Once upon a time there was a rich young ruler, and his name was … Well. We don’t know his name. The story of his interaction with Jesus gets told in three of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is clearly the same story in all three accounts, though the details differ in some intriguing ways. People usually identify these passages as the story of the Rich Young Ruler. But it’s actually a little more complicated than that.

Mark’s version goes like this:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.’ ” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions (Mark 10:1 7-22, NRSV).

Mark’s version starts off by saying that “a man” came to see Jesus, and concludes with the note that “he had many possessions” – thus, a rich man. Matthew simply begins by saying “someone” asked Jesus a question, and then later in the conversation identifies this someone as a “young man,” and like Mark concludes with the detail that he had many possessions – thus, a rich young man. Luke identifies the fellow as “a certain ruler” and rounds off the story by telling us that he “was very rich” – thus, a rich ruler. All three, then, tell us that the man was rich; but only Matthew reports that he was young, and only Luke states that he was a ruler. The common title of Rich Young Ruler, then, is a result of us combining the information from the different accounts into one homogenized version in our own minds, telling the story with a fullness of detail that none of the gospel writers quite included.

It’s easy enough to do that, since the stories are so similar: word for word identical, in several places in the text. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing to do: since they are the same story, told in three different accounts, we don’t have to assume that one gospel’s version is right and the others are a little off, so it would be wrong to include details from those others. Matthew tells us it was a young man, and neither of the other two mentions his age one way or the other; we don’t need to conclude on the basis of Mark’s and Luke’s silence on the matter that the man must actually have been old, or must not have had an age at all. I have known people who seem ageless, and I’ve known others who seem quite reluctant to admitting they have an age; perhaps the fellow was one of those? No. Matthew says he was young, and there’s no good reason to doubt him.

Still, it is difficult to keep calling this fellow “The Rich Young Ruler,” not only because that’s a composite description that none of the gospel writers actually use, but also because it’s a longish phrase instead of a single name. So I’m going to call this guy Joe. I don’t know that was his name. Yet even though Mark and Luke don’t give us his age, I’m pretty sure he had an age; and even though neither Matthew nor Mark nor Luke give us his name, I’m pretty sure he had one of those, too.

One of the intriguing differences among the three is this. In Mark and Luke, Joe asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” In both of their accounts, Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” This has seemed to many commentators to indicate that Jesus was squeamish about being called “good.” It appears to reveal that Jesus recognized about himself, like most of us do about ourselves, that we are this strange mixture of good and bad, with high and lofty motives some of the time, and rather cheap and shabby and self-serving motives a lot of the time. I might like to think of myself as one of the good guys, but it doesn’t take much introspection for me to have to admit – at least to myself – that in my soul there is plenty of wanting-to-get-my-own-way and willing-to-cut-corners-on-my-own-behalf and harsh-criticism-of-you-while-cutting-myself-some-slack. When Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” this looks like Jesus was admitting that he’s in this same boat, another sinner like the rest of us, seeking to live up to the goodness which only God has.

That feels awkward, doesn’t it? We are used to thinking of Jesus as the sinless Son of God; but this sounds like maybe Jesus didn’t think of himself that way. And maybe it felt awkward to Matthew also, because when Matthew tells the story, he says that the man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And Jesus answered him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.” And when we listen to that, we can notice that the awkwardness is gone which we felt before, when Jesus seemed to be suggesting that he isn’t the kind of person who could be called “Good Teacher.”

This has led many New Testament scholars to suppose that Matthew took Mark’s awkward line about “Why do you call me good” and changed it, to get away from that awkward implication that Jesus maybe was a sinner like the rest of us.

