Sandwiched between the stories of Jesus’ third prediction of His death and His triumphal entry are two stories that relate to each other.  The first is James and John’s request for power and Jesus’ rebuke.  This is one of the three times Jesus talks about greatness in the gospels.  “To be great you must be a servant of all,” Jesus tells us, and then gives us one of the formative thoughts of our discipleship: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to lay down His life as a ransom for many.”  A great memory verse for us, but a stinging rebuke for James and John.

The other story that is related to this one is the story of blind Bartimaus.  I say they are related because together they speak to the reality of Jesus’ closest disciples.  The story of Barimaus’ healing is impressive in and of itself, but the fact that it comes where it does leads us to the conclusion that (1) James and John were as spiritually blind as Bartimaus was physically blind, and (2) all of the disciples were blind to Jesus’ teachings when they missed (again) His prophecy about His own death and then began it with the Triumphal Entry.  Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say, so we can see what they missed from our future vantagepoint.  And it is not fair that we judge these poor men as harshly as we do when we ponder just how blind they were.

Yet we are at least as blind in our own discipleship today.  We may get Jesus’ predictions of His death, but we don’t give up all we have and are to follow Him.  We may see the Triumphal Entry as the first step toward the cross (and the resurrection!) but we regularly miss Jesus’ command to put Him first in every aspect of our lives.  Maybe blind Bartimaus is the only one who can truly see after all.

A family had left a church where I served previously, yet the husband and I were meeting regularly for discipleship.  I asked him why they had left and he shared that it was because he felt I was too negative about money and wealth.  “I work hard for what I have and I won’t feel guilty about it,” he shared.  I appreciated his candor because it made me take a serious look at whether I really was hard on the wealthy and if so, why that was.  I decided that he was probably right.

Throughout my life I’ve had a very difficult relationship with wealth.  I grew up a privileged white male in a wealthy suburb of Detroit.  I had wealthy friends, attended a wealthy church, and lived a wealthy life.  My difficulty with wealth was not covetousness of others’ wealth, nor was it guilt about what I had.  It came directly from scripture.

Now, if the image you have of my childhood includes new cars, a mansion, membership at the golf club, and fancy clothes, you may want to reassess your definition of “wealthy”.  We lived on a teacher’s salary (my mom didn’t work while we were kids, going back only to help put my sister and me through college) and bought generally used cars.  We lived in a 3 bedroom house, camped on our vacations out of necessity, seldom if ever went out to eat, and wore modest or even hand-me-down clothes.  But we were wealthy.

As a youth pastor in Rochester, MN, I used a “global wealth calculator” which ranks your salary level relative to the rest of the world.  With just that salary, our family was in the top 6/10 of a percent of the world’s population.  Even there, making less than my father did after a career in teaching, we were wealthy.

Today Jesus puts we who are wealthy, whether we admit it or not, in our place.  “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the Kingdom of God.”  Jesus commands this wealthy young man, who has lived an obedient, righteous life thus far, to give up everything and follow Jesus.  Not to “be willing to” give it up, and not to give it up metaphorically.  Jesus knows how wealth draws us away from God, and so He says get rid of the baggage.

I don’t know if I’m there yet in my walk with God.  Are you?