What Must I Do? (Luke 18:18)

 


Tuesday, April 1, 2025


Psalm 74

Exodus 2

Luke 18:15-30


What Must I Do? (Luke 18:18)


As we read through the Gospel according to St Luke this Lent, we find ourselves today on the precipice of Jesus’ final days. We have been travelling with him from his birth, seeing and marvelling at him, for he has done all things well. Soon Jesus will enter Jerusalem for the final time and complete his purpose in life; that he was born to die.


There will be arguments and disputes with various vested interests in the Holy City, and wisdom will spill from his lips like water from a waterfall. But his final lessons before he enters the viper’s cave surround the danger of the love of money. His last words to the normal people living in the regions outside the big smoke are to love God and serve him, and beware the fact that to enter the kingdom of God while wealthy is the most difficult thing in the world.


This is a tough lesson to learn. Our politics are all about who will make us better off. Our economic system is all about making us better off. Received wisdom about career advice is based on how we can make ourselves better off. And yet Jesus says that, if we wish to enter the kingdom of God, we must give everything away and follow him.


Being a Christian requires no little amount of financial sacrifice. Consider how for those of us who work or have worked in fast food, the extra pay on Sundays creates a huge temptation on whether to observe the Lord’s Day with his saints, or to get more money. Or for many Christian ministers here in Australia, who are talking louder and louder about “bivocational ministry” – that is, for ordained clergy to get a part-time job in order to make up for the fact churches cannot afford to pay a full time stipend.


Are we concerned about making sure we have enough money, whatever “enough” is? It is a huge sign of the trust aspect of faith, to set aside financial concerns entirely in order to follow Jesus. Yet he promises to those who do such things will not be left out in the cold. To those who set aside the crown of this world for a crown of life he promises that they will “receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” (v. 30)


When was the last time you had to decide between money or Jesus? How did you make your decision? What happened as a result?


Good Teacher, Lord Jesus, eternal Son of the eternal Father: teach us so to desire the things of your kingdom that all worldly treasures fade into mist by comparison. Give us, in this life, knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come, life eternal.

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