It’s a basic premise of New Testament textual studies that when you have two manuscripts talking about the same material, but they don’t tell it the same way, the one that is probably original is the one where you can see how that text explains how the variants came about. So, for example, if the way one of the manuscripts says it feels awkward in some way, and the other is smoothed out, you assess that the awkward one is probably more original and the smoother one came later. That’s because it makes sense that a copyist would smooth things out, when recounting a story. Deliberately or accidentally, a scribe will smooth out the rough bits: choosing a well known word over an obscure word, replacing a bit of improper grammar with the correct phrasing. But it’s very unlikely that the scribe would change the wording to make the passage more awkward.

But here’s an interesting thing happening here. Mark tells us that as the man was trying to explain how good he was, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Matthew does not include that detail. Luke does not include that detail.

If Mark owned a copy of Matthew and copy of Luke, he could be working at a large table and have both source books open in front of him to the place he wanted to summarize, copying from one at times, copying from the other at times, blending the material together at times, occasionally adding in particular nuances that he recalled from the testimony of Simon Peter, for whom he had sometimes served as secretary, according to the second-century writer Papias. As it turns out, one of the things that seems to have particularly interested Mark was human feelings: especially the feelings of Jesus, but also sometimes the feelings of other people. And so Mark will often make special note of how Jesus was moved with compassion, or was troubled in spirit, or was frustrated by people’s attitude. Sometimes one or another of the other gospel writers will offer the same information; sometimes not.

This is one of those instances where the others do not.

So it is Mark who tells us that when Jesus spoke to this man – that is, when he spoke to Joe, this Rich Young Ruler, if we blend the descriptions together, or Joe, this rich man, if we limit ourselves to Mark’s testimony – when Jesus spoke to Joe, his words were motivated by love. Jesus looked at him and loved him.

I may have told you more about textual studies than you want to know, but let me geek out just a bit more about the work of scholars who try to discern the relationship among the first three gospels. The question can be expressed informally as, “Who was copying off of whose paper?” If we suppose that Mark wrote first, and that when Matthew was writing he had a copy of Mark and used it to provide the basic structure of his own gospel, and also much of his material; and if we suppose that when Luke was writing, independently of Matthew, he also used Mark to provide the basic structure and much of his material, then that presents us with an interesting question: why is it that Matthew would copy from Mark the story of the rich young man, and leave out the detail that Jesus loved him? And why is it that Luke would copy from Mark the story of the rich ruler, and leave out the detail that Jesus loved him? It would certainly seem like a relevant detail to include.

On the other hand, if Matthew wrote first, and Luke used Matthew as one of his reference sources as he assembled his gospel, then we end up with something like this: Matthew wrote what he wrote about the young man, and Luke didn’t care that the guy was young, but he had found out that the fellow was an officer in the synagogue, so he mentioned that the fellow was a ruler. And then Mark came along, intending to write a shorter, abridged version of the gospel, and Mark saw those two details, and shrugged about them. The details about how old the man was, and about how he had an official position in the synagogue: Mark felt like those were details he could easily leave out, for the sake of keeping his account brief. But Mark knew a detail that his sources didn’t mention, and it was a detail that always fascinated Mark: he knew how Jesus felt about this guy. Did Jesus scorn this man for thinking he was much more righteous than he actually was? Did Jesus see potential in this ordinary Joe to be a great leader? Did Jesus not really care about the fellow that much, one way or the other? Or did Jesus love him? Mark knew the answer to this string of questions about how Jesus felt. Mark knew that Jesus loved him. And he wrote that down.

So the man asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

And Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

People sometimes find themselves uncomfortable with this saying of Jesus. Doesn’t it seem to imply that Jesus himself was uncomfortable with being called good? Isn’t it an implicit denial of that: doesn’t it mean “You shouldn’t call me good, because only God is good, no mere human being should be called good” ?

Jesus and his disciples are walking along the road. The road goes through villages and towns along the way. People can watch as Jesus goes by. People can walk along while Jesus passes through their town, listening to the conversation for a while; they can even tag along for a mile or two out into the country, if they find the conversation interesting enough. And people can join into the conversation: they can ask a question, and listen to the answer, and say something else, and keep the conversation going for a while.

