The Rich Young Ruler, Part V: What Spirit Fills Up Our Community: From 1st century Judea to the Gulags Or Where performance Christianity takes us…

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Review

In the last writing, we looked at the Rich Young Ruler’s response to Jesus, where he had confidently claimed concerning the commandments:

“Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”

Again, “all” , not “some.”

To quote a different section of Calvin (this time from his commentary on the extraordinary 16th chapter of Ezekiel), the underlying reason for the poor rich man’s total (yet, apparently, sincere) lack of self-knowledge was due to the fact that men, in general, are so “blind and intoxicated with self-love” that

“they do not perceive what is sufficiently evident to every one else.

And we know that the people were quite drunk with pride, for they voluntarily blinded themselves by their own flatteries.”

So too this Ruler six centuries after Judah’s Exile.

So too us two millennia later: wealthy, prosperous, prideful…and blind.

And part of the reason, fascinating enough, why he could keep himself so thoroughly blinded was through his…religious addictions—people-pleasing and workaholism. As these twin addictions were reinforced by his man-centered religiosity (“I am a good, moral person…I keep the commandments…”) and likely supported by his religious community (“He is a very, very good, religious man), his religion served only to blind him to his true, inner state.

No need for atonement for he had kept all the Law from his youth. In short, no need for Christ at all. Everything depended on his personal performance.

Kyrie eleison!

Yet Jesus, knowing his true state, seeing beyond his beautifully constructed exterior deep into his tumultuous soul,

“beholding him loved him.”

And the grace of His love gently sought to draw the Rich Young Ruler out of his blindness into the light of greater self-awareness through the mirror of the Law.

And yet he, as we do, resisted.

And thus, as we will see in this final section, Christ had to apply a more severe remedy. He—together with the us—are powerless religious workaholics.

When we honestly and fearlessly admit this fact, there is, however, a paradoxical effect.

For in our powerlessness, then comes down the blessed and gracious Holy Spirit, Whose love begins to break through our whitewashed tomb of an outer man in such a way that He releases His Holy Spirit within us.

And this brought us to Jesus’ final words.

“One thing you lack:

Go your way (Hypage),

Sell whatever you have and give to the poor,

And you will have treasure in heaven;

And come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mk 10:21).

What a true vs an idealized cross means

A cross means death.

And not just death but brutal suffering in the pathway to being suffocated of all life-giving oxygen.

It will not be cinematically dramatic, like the “love of mankind” spoken of by a young lady who comes to Zosimas in the early chapters of Brothers Karamazov.

You see, I love mankind so much that, believe it or not, there are moments when I would like to give up everything, and become a hospital nurse. I close my eyes and let my imagination wander, and during those minutes I feel an irresistible strength within me. 

No wounds, no infected sores, however terrible, could frighten me away then. I would clean them with my own hands. I would look after those sufferers.  I would be ready to kiss their sores…”

And in response to this beautifully conceived scene, Zosimas simply responds,

“It is good that you should think of these things rather than others…But it would be very nice if you actually performed some good deed.”

If we desire to participate in Christ’s world-reshaping victory of the Cross, we may actually have to start by taking up our cross and doing something very little, most likely unseen, unknown, unrecognized.

And as we take up our cross in very little things, then it may possibly open us to bigger vistas where the saints tread…yet only as the Spirit—not us—directs.

Dependence on our possessions (ktēma and chrēma) to propel us forward in the Christian life vs our reception of Christ’s treasures (thésauros)

His possessions (ktēma and chrēma) could not supply him with life. Their weight only dragged him down further.

Jesus (whose name, we remember, means “Savior”), sought to save him from them, opening him to a different treasure (thésauros)—a treasure that would keep giving and giving and giving for all eternity. A treasure that would only increase the more it was spent.

And How?

Through the cross.

What?!!

A word from the Fathers

“‘Sell all that you have,’ the Lord says.

‘If anything remains, you are its slave.’

And because a man must have all the other virtues as well as non-possession, the Lord then said,

‘And come, follow Me," meaning,

‘Be My disciple in all things, and always keep following Me.

