Whose Child are You: Like Father Like Child?
Wisdom 7:7-11; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30
An African wisdom can save our world if we practice it. This wisdom is so common place that it is the first question an African asks a stranger: “whose child are you?” NOT “what is your name”! The presupposition in traditional Africa is that there are no loners, only “we”! For instance, a stranger is anyone who lacks an ancestry – no connection with the past – whose appearance doesn’t reveal his/her identity and origin.
Africans connect each person to their roots. The African question, “whose child are you?” is an attempt at a reinsertion of a stranger into the community of friends, family, and loved ones. The origins and roots of each person reveal their identity. This same question, “whose child are you?” is Jesus’ question to the so-called rich-young-man of today’s gospel. His name isn’t important, so our gospel gives him no name, but it underscores his desire for heaven. Jesus wants to reconnect the rich-young-man to his roots and ancestry – the missing link!
The importance Africa gives to pedigree over individual achievements gives origins pride of place over individual success story. Corporate survival outlasts individuals’ success stories. The rich-young-man recognizes the accomplishments of Jesus as a teacher, so he calls him “good teach”. He neither sees what Jesus stands for nor what his teachings amount to. The authority behind Jesus becomes inconsequential when success is the focus of the reality of Jesus rather than the God who motivates the actions of Jesus and the God his teachings reveal. Little wonder Jesus pushes aside the question of curiosity and addresses the question of salvation – “No one is good except God alone”. If “God alone is good,” as Jesus says, then, it is God that we need to imitate and no one else.
The end of today’s gospel helps us to understand its beginning. If salvation is only possible with the help of God, as the end of the gospel says, then the rich-young-man cannot possibly inherit the kingdom of God by his power, it is by God’s mercy that anyone is qualified for it (Heaven). When Jesus enumerates the commandments to the rich-young-man, his answer inspires love in Jesus because the man keeps God’s commandments, at least, the ones Jesus numbers in the gospel. What is important to notice is that the list of commandments covers exclusively inter-human relationships – false witness, adultery, theft, etc. The part of the commandments that deals with God’s relationship with human beings doesn’t make it to the list. The first list of commandments provides the roadmap for earthly existence. The second commandment, on how to make it to heaven, “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” is anything but contrary to what success and blessing means for the Jews. Material success is a sign of God’s blessing in the Hebrew mind. To part with wealth amounts to becoming a sinner and someone with Divine malediction on him.
The new teaching of Jesus today is how LOVE trumps LAW. The keeping of the LAW is no guarantee of salvation or entering the kingdom of God. The sorrowful departure of the rich-young-man, despite his mastery of the LAW in practice, is a glaring failure to grasp the real meaning of the LAW as “love of God and neighbor”. His preoccupation is how to possess eternal life without the help of God. To treat one’s neighbor right is to possess the kingdom of God. Charity or love-as-sacrifice is to depend on God for the possibility of salvation. To see God present in one’s neighbors and to reach out to God in them is already the kingdom of Heaven.
Like father like son, like mother like daughter, speaks to our origins and attempts at imitating God and not putting ourselves up as models. Jesus’ disciples left possessions behind them, so they are free to inherit the kingdom of heaven, but the rich-young-man remains a prisoner of possession. When the love of God ranks above earthly possessions, it liberates the human person to possess the kingdom of God. This is the meaning of “wisdom” in our first reading. “I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her, nor did I liken any priceless gem to her”.
The fact that “wisdom” requires prayer before its attainment portrays the kingdom of God as a gift of God and not something to be bought through personal initiative and strength. The Kingdom of Heaven is the recognition of the God of that kingdom as the God of everybody. He is our God and our Father. To forget the least of the little ones is to forget God, no matter how perfectly we think we are keeping the LAW. “Like father like son, like mother like daughter” makes the imitation of God’s love and compassion our example to follow. The LAW is for human beings, not human beings for the LAW. There must be the wisdom of God that leads to the recognition of universal humanity in God. For Christ to summarize the whole commandment as “love of God and neighbor” is to emphasize the inseparability of LAW and LOVE. It is love that makes a man to leave his father and mother to be joined to his wife; it is love that makes one leave home, family and possessions to go preach the gospel.
The rich-young-man only realizes the meaning of the WORD OF GOD in contradiction to the LAW OF GOD, when Jesus confronts him with the power of love and responsibility. This is the meaning of our second reading, that the word of God has to challenge us to our responsibilities and duties to one another and God himself – “Indeed the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart”. The love of neighbor must go beyond the requirements of the law to encompass God’s design for his creatures. Every sin against love must be accounted for. To dispossess the poor of their livelihood, as we do today as politicians and religious people, stealing from the poor in the name of God and service to our respective nations and churches, await God’s stern judgment.
The commandments of God metamorphose into love when our neighbors no longer constitute obstacles to our wellbeing; rather, let their joys become ours, and we share in their sorrows. We must realize that we are all children of God, whether rich or poor, old or young, ill or well. The one thing we lack is love of the other, and the readiness to dispossess ourselves of our own comforts and goods in order to enrich the other. We need to ask God for a generous and liberal heart and hands to share our resources with the needy. As God’s children, ours must be “like Father like children”!
Let’s conclude with a story: A Catholic couple lived under the same roof but were not talking to each other. One day, the husband returns from Mass and starts singing a romantic song to the wife, something unusual of him. He goes ahead to lift his wife in his arms and sings along. In her surprise, she asks him the meaning of it all. He says to her, Father asks us in his homily to go back home to carry our burdens!
May you carry the burdens of the poor gladly this week!
Assignment for the Week:
Do something this week that will warrant a neighbor to see God in you!