One of the things about talking with Jesus was, you never knew for sure how the conversation might go. You might feel really sure how Jesus has to answer you, but you’re probably in for a surprise, because Jesus will often move the conversation in unexpected ways.

So here come Jesus and the disciples, walking through town with a crowd of locals walking along with them, and Joe sees that it’s Jesus, and he scurries up alongside the parade, listening to what’s being said as he maneuvers himself into the group just ahead of Jesus, and where he gets down on his knees with his arms out wide in supplication, and that stops the procession right there in the road. Then Joe speaks up: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And he thinks that Jesus will answer his question by talking about what Joe needs to do in order to go to heaven when he dies. But Jesus says, before we talk about the how to inherit eternal life part of your question, Joe, let’s start by talking about the Good Teacher part of your question.

Because, you see, “how do I get to heaven when I die” is a theological question, and if we’re talking theology we’re talking about God, and when we talk about, say, the goodness of God, that pretty much puts all human claims to goodness off to the side, doesn’t it, Joe? If you believe that God is good, and indeed if you believe that the standard of goodness is the goodness of God, then when you join into the conversation by calling me Good Teacher you’re just engaging in meaningless flattery, isn’t that right? Because individuals who are truly devout would acknowledge that only God is good, wouldn’t you say that, Joe?

Now when we’re speaking colloquially, we call each other good pretty often. She’s a good student. She’s a good basketball player: she’s got good skills, and good character. He’s a good man, a good husband and father. But when we’re speaking theologically, we acknowledge that we are in fact not that good. We fail to do the things we said we’d do. We fudge the truth. We cut corners. We say words that hurt instead of heal. We expect others to get it right, to toe the line, but we cut ourselves plenty of slack. We know that we are not wicked bad, but we also know that we are not scrupulously good.

Jesus saw what Joe was doing. Joe was calling Jesus Good Teacher, with the implication that Jesus was a Good Man, just the same way that Joe himself was a Good Man, too. Jesus saw that Joe’s question was really, “I know I’m a Good Man; but how does a Good Man like me get the assurance that I’ll go to heaven when I die?” Jesus saw that when Joe called Jesus “Good Teacher,” he wasn’t trying to say, “Jesus, your goodness is distinctive, so far beyond all the rest of us, indeed your goodness is divine in character.” No. That’s not what Joe meant. Jesus saw that what Joe was trying to say was, “You’re a good man, Jesus, just like I am.”

So Jesus called that into question: “Tell me, Joe: why are you using the word good here? You do know that you’re only supposed to use that word good when you’re talking about God, don’t you?”

But Jesus went on, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’”

Now, what just happened? Let’s pause for a moment and recognize that Jesus began a Bible study with Joe. He pointed him to scripture. He pointed him to commandments written in the Bible, and listed off some of those commandments.

Let’s pause for a further moment and notice that they didn’t have a written Bible handy at the moment. Jesus and Joe didn’t pull their Bibles out of their backpacks, so that they could sit on the grass and look up passages together. In order to discuss those passages, they had to have read those passages, and learned those passages, so that they could recite those passages and talk about what they meant.

And let’s pause for a third moment and ask, was there a specific part of the Bible that Jesus was pointing to? What was the source for this material that Jesus quoted to our buddy Joe?

Jesus offered a clue, when he began with the phrase, ‘you know the commandments.’ What are these ‘commandments’ that Jesus was talking about? That’s right: the Ten Commandments. And which ones did Jesus cite? If you are keeping score, you will have noticed that Jesus cited numbers six, seven, eight, nine, and five.

Now, suppose some guy named Joe had joined in a conversation with you, and the topic turned to the Ten Commandments, and you suggested that Joe should follow the Ten Commandments, and you decided to list some examples from the Ten Commandments: five examples, let’s say, which would be half of them, if my math is correct. If you wanted to make mention of five examples from the Ten Commandments, you’d have to decide which five to include, and which five to leave out.

