I think I know exactly what was going on with this man who ran up to Jesus one day and fell at his feet pleading, Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I think you know, too.

Now, I could tell you why we should not know. I could tell you that this man was a first-century Palestinian Jew, not a twenty-first-century American Christian. I could tell you that he was rich by the standards of his day, not middle class like us by the standards of our day (even though we are really incredibly rich, most of us, by the standards of our day versus the rest of the world—let’s just keep that little conceit to ourselves, shall we?). I could tell you that the theology of the so-called rich young ruler was different from ours, that his understanding of eternal life was more about the age to come than heaven as we think of it, and that that age to come was much more realistic than our pie-in-the-sky vision of heaven. But at the end of all those comparisons designed to make sure that he and we are really different people and therefore what he was feeling could not possibly be what we are feeling, we know better, don’t we? We know we suffer the same affliction as he, and with him we want to know the cure.

Have you gotten your flu shot yet? It’s that time of year. We offered them here at church last week as part of our commitment to being a healthy community of faith. Influenza scares us, and it should. For the elderly and the physically vulnerable, influenza can be deadly. And so we inoculate ourselves against it to protect ourselves against its effects.

But there is a more widespread disease that affects all of us, and it should scare us even more. Call it affluenza. It’s a disease that creates ungodly unease in the soul and disrupts lives in every dimension. Signs of affluenza among us include record high personal bankruptcy rates and record low saving rates; addiction to shopping and spending; the attitude that more is better and better is more; brand-name clothing substituting for personal value; relationships with spouses, children and friends suffering out of exhaustion to keep up a lifestyle that is killing us; charitable volunteerism and church ministries being starved in time and funding because of other material priorities; and generally an inner emptiness that has no worldly answer. [Much of this sermon draws from the film Affluenza: Medical Alert! (Bullfrog Films, 1997.]

When John Kenneth Galbraith published his book The Affluent Society in the late 1950s, Americans had roughly half as much stuff as we have today and arguably twice as much happiness. Since that time, advertisers have deliberately tried to turn the virtue of contentment into a vice. Our economy thrives on discontent. We routinely allow Madison Avenue to get away with pitching material things to us with spiritual promises. One ad some years ago actually said it this way: Shopping is happiness. Just listen to that little voice in your head. You can buy happiness; just don’t pay retail for it. Right. And as much as we shake our heads in disgust in this sanctuary at that blatant audacity, when we leave this place we are more likely to adopt that philosophy of life than the kind pitched by Jesus that you hear here. You are more likely to make impulse purchases at the mall to satisfy emotional needs than to make impulse gifts at church to satisfy spiritual longings.

Medical doctor Richard Swenson considers this a soul sickness that affects our physical and social health. He’s something of an affluenza epidemiologist, analyzing and treating the epidemic that has us working harder, acquiring more, and enjoying life less. Affluenza, he says, is possession overload. You know you have a bad case of affluenza, or even a touch, when you have to confess: Everything I own owns me.

And isn’t this just what it seems afflicted the man who came to Jesus that day long ago? We get some clues to the diagnosis from the way Mark tells the story. Mark doesn’t actually call the man a rich young ruler, although we have so described him from reading Mark along with Matthew’s and Luke’s versions. But they all say he had “many possessions.” In those days, to have many possessions could only mean he was a landholder and employed lots of cheap labor that benefited him at their expense. There were no labor unions or government agencies that protected the rights of workers. Society favored rich over poor in part because they believed back then that wealth was a sure sign of God’s blessing and favor, while poverty betrayed God’s displeasure with the secret sins of the poor. (I am so glad we have moved away from that kind of theology; aren’t you?)

Another sign that affluenza had a hold on this man is seen in Jesus’ answer to the man’s question about what he could do to be sure he would be a player in the age to come after God had judged the hearts of everyone and rewarded the righteous with a place in that world. Jesus cited some of the Ten Commandments—murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and honoring father and mother. But buried among these he adds one that is not part of the traditional ten: Thou shalt not defraud. In other words, Jesus pinpoints part of the reason for this man’s anxiety about his eternal salvation. He knows in his heart that it isn’t just his considerable wealth that has gotten him into this state of panic; it is how he acquired the wealth.

