by Rev. Herbert Nichols

This week we begin with the first reading, written in a literary style called parallelism, not so familiar to our modern Western mind, but common in the Ancient East. We find each verse echoed in the next verse in a slightly different or more emphatic sense. (i.e. I prayed -- I pleaded)

This particular piece of poetry is echoed in confidence and enlightenment of a hierarchy of values and forms that style of comparison with the gospel conversation between Jesus and the young man. Jesus invites him to renounce all his attachments. Giving up everything in one fell swoop, that’s tough.

But perhaps that is not what Jesus was asking. He was asking the young man not necessarily to toss aside everything but only that which was held most dear, his most cherished possession. Now what might you answer if Jesus asked that of you?

I’m sure most of us would also go away sad in the face of such a demand. But we learn from the example of the Letter to the Hebrews re: the penetrating word of God, which judges the thoughts and reflections of the heart; that exposes our bare reality to weigh and render accountable.

Rendering accountability, or the bottom line, as we more often refer to it today can be gloomy; certainly the young man is described as going away sad, but don’t miss the note of exhilaration. Jesus looks at him with love.

This particular story is found in all four of the gospels; but only Mark makes this observation; one which would seem only an eyewitness could make. In the passion accounts by the four evangelists, it is likewise Mark alone who describes the young man wrapped in a linen toga, in those days an obvious sign of wealth, but flees naked, leaving everything behind. Was this Mark’s way of telling us that he is the man in the story?

It is sort of an anonymous storyteller telling his own story. This is the challenge of this second week of Renew to enable us to get in touch with our own stories of how God is working in our lives and calling us to greater commitment. Our ability to know and tell our stories is an invitation for others to join in.

I remember several years age, I heard someone say: You can’t get a loaf of bread in the hardware store. I was at an ACOA meeting, adult children of Alcoholics, adults who grew up as children having either or both parents alcohol or substance abusers, resulting in the deprivation of love and nurturing that is necessary for healthy child development and adult maturation.

Like myself, many blame their parents for what they did or would not give us. When it came to providing material things, the hardware of life, clothes, food, shelter, they passed; but now I understand why they were unable to provide the emotional needs of nurturing, because bread is not baked in the hardware store.

They were not professional parents. They were not even capable parents, but that is no fault of their own. They were dysfunctional parents who came from their own dysfunctional homes. So how could I continue to blame them for what was not their fault?

Nonetheless, those childhood needs that went unmet in myself, and many others, still cry out for nurturing and nourishing. The loaf of bread must be found and had in order to be satisfied. The meaning can be found in the great Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

To accept the things I cannot change means I no longer need to cause myself undue and needless anxiety by clinging to that which no longer exists. I cannot change my past but I can have my past instead of it possessing me. Not all the things we cling to are material, but Jesus says we need to let them go.

"To change the things I can" means to give up my attempts to control the lives of others. I cannot live another person’s life; I have all I can do to live my own, one day at a time, recognizing my humanity, my limitations, to be the best that I can be today, no better or no worse.

And "the wisdom to know the difference" means that I am not trapped in the hardware store, looking and looking for that which will never be found there. I am free to walk out and see the grocery store next door or the bakery across the street and smell the fresh bread. When it seems that there is no way out, that life is like a dead end road, new paths open up like miracles; but only if we take time to smell the bread.

But you will never find it or even go near the kitchen if there is someone in there whom you hold in resentment and fear. Instead of fresh bread, you’ll spend your life eating sponge from the hardware store, not very nourishing.