Maybe you’d pick the first four, which address our relationship with God: you must have no other gods but me, you must not make or worship any image, you must not take God’s name in vain, you must keep the Sabbath. And then you’d pick one other from the remaining six, which address our relationships with other people. Or perhaps you’d pick two from the first four, about our relationship to God, and then three from the remaining six, about our interactions with the people around us.

But Jesus did not choose to follow either of those patterns. Instead, he chose five that all address our relationships with other people: six, seven, eight, nine, five. That’s a little odd, isn’t it? When I give you five examples from the Ten Commandments, and when I list them off one after another: six; seven; eight; nine – what do you expect comes after that? Six, seven, eight, nine – what’s next? We all anticipate the next one in the sequence will be number ten. But Jesus didn’t include number ten in his list; instead, he circled back and quoted from number five.

Now, I’ve been using numbers as shorthand here. Jesus simply quoted from the Ten Commandments, without using numbers; because if you know the Ten Commandments well, you know which one is what number, it’s second nature to you. And Joe is supposed to know the Ten Commandments well, just like all of us are supposed to know them well. After all, he’s about to tell Jesus that he has carefully kept all these commandments since he was a boy. But wouldn’t it be hard to keep the commandments if you don’t know the commandments? And wouldn’t it be hard to know the commandments if you haven’t read and studied and learned the commandments? I would expect that if someone wanted to make the bold claim, “I’ve lived by the Ten Commandments ever since I was a child,” then that person would know the Ten Commandments by heart, and could recite them without any hesitation at all.

So if that’s the way it is with this guy Joe, I would expect that he would notice that Jesus cited the sixth commandment, and then the seventh, and then the eighth, and then the ninth, and Joe would be expecting to hear the tenth commandment next; and when he didn’t, he would ask himself, “Why didn’t Jesus mention the tenth commandment?” Which, as you will remember, is the one about coveting the things that belong to your neighbor. It’s the one about wanting more stuff. The tenth commandment tells us, when you see the things that other people have, you must not covet those things.

(As an aside, we should notice that the American advertising industry is based on the premise that the tenth commandment is wrong; the American advertising industry proposes that you should indeed want to have the things that other people have.)

This is a subtle point, but it is important. Jesus emphasizes the tenth commandment here, not by mentioning it but by not mentioning it. If Joe is the Bible student that he claims to be, having learned the Ten Commandments by heart, he will hear the echo of what Jesus didn’t say much more loudly than he would have if Jesus had gone ahead and said it. And he will be deep in thought about how much of his life is wrapped up in his quest for riches, and for the things money can buy, so that he will always be able to buy the things that he covets: when he sees the nice things that someone else has, and says, “Ooh! I want that!”

But wait! There’s more! Jesus actually listed six commandments. We’ve been reviewing five of them: six, seven, eight, nine, five. But Jesus actually provided six examples of commandments for Joe. Five of them come from the Ten Commandments. And one of them – doesn’t. Jesus “quotes” a commandment – Do not defraud – but that string of words does not come from anywhere in the Old Testament. There are plenty of places in the Bible that tell you that you have to be honest in your financial dealings, but when Jesus used that particular phrase, “Do not defraud,” he was not quoting a commandment found anywhere in the Bible.

It sounds like it ought to be in the Bible, though, doesn’t it? In fact it sounds like it could be one of the Ten Commandments.

One of the techniques that ancient rabbis used to use, and which modern rabbis and teachers continue to use, is to state the answer incorrectly. When the rabbi does that, the students are supposed to notice, and raise your hand and say, “Ah, excuse me, Rabbi, but did you just say X? Isn’t … isn’t the correct answer Y?” And then the rabbi commends the student for paying attention, and for having the courage to speak up.

That’s what Jesus was doing here. “Joe, let me give you some examples from the Ten Commandments. I’ll list the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth commandments, then I’ll throw in this ringer that isn’t one of the ten commandments and indeed isn’t even in the Torah at all, just to check on whether you’re alert or snoozing. And then I’ll finish up the fifth commandment. How about that, Joe?”

