Wait a minute. You think Jesus can't tell the
difference between not now and not yet? Luke
says the man walked away sad. It never says he
stayed gone. You're standing in the dust of an
ancient road watching a man kneel in front of
Jesus. He's not a villain. He's the kind of man
people respect. Faithful. Disciplined. Someone
who's tried to do the right thing his whole life.
He asks the question out loud, what must I do
to inherit eternal life? And Jesus answers gently,
honestly. And then he opens a door the man did
not expect to see. The invitation is clear. The
cost is heavy. And the man walks away sad. Not
angry, not offended. Just sad. But... What if
that moment is at the end of the story? And wherever
you are right now, driving a back road, standing
in the kitchen, walking the dog, or sitting quietly
with a cup of coffee, you have just wandered
into a small town church with us. So go ahead,
grab a pew, settle in for a few minutes, and
I'll see you on the other side. But, hey, you
know this guy. You went to school with him. He
sat two rows ahead of you, turned in his homework
early, somehow made getting the honor roll feel
effortless. Coached Little League. He never missed
a Sunday. He tithed. He visited the sick. He
held the door for everybody. And you know what?
He meant it every single time. And here is the
thing that makes a guy like this hard to preach
about. He wasn't faking it. And that's the part
we skip. We rush past the ruler's goodness in
this story because we already know how this story
ends. And we want him to be the villain so that
the lesson will land clean. But Jesus doesn't
treat him like a villain. And Luke doesn't either.
We should pay attention to that. A man walks
up to Jesus with an honest question, an honest
record, and an honest heart. He doesn't come
at night like Nicodemus, hedging his bets. He
doesn't send his servants to get his answers
for him. He walks up in broad daylight and kneels.
Luke says that he is a ruler, which means There
are people around. And he asks the question out
loud. What must I do to inherit eternal life?
And by now we already know he's going to walk
away at the end of the story sad. We've heard
the story so many times that we treat the ending
like a verdict. Case closed. Rich man. Fails,
moral delivered. But what if walking away sad
isn't the last scene? And you know, there is
a kind of grief that only visits people who almost
said yes. Not the grief of failure, not the grief
of ignorance. The grief of seeing exactly what's
offered and feeling the weight of what it would
cost to take hold of it. That's a different kind
of sad. That's a sad that remembers. Friends,
tune your ears to the reading. This morning our
word comes to us from the gospel account according
to the historian Luke. The 18th chapter of his
gospel account beginning with verse 18. A ruler
asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus
asked him. No one is good except God alone. You
know the commandments. Do not commit adultery.
Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not give false
testimony. Honor your father and your mother.
I have kept all of those from my youth, he said.
When Jesus heard this, he told him, you still
lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute
it to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me. And after he heard
this, he became extremely sad, because he was
very rich. Thus ends the reading of Holy Scripture
this morning. He became extremely sad. Not angry,
not offended, not dismissive, not righteous about
it. Sad. That's a man who knows exactly what
it is he is turning down. So let's hold that
word, sad. We're going to come back to it. But
first, let me ask you something. When's the last
time you've heard a sermon on the rich young
ruler that made you feel anything but guilty?
I mean, let's be honest. Every time this message
shows up on that sign out front, people brace
themselves. Uh -oh. Here comes the wealth sermon.
Here comes the, are you holding on to your money
too tight? sermon and you sit there doing the
mental math about your 401k while the preacher
tells you that this man and maybe you too have
failed the test. But what if he didn't fail?
What if he just wasn't finished? What if Luke,
who is the most Careful historian in the New
Testament who doesn't waste a single scene in
his narrative left this story open -ended because
the ending hadn't been written yet. Now, let
me stop the VCR tape here for a second, break
the fourth wall. What I'm about to talk about,
I need to show you. Before I do, though, I need
to let you know this is something very important
to get in this story, to get this story. So we're
going to listen. All right, play. Watch what
Jesus does with the commandments. Because he
does something here strange that I feel like
nobody talks about. The ruler asks how to inherit
eternal life. Big question. And Jesus answers
it with the law. Makes sense. He's talking to
a man who knows Torah. But look at which commandments
Jesus names. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder.
Do not steal. Do not give false testimony. Honor
your father and your mother. That's the second
table of the law. Commandments 5 through 9. The
horizontal ones. How we are to treat our neighbor.
What's missing in the scripture? The first table,
the vertical ones. Love the Lord your God. No
other gods before me. Don't take the name in
vain. Remember the Sabbath. Jesus leaves God
off the list. Why? Because the ruler doesn't
have a neighbor problem. He's kept those commandments
since he was a boy. And Jesus doesn't dispute
it. Not one word of challenge. Not, well, actually.
No trick question. The man passes. Legitimately.
Jesus looks at him and sees a righteous man.
And legitimately. Almost quietly. He opens the
one door the ruler has been walking past his
whole lifetime. Jesus skips the first table of
the law because that isn't where the diagnosis
is. The ruler's relationship with people is fine.
His relationship with his stuff. is where the
door is still shut. And stuff, if we're being
honest about Torah, stuff can become the God
you serve without ever calling it a God. The
first table violation is actually hiding in the
second table obedience. Because he says, You
still lack one thing. Not ten things. Not ruler,
you need a complete overhaul. One thing, one
door. You're standing right there at the threshold
and you don't even know it yet. You have been
so faithful to the neighbor commands that you
never noticed that the first table has quietly
been rearranging itself around your wallet or
your stuff or your habits or your insert in the
blank, whatever it is that has become in your
life replacing God. Because it's all different
kinds of things and idols. And that's not condemnation.
