What treasures from my chest would I not shove
if Jesus looked at me with that much love?
For months now, I’ve been playing around with the story of the Rich Man in Mark (which you can read here) as an assignment for the Jesuit Media Lab’s Imagining the Gospel series. It’s the Gospel for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 13), so I have months left to muse on it. But when I began my morning with Pray As You Go, I discovered that it is also the Gospel for today—Monday of the 8th Week of Ordinary Time. So it felt right to share with you my thoughts in progress.
Although poetry is not my medium, something about this passage kept pulling me in that direction—specifically, the discipline and economy demanded by a sonnet. Perhaps Jesus’ invitation to pare down the rich man’s possessions made me want to do the same with my words?
I’m not saying it’s a good sonnet; mostly, it feels like a high school English assignment—compressing my thoughts into fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. But the ending couplet that began this post has stayed with me:
What treasures from my chest would I not shove
if Jesus looked at me with that much love?
The story begins with the rich man running up to Jesus, ostensibly seeking guidance but quick to say he’s kept all the Commandments from his youth. (Oy. Brag much?) We know how it ends: after Jesus tells him he’s only lacking one thing (go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and come follow me), the man goes away sad, for his possessions are many. But sometimes we forget the middle, the pivot-point: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”
Why did Jesus love him? I don’t think it was his spiritual resume. (Oh, you’ve kept all the Commandments?) Perhaps he was touched by the man’s earnestness or even his anxiety—that someone who’d followed all the rules would still have such deep unease about the path to salvation.
On the other hand, maybe asking “why” Jesus loved him is not the right question. Maybe that spontaneous, compassionate regard is the nature of the beholder, not the merit of the beheld. Maybe to be looked at by Jesus is to be loved by him.
So, what happened next? Was that love transformative? Did the rich man go away sad because he knew he wouldn’t be able to tear himself away from all those possessions—or because he knew how much work lay ahead of him?
I hope it was the latter, but the pressing question today is simply this: Can we allow ourselves to stand in that divine gaze long enough to be transformed by the knowledge of how deeply we are loved?
“What Happened Next?” (with apologies to Shakespeare)
As on a journey they were setting out,
I bet the muttered epithets were rife
When some rich guy delayed them with a shout:
What must I do to gain eternal life?
Our Lord, so patient, listed out the Ten
Commandments. Oh, I’ve kept them from my youth!
“You have but only one thing lacking, then:
Sell all and give, then come and follow Truth.”
Poor foolish burdened ass, you well may say—
Too tied to “stuff” for generous reply.
But I suspect that, as he walked away,
Sheer magnitude of work’s what made him sigh.
What treasures from my chest would I not shove
If Jesus looked at me with that much love?
And here’s the final version, if you’re curious.
Christine Marie Eberle 