Do not follow Me today only, and leave Me tomorrow’” (Theophylact).

He continues,

“The Lord promised him treasure in heaven, but the ruler did not give heed, because he was a slave of his money.

Therefore when he heard what the Lord had asked of him, he was sorrowful.

For the Lord had counseled him to deprive himself of his wealth; yet that was the very reason he wanted eternal life in the first place, so that he could live forever enjoying his many possessions…”

That is to say, he thought his temporal riches would propel him theough this life amidst the praises of men accompanying him into eternity. He, again, did not understand that riches

“make themselves wings” and
fly away like an eagle toward heaven (Prov 23:5).

He was rich in life but could not yet see that his wealth had no power whatsoever to

give to God a ransom for him (Ps 49:7).

The paradox of poverty

In death the Rich Young Ruler would be finally poor. Jesus, with the truth and mercy that are held perfectly together in love, sought to give him treasures that would endure beyond his life on earth.

What, we remember, is the first beatitude?

What is the blessedness that would open him to the Kingdom of Heaven?

What is the “one thing needful” to have here on earth, the possession of which will guides us through the gates of paradise?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3).

But how does the Ruler respond?

Two words: stygnázō and lypéō

The text says that the ruler was “downcast (stygnázō) at this word, and went away grieving (lypéō), for he had great riches.”

And that, quite starkly, is the end of the encounter.

Jesus offers him a remedy that will break him out of the prison of self and heal his blind eyes that they may see the treasure that endures unto eternity; yet the poor rich, trapped in this “now age” where his riches give him position and power and presetige, can only see the grief and pain from their loss.

And he hates it.

Thus, the first of these two words is stygnázō.

This verb is derived from stygnētós, which means ‘hateful’ or ‘detestable.’ It came to mean that which is so detestable that the mere thought of it draws one into a downcast state of somberness.

In its only other occurrence in the NT, it depicts the gloominess of the sky when it is covered with clouds on the verge of a storm (Mt 16:3). And if we trace it further back to the its three uses in the LXX, its meaning extends well beyond the physical realm into the psychological. There each instance expresses the inner state of terror when man is faced with coming judgment (Ezek 27:35, 28:19 & 32:10).

The point here is that the young man has deep within him a genuine sense of the judgment of God coming down upon the greed and avarice of his soul. Yet still being so blind and intoxicated with a self-love that is fueled by his temporal “riches” in this “now age” he turns away from Yeshua.

And in turning away, he rejects the true “treasures in Heaven.” As the clouds cover the sun, he becomes “downcast at the word” of the Physician of his soul, Who is seeking to apply the remedy.

In the words of Eliot,

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art…

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good (Four Quartets, East Coker IV).

The next word reinforces and intensifies his tragic response.

From hatred to unimaginable grief: lypéō

The next word comes from the noun, lýpē, meaning ‘pain, grief.’ And as a verb, it expresses the entrance of pain, grief and sorrow into our soul.

Though it is used 26 times in the NT, for the purposes of this study we will only highlight one key usage (which, interestingly enough, is the occurrence in the Gospel of Matthew directly before this first use in Mark):

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples,

“Sit here while I go and pray over there.” 

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful (lypéō) and deeply distressed (Mt 26:36-37).

As has been contended, the sorrow that Christ is experiencing in the Garden is the sins of the world beginning to enter into the depth of His person, producing such a strain on his cardiovascular system that it literally bursts his capillaries such that he sweats blood—hematahidrosis.

He, as it were, is entering into the divine Judgment.

The difference between the Ruler’s grief and Christ’s

What is wholly different from the experience of the Rich Young Ruler, however, is that the pain and grief that Jesus takes “into His own body” in Gethsemane is redemptive. That is to say, when He takes into Himself the pains of the “sins of the world,” He does so in a way that fully propitiates these sins in such a way that they have no more power over His people.

The ruler, however, in the tragic delusion, that causes him to think, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” is kept from seeing that he is, in reality,

“wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked."

And thus, he rejects the Mediator and the Physician’s words become to him only the

“aroma of death unto death.”