Much of what passes these days for smart business sense is just plain old-fashioned fraud. When Enron went belly-up, it became clear that Enron was engaged in a conspiracy of otherwise good people who could not see the forest for the trees. Top executives, board directors, and financial institutions that profited by Enron’s success saw to it that any and every means be pursued to feed their ever-expanding standards of living. And at whose expense? At the expense of employees who banked on Enron stock for their retirement, shareholders who were given false information to keep them on the hook, and other businesses that extended credit to Enron, only to lose it all because they were lied to. When company executives make decisions that impact the lowest workers most and themselves least, this is unjust and ill-gotten gain. With corporate pay having risen at skyrocketing rates until the gap between the highest paid employees and lowest is a cruel joke, there can be no other conclusion.

The rich man had it all. He had even, in his own judgment, done everything the law of God required of him. And yet he had no inner peace. He was so empty that he threw himself at the feet of an itinerant preacher who said of himself, Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Go figure.

But this is the first step in the cure for affluenza: fall at the feet of Jesus. We do this because Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. As the one true human who ever lived, he understands humanity better than the rest of us who are searching for answers. But there is something else: he loves us in ways that only God knows how to. Look at what Mark says when the man finishes justifying himself for keeping all the commandments. Jesus, knowing how caught up in his need for things the man is, looks at him and loves him. I love that! Before he says anything about what the man needs to do to change, the man needs to know that he is loved.

We don’t any of us change unless and until we are freed from within from the chains that bind our hearts. If we think we need things in order to be people worth loving, we can never give them up. But if we are loved even when we are enslaved by things that keep us sad and empty, then we have a chance to change.

The unconditional love of God that Jesus shows the man does not end in sentimentality. It means to drive out all the things that deprive us of the joy we are intended to know. George MacDonald, a 19^th-century preacher, put it this way when he wrote: “All that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God, our God is a consuming fire.” [Quoted by John McCard in a sermon, Matthew and Luke Got It Wrong, for Day1 (Oct. 15, 2006).]

So Jesus tells the man who has everything, including an apparently impeccable spiritual resume, that he lacks one thing. Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor … then come follow me. Sounds like more than one thing, but it is really one thing.

First he tells the man to go. In the Greek text the command carries the sense of Get up and get on with it. It is the same command that is given to anyone Jesus intends to heal, whether a lame or blind man, for instance. What we are to see is that this man who seems to have it all together is really sick and needs to be healed.

Now we probably think Jesus is overdoing it, telling the man to sell everything he owns and give it to the poor. There goes Jesus, making a point by exaggerating again. But how many alcoholics get better by just cutting down? How many smokers by moving from two packs a day to one? Jesus knows what a hold this has on the man. He also knows that it isn’t enough to give a nice donation to the Temple to salve his conscience—although, may I say that if this helps your conscience any, we are more than willing to accept it. We are that kind of church, don’t you know?! No, on second thought, if it keeps you from curing your affluenza, forget it. We are more interested in your getting well than in receiving guilt money as payoffs.

The point is that the man has to make restitution to those he has defrauded. He has to see the connection between his wealth and the poverty of others. Which is what we all of us also have to learn about ourselves. Which is also why we urge you to get involved in local missions projects in poor communities or go on mission trips to the Valley or to the Gulf Coast or to Kenya or to anyplace where poverty grips people daily. We know that once you have lived and served people who have nothing, you will not be able so easily to indulge yourself without thinking of how your decisions affect them. And we know it will likely make you more generous, too. When you learn to give, it is a sign that you are being healed.

Two high school girls in the Northwest got fed up with the materialism of their peers in the late ’90s. They went on a trip to Mexico and were stunned to meet some of the happiest people they knew—who were also some of the poorest. They came home and wrote a play called Barbie, Get Real. They challenged their friends to challenge the culture and unload the lies that trap them.

Listen, Jesus is challenging you today. He knows what alone can cure you. And if you suffer from affluenza like most of America, don’t go away sad like the rich young ruler. Take your medicine. Let go of your possessions before it’s too late. Then come follow Jesus to life eternal.