That's the most pastoral thing, in my opinion,
Jesus does in the entire Gospels. And yet, he
walks away sad. And every sermon you've ever
heard on this Bible story ends right there. The
camera pulls back. The moral arrives. Don't be
that guy. Let's pray. But Luke doesn't end the
story. Luke just stops telling it. There's no
epilogue. No, and he went home and counted his
money. There's no... And he never returned. Luke
leaves the door standing wide open and walks
into the next scene. And I think we've been preaching
a period where Luke actually put a comma. And
I think Luke did that on purpose. Because. Luke
knows something about rich men who walk away
sad. Luke knows Zacchaeus. Two chapters later,
a rich man. a chief tax collector, a man the
whole town has written off and something in him
won't stay written off. He hears Jesus is passing
through Jericho and he doesn't send a message.
He doesn't try to arrange a private meeting.
He runs ahead of the crowd and he climbs into
a sycamore tree like a child. All dignity gone,
a wealthy man with bark under his fingernails
and his robe hiked up around his waist, perched
on a branch so that he may see. And when Jesus
calls him down, Zacchaeus gives half his possessions
to the poor and repays everyone he cheated fourfold.
Same gospel account. a rich man who came back.
Luke also knows of Joseph of Arimathea, a rich
man, a member of the very same council that condemned
Jesus, which means he was in the room when it
happened. And then after the crucifixion, when
every disciple had scattered, When Peter is hiding,
when the movement looks graveyard dead, the rich
man goes to Pilate alone, asks for his body,
wraps the body in linen with his own hands, lays
it in his own tomb, the one he had purchased
for himself. He gave the most expensive thing
he owned to a dead rabbi everybody else had abandoned.
Luke 23, same gospel account. A rich man who
came back. And Luke's friend, the one he's writing
Acts for as well, probably an old rich fella
himself. He also knows Barnabas, a landowner,
sold his field and laid the money at the apostles'
feet. Acts chapter 4, another rich man who came
back. So when Luke tells you about a ruler who
walked away extremely sad and then doesn't tell
you what happened next, that's not an oversight.
That's an invitation. The rich young ruler is
not a cautionary tale. Perhaps, perhaps it's
the intermission. And I think some of you know
what it's like to walk away from something you
know to be true. And not because you didn't believe
it. Not because you didn't feel it, but because
the cost sat heavy in your chest and you just
weren't ready. Not yet. And maybe you've been
carrying away the guilt of that walking away
rather like it was the final answer, but maybe
it wasn't. Because walking away sad isn't the
same thing as walking away done. Sad means it's
still in you. Sad means the door is still open.
Sad means something in you recognized what was
being offered and the recognition didn't die
just because your legs began moving in a different
direction. Zacchaeus was probably sad too for
a little while before the tree. And here's the
plain truth about it, friends. I don't know for
sure what happened to the ruler. Neither does
Luke. Neither does Jesus in the text. Because
he lets him go. No guilt trip, no calling after
him. No, you'll regret this. He lets him go.
Because Jesus can tell the difference between
someone who has said no and not yet. I wonder
if you can tell the difference in yourself. Because
I think some of you have been calling it no for
years. Because you've walked away from something.
Calling, a conversation, maybe a surrender you
haven't been able to quite make and you stamped
it as finished and you just filed it away. But
it keeps opening the drawer. Keeps setting up
with you late at night. Keeps being sad. And
that's not a closed door. That's an unanswered
invitation. And we've been walking hard through
Lent together, I think. Ashes, wilderness, the
whole weight of the season pressing down on us.
And you know what? Some of you have been white
-knuckling it since Ash Wednesday, doing the
work of self -examination, sitting with hard
truths about yourself. And friends, that is holy
work. But I want to offer you something else
this sunny Sunday morning. Not as cheap comfort,
but as the thing Luke actually wrote. Because
the story isn't over just because someone walked
away sad. The door is still open. It was open
for Zacchaeus. It was open for Joseph of Arimathea.
It was open for Barnabas. And you know what?
It's open. For you. So go in the grace of the
God who names what you lack. Not to shame you.
Because he can see you're close. Go knowing that
the invitation doesn't expire when you decide
to walk away. Go knowing that sadness is not
the same thing as refusal. Every sycamore tree
in this town is climbable. The door is open,
friends. It's always been open. The decision
is yours. Amen? Amen. Before we go, let's hold
on to the quiet truth sitting in the middle of
that story. Man walked away sad, and sadness
means something still moved inside of him. It
means the invitation was real enough to ache.
And maybe you know that feeling. Maybe there's
something Jesus once said in front of you, a
door that you didn't quite walk through, a call
you weren't ready to answer. And if that's you,
hear this. The door of grace does not slam shut
the moment we hesitate. The invitation still
echoes. Walking away is not the same thing as
being finished. And sometimes the spirit keeps
working in that sadness until the day we finally
turn around. And if something in today's conversation
stirred you, if you heard a thought you hadn't
considered before, or if the story opened in
a new way, would you do me a small favor? Go
ahead and drop a little like in the offering
plate the way we used to do in church. And if
you'd like to keep walking with us all the way
to Easter Sunday morning, go ahead and tithe
your subscribe so you'll know we start walking
towards Jerusalem again. Until then, friend,
be blessed.