The presence and words of the Suffering Mediator both offends and grieves him on the deepest level, exposing not merely the eternal vanity of his false holy spirit of wealth (—were it only that!), but unveiling the eternal horror of his coming judgment.

Knowing, sensing, coming to understand how the impoverished riches would turn his entire righteously-wealthy-I’m-a-good-person-and-of-course-do-good-things little world upside down, he does the only thing he can do to preserve it all—He departs from Jesus.

Again, in the final words of the encounter, the Rich Young Ruler goes away

“deeply grieved (lypéō) because he had great riches (ktēma).”

The reason why in one word: ktēma

We are told that the reason in a word: He “has great riches” (or more literally, “is having great riches,” as a present participle).

But what are the riches?

Ktēma vs Thēsaurós

This word is derived from ktáomai, meaning to ‘acquire, possess or own.’ As such, it means ‘that which a person owns’; or more simply, ‘possessions.’

Before we move further, it is not without note that Jesus tells the Ruler that if he “sell whatever” he has and “gives to the poor”, he will have, not “possessions” (ktēma), but “treasures (thēsaurós) in heaven.”

That is to say, what he will come to possess can never be taken away.

In regards to Thēsaurós, this word appears only four times in the entirety of the NT. Of these four uses, half are found in the Gospels—both here where it speaks of the “great possessions” (ktēmata pollá) that drove the Ruler to abandon Jesus (Mt 19:22 & Mk 10:22).

The remaining two uses, however, add a different, even paradoxical, dimension; for they demonstrate that the mere act of giving away our possessions is not sufficient to secure these eternal treasures. All depends on the state of our heart out of which we are doing the giving—either of the flesh; or of the Spirit.

As such, the next occurrence demonstrates the Spirit’s inworking within in the depths of our person that lead to communal flourishing; and its final use, reveals the controlling power of the flesh that leads to the bondage and death. And both appear in the first community of the Acts Church formed following Pentecost.

Now all who believed were together,

And had all things in common (koinós),

And sold their possessions (ktēma) and goods,

And divided them among all, as anyone had need (Acts 2:44-45).

This is the other-worldly community (koinōnía) that can…and should mark the Church.

Yet, can such a community be formed in the flesh?

An excursus on Marx

It is somewhat extraordinary that even Marx, and all the Socialist systems that followed, seemed to be somehow inspired by this early Acts community. Though we should admit upfront that Marx makes no concrete reference to Acts 2 in any of his writings (neither in his Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital nor even in his lesser known works and over 3000 letters), it is still the case that his father himself converted to Lutheranism and Marx was raised within the “religiously-infused” Prussian system.

And so, if his upbringing did set this early Christian community before him in a way that inspired him, whether consciously, unconsciously or in some other roundabout way, we simply do not know. Yet we can, at the very least, say the following:

Socialism would offer its adherents the fruits of a Spirit-filled community yet in a way that was cut off from its root system in the Spirit.

As such, it would offer humanity economic and societal transformation that works from the outside-in: Economic conditions, modes of production, industrialization and technological progress, economic inequalities, concentration of capital with resultant class struggle, etc. which work to produce a new classless equality.

All factors that are external to self (which factors, we might add, are all negative and corrupting).

And these would produce…scientifically, of course…such incredible, dramatic movements within a populous that they would drive them to abolish their private property do away with all systems of class. Even more, this would happen freely:

“The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Communist Manifesto, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists)

That is to say, the system would produce a free community of people that is stateless and classless operating “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875).

Wow!

What actually happens…

The history, however, seems precisely the opposite.

External corruption does not lead to inner purity.

Entropy does not lead to order.

And Communism does not lead to freedom but into Totalitarianism.

Externally-fabricated koinōnía constructs the Gulags.

And Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago should bear sufficient witness to this historical fact (with, for example, the archival records demonstrating Lenin’s own development of the Gulag system at the time of the 1917 Revolution (See Vol. 1, Part I, Chapter 2 where on September 5, 1918 Lenin issued a decree from the Council of the People’s Commissars that called for “securing the Soviet Republic against its class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps.”).

