was able to reply, apparently truthfully, that he had kept them all, some ancient manuscripts even adding the words ‘from my youth’. He was, in other words, a devout and observant Jew.

Jesus didn’t challenge his claim. Instead, he raised the stakes, with the words at the top of this column. It’s interesting that in various other conversations Jesus had with people about discipleship this is the only occasion when he stipulated that giving all one’s possessions away was a necessary condition for following him. Even the swindling tax-collector Zacchaeus was only required to surrender half of his ill-gotten gains. In the case of the wealthy Nicodemus money wasn’t mentioned at all. This suggests that possessions were particularly important, even essential, elements in this young man’s life. Jesus knew that unless he let go of them he would for ever be an encumbered disciple.

We don’t have to be wealthy to be obsessed with possessions. Sometimes, acquiring and keeping the little we have can also dominate our thinking.

What is certain is that those who focus on money or possessions will always be at best second-class disciples, because to follow an unencumbered leader we too need to be unencumbered. That may not (probably will not) require the gesture asked of this would-be disciple, but it will demand a willingness to be stripped of those ‘weights’ that slow down runners in an athletics race (see Hebrews 12:1).

Lent is probably a good time to re-examine our priorities to see if we, like the ‘rich young ruler’ (as he is known) are handicapping ourselves in the marathon run to eternal life. Our heavenly Father knows that we need ‘things’; the problem is to separate the needs from the ‘wants’ (Matthew 6:32,33).

This is an edited extract from David Winter's 2008 Lent book, Journey to Jerusalem (BRF £7.99).