October 13 2024, RICH BEYOND MEASURE

Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

Rich Beyond Measure

Homily for St. John’s Episcopal Church by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn given October 13, 2024

Mark 10:17-31

When I was working at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul I met a couple there, Jeff and Kristen Kidder, who had visited a partner church in Haiti many years before. They had been so deeply touched, so moved, by the people they met who had so little but who shared who they were and their faith so generously, that they decided they wanted to somehow emulate what they had seen in Haiti. So they relocated to Frogtown in St. Paul, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the Twin Cities. They decided they would always work part time only so that they would have time to spend with the people in the neighborhood, time to just be free to go with the flow of whatever life and the neighborhood and the Spirit brought before them. One of them worked for the church but he said he would only work three Sundays a month. The other Sunday they wanted to be free to visit or attend any church of any denomination to just receive and remember that church is a living community where both giving and receiving are constantly happening in a generous and strong flow.  Their lives have not been easy, but they have experienced over and over again that whatever they really needed has shown up at just the right time. They have an unshakeable knowing, based on years of experience, that by letting go of the effort to control and possess security, they have receive abundantly far more than they have ever given. They have a calm freedom of spirit that is really beautiful to watch.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus has a remarkable conversation with a young man about what one needs to do to inherit eternal life. At first the conversation revolves around how one leads an ethical life. The young man says that he has kept the commandments all his life and still feels something is missing. But what exactly is this eternal life he wants? Eternity, by definition, has no beginning and no end. Jesus does not talk much about life after death in the scriptures, but he does talk a lot about the quality of one’s life here on earth as being measured by the extent to which one is in the kingdom of God, which is always pictured as a breath away, very near to us. There is a passage in Hebrews that talks about Jesus as possessing the “power of an indestructible life.” This eternal life, this indestructible life, is clearly more than biologically living. Jesus died a terrible death, after all, and yet here we are two thousand years later still captivated by his presence, teachings and power.

So Jesus, looking at this young man, loves him, and tells him something very difficult: that to inherit eternal life he must sell everything he has, give to the poor, then come and follow Jesus. And there was the rub for this young man, and would be if we’re honest for most of us. Today insurance exists to protect those of us who can afford it against catastrophic loss. Despite being one of the richest cultures in the world, we are so afraid of loss. And yet it comes to us all nonetheless. It turns out no matter how hard you grasp, no matter how hard you try to amass security and comfort around you, nothing is permanently secure. In a nanosecond of glancing at an incoming text while driving, you can lose your car or your health or your life. Gaining and losing is all around us all the time.

And Jesus seems to be saying, to this young man and to each one of us, what would happen if instead of grasping everything tightly, we were to open our fists and live from a place of generosity and let life flow through us without trying to possess it? What if we could meet each moment with joy and purpose and a lightness, allow it to be what it is, find a way to love in it, and then let it go and catch the next wave, whatever it is?

Perhaps many of you have read the book Cave in the Snow, the biography of Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo. Tenzim Palmo was born in London’s East end to a fishmonger and housemaid, but she always intensely felt that she was in the wrong place. Once at age thirteen she was at a bus stop and it came to her that everyone seemed crazy – they were all living their lives as if they weren’t going to die someday.[1] Ultimately she took vows as a Buddhist nun and also took a personal vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form. In pursuit of this vow, she spent twelve years alone in a cave above 13,000 feet in the Himalayas, meditating, almost never lying down, sitting in her box. She owned nothing but some sacred objects, a wood stove, food, her meditation box. She ate once a day, with very little variation in her diet.  And she said she was perfectly happy, that she had everything she needed. She had to solve her own problems in order to survive. She had no distractions, no way to escape facing the reality of her own nature and of existence. Once she had a terrible eye infection that left her in excruciating pain for 49 days. She learned to observe the pain and found that the exhaustion that accompanies pain comes from resisting it, so she learned to go with the pain, to “ride it” as she described it.[2] Several times she faced death, and discovered that you face death in exactly the same way that you live. Ultimately she had to leave the cave before she wanted to because she had problems with her visa of all things, but even this she accepted with equanimity. In her life since then she has continued with her spiritual practices, with writing books about Buddhism and helping to champion rights and opportunities for female Buddhist nuns. She has learned to live with her hands unclenched, accepting everything and discovering an unshakeable joy.

I am fairly willing to bet that not a single one of us will ever even spend a week meditating in a cave, let alone twelve years. I am guessing that few of us will literally take Jesus up on his offer to sell everything we have, give to the poor and then follow him with utter freedom. But it seems clear that the great spiritual masters of all traditions have touched something essential about true meaning in life, which is that to gain true life, true vitality, one must be willing to give everything away, to cling to nothing. Only then can the true current of life flow through us unimpeded, like blood through clear arteries or air through a flute or water in a sparkling mountain stream.

If you knew that all you had in life was today, what do you think would really matter to you? If you knew you would die tonight in your sleep, what would you have wanted to prioritize today? Consider the things that have kept you awake at night lately. How many of those things are truly important?

Christians do believe in life after death, that in some way we will never completely understand, consciousness continues. Rather than see this as an opportunity to be rewarded or punished, rather than fearing it, what if we discovered that after death we would simply be liberated to explore more fully what it means to be made of divine light, what it means to love? What if no loss is truly ultimate—that even pain and death are waves in a vast ocean whose edges we will never be able to reach?

What immense joy it is to be alive. What a gift it is to be sitting here in community with one another, having the chance to sing and to pray and to connect with God and each other, to be nourished at Christ’s Table and fortified to walk through this world differently. Every single one of you belongs here. Whether this is your first time visiting St. John’s or whether you were baptized here 80 years ago, here you are, here we all are.

Today, I invite you to consider letting go of fear, letting go of the small things that constrict us, and instead step into a vast generosity, the vast flow of God’s love in which nothing is ever truly lost. When in doubt, give. When uncertain, help someone. When you aren’t sure if you fit in, do something for someone else less fortunate than you. When you are anxious, remember you can be filled with all the light and fulness of God even as you let go of every expectation, every resistance. Discover the ultimate joy of giving everything away, and finding yourself rich beyond measure. Amen.

[1] Vicki Mackenzie, Cave in the Snow, at 15-16.

[2] Ibid at 97.

10am Service