All of this to say, the totalitarian control of the forced labor system wasn’t a corruption from the original Communist system; it was embedded deep within it.

But what of a community that starts out in the Spirit?

The final use of ktēma and closing thoughts

Moving from the systemic control mechanisms of the flesh that produced the Gulags back to the ideal Spirit-filled community of Acts 2, we immediately encounter…corruption.

Just like in the Garden…

There it was a lust for something more than what God had freely offered them. And it destroys a Paradise, designed not by man, but by JHWH Himself.

Here, it seems, the corrupting influence, it seems, is the desire for entrance into a Christian community with all of its idealized benefits. And further, entrance on the basis of outer performance rather than the inner transformation of Grace.

Immediately following this use in Acts 2 and standing as its antithesis, we are presented with the story of Ananias and Saphira. And right at the beginning we may do well to ask,

What spirit is animating their sacrificial generosity?

For the same spirit that drives them to sell their possessions (ktēma, Acts 5:1) binds them, at the very same time, to “keep back a part of the proceeds” (5:2a) in a rather calculating manner. That is to say, their giving is performative. It makes sure that their left hand knows what their right hand is doing. And even more, that the Apostles—the ones in charge, are witness to their generosity.

Performative; political; calculating.

And so they

“brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet (5:2b).

Only a “part.”

We could say here that this is exactly what their flesh had the power to do. And it would, in their minds, purchase for them an entrance into this enchanting, Spirit-filled koinōnía.

Yet what would happen?

What happens to performance artists within a utopian community?

Death.

Again, death.

In later history it seems to happen more slowly, with the bondage, chains and oppression coming to pass gradually. In this narrative, however, it happens immediately.

And the death is meant to strike us. For within moments, Ananias then his wife literally “fall down and breathed [their] last” (5:5).

But why, we might ask, does this happen? And why so fast?

The Spirit was, no doubt, operating in a new dimensional way in this early community of the Apostles (the likes of which we have not seen since that point, try as we might for the past two millennia). Yet the portal into the spiritual dimension that was opened at Pentecost brought down false spirits too.

Peter discerns this and makes the young believers aware that it is not the Holy Spirit that has filled the hearts of these two supposed, upstanding, sacrificially pious, churchgoers…but Satan:

“Satan has filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? (5:3).

And in so doing they had

“not lied to men but to God” (5:4)

And lies and deception will destroy a person and infect a community. Having already outlined the pathway to the Soviet Gulag system, if we need further examples, we can ask what happened to Taiping’s “Heavenly Kingdom”?

Or Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge?

Or the Utopia of Hitler’s Third Reich

Or Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward built upon forced nationalized poverty?

We could go on, but the point is simply this:

If our founding actions within a community flow out of our flesh and not from the inworking of the Blessed Holy Spirit, our community will not be “blessed” but cursed.

For the question is always,

Who dwells in our communities?

And How does He come to dwell there?

For thus says the High and Lofty One
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
With him who has a crushed (dakkâ) and humble spirit,
To revive the spirit of the humble,
And to revive the heart of the contrite (dakkâ) ones (Is 57:15)

Concluding thoughts

True koinōnía forms from the inside-out through the Holy Spirit Who produces in His people genuine brokenness

To bring this to a conclusion, hopefully we have seen that true koinōnía cannot be established from the outside-in, especially if the outside itself is corrupt (as well as the inside too…).

No, it can only occur from the inside-out.

And this can happen by no external force, no matter how violent. Neither Gulags nor internment camps. And the most horribly-devised forms of torture can in now way force the formation of a such a community.

It must be planted in the soil of a truly broken soul and grow up freely by the transformative in-working of the Holy Spirit, one day at a time, in the language of the 12 Steps.

The Rich Young Ruler thought it could be obtained another way…by his wealth and attending performance.

But the Kingdom of God, in the words of a local pastor, can only be

“received, not achieved.”

May it be so!

We continue the next writing on Jesus’ comments to His disciples, synthesizing his desertion of the Way of the Cross:

“Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!”