“But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.”
– Matthew 19:22

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Gospel authors each tell the story of a wealthy young man who comes to Jesus and asks him what one must do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus responds with a proper answer for a Jew, in relation to the Old Covenant of Israel. “Keep all the commandments.”

The young man is an ardent adherent, and Jesus does not dispute his claims to be a man of obedience.

But then Jesus adds a different caveat to what is required of one to enter heaven, which reflects the New Covenant Jesus was establishing through his life.

“Go, sell everything you own, and then use it to help others.”

And at that point the young man was thrown into a crux.

He had a lot, and it was too too much for him to give up.

And perhaps the toughest part of this story is seeing the young man realize his decision for his estate would bar him from what Jesus squarely promised if he would choose otherwise.

And who knows. Maybe in time the young man found his accumulations burdensome and unrewarding, and he remembers what the itinerant teacher told him.

I like this story, less about the struggle that the young man faces in weighing his prosperity against his posterity. The young man faces a choice that each one of us faces in some way when Christ’s demands on us counter with what we are pretty unwilling to give up from some corner in our life.

But what I see in the image that Jesus describes of a disciple, and in what Jesus himself displays for us in the narratives of his life, is that confounding kindness and unselfish generosity that is just so not a human way.

Jesus tells the prince to divest himself in taking care others who could really use his help- because doing that is how God intended people to be towards one another. Because doing that is a demonstration of an understanding that God is actually gracious, and he takes care of those who trust him. Because doing that emulates the actions of another who entered the world to show it what his Father was really like.

And it is probably this image of Jesus- that gracious, giving, serving man who utterly and confidently lived his life listening to and living to fulfill his father’s will- that best pulled me into Christianity.

Because Jesus is peculiar amongst the gods.

He is like me, but he is absolutely not like me.

He demands that I act like him, and yet says he will help me to be like that, if I will let him- if I will let go of some hard things to let go of.

And even if the story of the young prince was just a nice tale, my soul would still respond to it, because in the image of Jesus and his demands in the story, my heart recognizes the nature and ways of an infinitely gracious God I would still want to know and serve.