As a good student, Joe is supposed to say, “Well, but Rabbi Jesus, instead of the tenth commandment you’ve put in this thing about defrauding, which is an important point, of course, but it’s … not one of the Ten Commandments. The Bible says you must not cheat your workers out of their pay, but there is no commandment that says, specifically, ‘Do not defraud,’ is there?”

So here’s the situation. Jesus has done three very odd things in pointing Joe toward keeping the commandments:

1. he does not cite any of the commandments that address our relationship with God,
2. he sets up a sequence that should include the tenth commandment, but he leaves it out, and
3. he tosses in a ringer that is not at all part of the ten commandments.

And Joe doesn’t blink. It appears that Joe doesn’t realize that Jesus has done anything odd at all. He has not wondered at why Jesus left out the primary emphasis in the Ten Commandments on our devotion to God. He has not heard the echo of the tenth commandment when Jesus didn’t mention it. Joe appears not to realize that “Do not defraud” is not one of the Ten Commandments at all. And Joe simply goes ahead and affirms, “I’ve always kept all the commandments, ever since I was a boy.”

Maybe Joe doesn’t realize how silly he sounds. I’ve been there. Or maybe he does recognize that this conversation isn’t going the way he expected, but he is trying to bluff his way through what has suddenly become an awkward situation. I’ve also been there. Or maybe, even as he was saying “I’ve always kept the commandments,” maybe he felt the pang of knowing he had often meant to do it right, and yet still had gotten it wrong. Yeah, I’ve been there, too.

I don’t know for sure which way it was for Joe. But I’m pretty sure Jesus was reading him very clearly. Jesus knew that Joe had not lived by the Ten Commandments as purely as he claimed. Jesus knew that Joe hadn’t even learned the Ten Commandments all that well.

And so Jesus had to decide what he was going to say to Joe; what answer was he going to give to Joe’s question, what do I have to do in order to receive eternal life?

He was going to tell him “You lack one thing.” After that, Jesus was going to tell Joe, “Go, sell what you own.” He was going to tell him, “Give the money to the poor.” And then he was going to tell him, “Come, follow me.” That already sounds like more than one thing to me: if we’re noticing what Joe lacked, then we can see of course that Joe also lacks an understanding of the Ten Commandments, and he also lacks an understanding of his own mixed-up heart, and he also lacks an understanding of how thoroughly his desire for wealth has got him tied in a knot. And probably a dozen other things, because Joe is like all the rest of us in not even realizing how much we lack, in terms of our obedience to the will of God.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that the Gospel of Mark particularly does, more than any of the other gospels, is this: Mark often inserts a short description to tell us how Jesus felt about a given situation. The other gospels often give us more information about what Jesus said, but Mark tells us how Jesus felt when he said something. He tells us that Jesus was upset, or troubled in spirit, or moved with compassion.

And here, Mark tells us that Jesus looked at this guy Joe, this guy who wanted to know how to receive eternal life, this guy who didn’t even really know the Ten Commandments but was bold enough to claim that he was really good at keeping the Ten Commandments: Mark tells us that Jesus looked at this guy, and loved him.

The children’s Sunday School song says, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” but I’m not sure that Joe knew that Jesus loved him. Jesus knew that the guy looked good on the outside – still pretty young, Matthew tells us, already holding an important position of authority, Luke tells us – but Jesus knew that on the inside Joe was not sure whether he would have eternal life or not, and Jesus knew that Joe wanted to live in accordance with the Ten Commandments, and also that Joe was mostly bluffing about how good a Bible student he really was, and that Joe was also mostly bluffing about how well he managed to follow the commandments. But Jesus loved him. This is a powerful revelation, right here, because there are so many of us who are like Joe, not such good Bible students, not as faithful as we might look, and more wrapped up in our possessions than we might like to admit. But Jesus looks at us, and loves us.

