Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

In our Office Gospel today, a wealthy young man says to Jesus, “Good Teacher! What must I do to inherit eternal life?” To which Jesus responds: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

Now, it’s probably useful to mention that the question the young man asks isn’t quite, “How do I get to heaven?” but more, according to NT Wright, “What must I do to have life in the age to come?” Which is more about the coming Messianic Age, the age of resurrection and renewal of all things. What can I do to have life when all things are restored?

I imagine many of us, in these strange days, are asking versions of that question even now: when the new normal comes, how do I share in it or participate in it? Is there any way to prepare for it? All important questions! But Jesus’ response suggests that for the question to really be useful for us, we might want to get something straight first…

…and that’s to do with goodness. When Jesus asks, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” he’s not suggesting he isn’t good, nor is he suggested he isn’t God, nor is he merely suggesting that he’s immune to flattery (though he’s definitely immune to flattery). What he’s getting at, what he’s saying to the young man, is: “Hold up there! Where does this goodness of yours come from? You use this word, but what do you think it means? If your notion of the good isn’t God, if God doesn’t set the standard of goodness, then I suspect you don’t quite know what it is you’re talking about when you call things good!”

He then goes on to ask the young man about the law, which is to say, he paints a picture of righteousness and goodness that would be familiar to the young man. It’s so familiar, the young man basically says, “Yep! Got it! I’m doing all that stuff! I guess I’m good!” To which Jesus responds, “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."

And this gets to the heart of the matter: the goodness worth having is not actually a goodness we possess, control or determine, but a goodness that holds, guides, and determines us! Goodness is not, in fact, something we own, nor can it be obtained by owning anything in particular; it’s not a matter of doing or of having or of inheriting, but a matter of participating in the life of the One from whom all good things come and who is the Only Good One. We might think we know what goodness is, but if we don’t let God’s goodness dispossess us of all the little goods to which we cling, then the goodness that is truly good, that is in fact THE GOOD ITSELF (!) cannot be fully alive in us, cannot supply our lack, cannot fill and fulfill us, and we cannot fully participate in it.

The question, then, is not, “What must I do to have?” But, “Who must be doing in me so I can fully live the goodness that upholds me?” And this, in the end, is a question about prayer: about silence, about listening, about faith, about receiving the grace God’s longs to give us to fill us, restore us, and empower us.

Whatever the new normal is, my Beloved Friend, the most essential thing about rightly living in it is the most essential thing about rightly living now: to be filled with the love of God, to let God’s goodness displace our own, so that God’s goodness truly becomes our own because it holds and upholds us in the good…and let's not forget that the good is nothing less than Love-In-Action. Through prayer, through worship, by grace, we are fitted for the goodly weight of glory that prepares us not to be participants of a new normal, but (as I mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon) heralds of a New World coming-to-be in and through us even now!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+