Jesus looked at Joe, and loved him, and said, “Sell it all, Joe, and come follow me.”

And Joe went away sad, it says, because he had a lot of possessions.

And that’s where the narrative concludes. This was Joe’s big chance, the opportunity to come along with Jesus, to discover the fullness of his life as a disciple of Jesus: and he blew it. He walked away sad, because he had many possessions, and he couldn’t bear to think of giving them up. So I suppose we could imagine what the rest of Joe’s story might be: he would go on to become a bitter old man, with lots of wealth but the aching regret that once upon a time he had conversed with Jesus, and Jesus invited him to come along and be one of his disciples, but he had walked away.

Or maybe not. The Gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us any more of Joe’s story, but that doesn’t mean that nothing more happened to Joe for the rest of his life. In particular, it doesn’t tell us that having blown his one and only chance, Joe never got a second chance.

We might notice that the scriptures do tell us how Peter blew his chance to declare that he was with Jesus, and instead he denied that he even knew Jesus, because he was afraid: and Peter got a second chance. The scriptures also tell us how Thomas had the chance to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, when his fellow disciples told him that they had seen the Lord, but Thomas was skeptical and did not believe them: and Thomas got a second chance.

And in fact the book of Acts does tell us about a guy named Joe who sold his property and brought the money and laid it at the feet of the Apostles, to be used to help the poor. This guy was a follower of Jesus, and indeed as a follower of Jesus he eventually became an apostle himself. The other apostles gave him a nickname, which translates to something like Mister Encouragement, apparently because he was always saying words of encouragement, always cheering people on. The actual Aramaic nickname they gave him translates, literally, to Son of Encouragement, but I paraphrased it as something like Mister Encouragement because that would be how we would probably say it in 21^st century English. So how would you say Son of Encouragement in first century Aramaic? You’d say Bar Nabas – Barnabas.

So maybe this rich young ruler that I’ve been calling Joe turned out to be the guy named Joseph who became a notable church leader, the one whom apostles nicknamed Barnabas. I don’t know that that’s the way it happened. There isn’t a lot of evidence, but there is some that might point in that direction. There are also some reasons to be hesitant. It’s not conclusive, either way. We need to reckon with the possibility that the three gospel writers who tell this story, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, have included this story simply to acknowledge that in the end, not everyone responded when Jesus called them to follow him in discipleship. Maybe that’s the lesson.

But maybe not. Maybe the lesson is that when Jesus called them, not everyone responded right away. And after all, we don’t all respond right away, do we? Actually, I think that’s the most common pattern. For some people, they have a great moment of conversion, where they have been totally an unbeliever and then they encounter Christ and become totally a believer. Yet even in those instances, quite often it turns out that Jesus was working in people’s lives for some little while – and sometimes for quite a long while – before they came to realize that it was Jesus, and they needed to respond. Even people with conversion stories that are quite dramatic often end up telling me that they can look back and see that Jesus had been calling them for some period of time and they didn’t listen – until one day they did.

So this rich guy – still a young man, as Matthew points out, and some sort of official, maybe the chairman of the synagogue board, Luke reports – this fellow has it made. He’s religious, and ambitious, and young, and rich. Everyone can see that he’s a fine young man, a good man, and he’s going to do great things. But he has the ache in his soul: some day he’s going to die, and what happens then? How do you get to heaven when that happens?

And what’s the point of this story? Is it to tell us that if Joe wants to go to heaven, all he has to do is give away everything he has, and follow Jesus? Or is it to tell us that Jesus loved this guy? And is the application to tell us that if we want to go to heaven, all we have to do is give away everything we have, and follow Jesus? Or is it to tell us that Jesus loves us? Or is it to tell us that we’ve got one chance, and if we blow that one chance, then all we can do is go away sad, because the opportunity has come and gone? Or is it to tell us that Jesus still loves us, and today is a new day, and Jesus still invites us to be his disciples: because he loves us, forever.