A reading from the holy gospel, the good news according to Saint Mark. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man came up running to him, knelt down before Jesus, and asked, good teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life? Our lord replied, why do you call me good? No one is good but god alone. You know the commandments.
You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud.
Honor your father and your mother. The man replied, teacher, I have kept all of these since my childhood. Then Jesus looked at him with love and said, there is one thing more you must do. Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor. You will then have treasure in heaven.
And after that, come follow me. At these words, the man's face fell. He went away sad, for he had many, many possessions, and they possessed him. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of god. The disciples could only marvel at these words.
So Jesus repeated what he had said. My sons, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god. The disciples were completely overwhelmed at this and exclaimed to one another, then if this is true, who can be saved? Jesus fixed his gaze on them and said, for man, it is impossible, but not for god.
With god, all things are possible. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This gospel has its difficulties, and I'm not this morning going to try to deal with them.
The only thing I would like to point out to you is this. With all the clamor in the world, and especially in The USA, about improving living conditions, civil rights, just distribution of property, that everybody should have a higher standard of living. And all of these and notice how all of this is man centered. Not that it's wrong, remember. These things are all right.
As long, you see, as something comes in here beyond man. And this is the rub. If our Lord is serious today, riches is one of the things we shouldn't want. And if anyone needs help, if this text is true, it's the rich people who need help. Now, I don't know whether there's much connection between this reading this morning and what I have in mind, a thought that came out of the latest issue of Time Magazine, and it's in regard to a man you know well, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Last week, in London's Guildhall, he received the Templeton Foundation Prize for progress in religion. So upon accepting this prize, which was a 140 some thousand dollars, Solzhenitsyn had had this among in his speech. He said this, and I'm quoting him directly, and he was speaking English. He said, the entire twentieth century is being sucked into the vortex of atheism and self destruction. We can only reach with determination for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self confidently pushed away.
There is nothing else to cling to in the landside. He knows whereof he speaks. He knows whereof he speaks. Now if there's anything that impresses me today about people and a good bit of talk that we have about religion is how seldom the word God comes into it. I have read whole articles in magazines put out by religious communities.
The word God didn't appear once, not once. As I have said many times, one of the greatest enemies to religion is religion. In many instances, we can forget God. And what meaning has religion if God isn't in it? Now, you see, if there's one thing you cannot say about the ancient world, that is the Greek world or the Roman world.
And then if you get into the primitive peoples of Africa and South America and Central America, there's one thing you cannot say about these peoples, is that they were atheists. That's one thing you cannot say about the pagans. Somehow we use the word pagan as an antonym to being a believer in God. That's ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd.
The pagans were overwhelmed with their belief in a supreme being or supreme beings. And remember, in all in all that I have any firsthand knowledge of, and that's chiefly the Greek and the Latins, there was a supreme being. Back of it all. So there's one thing that these people were not, and that is atheists. I I've mentioned here how on one of my trips to Rome, I was taking a rubberneck tour of the city.
And the man's right hand would go out and say, there's a statue to this god or goddess. Before he's the echo of his voice had died, he was pointing all out here. Here's a fountain dedicated to this god or this goddess. So after a little bit of this, he turned around to us and said, you know, he said, those pagans seem to have been surrounded with god. They were.
They were. You don't have to read the Iliad and the Odyssey to know that. That that remember, that was ancient history in the time of Plato. But look at Plato. And look at the Romans.
They took it all practically all over from the Greeks. And you see, even in the time of Augustine, March to 04/30, remember then, you still had a strong a strong, for various reasons, a strong tie with ancient paganism. But pagan is pagans were not atheists. They were surrounded with divinity. They saw gods and goddesses every place.
You see, in so many instances, all we're seeing today is man. We are anthropocentric. And the first commandment is not to love my neighbor. The first commandment is to love God. Now I say this for that I'm talking to myself too.
We've got to bring God into our daily lives. Do we ever think of the presence of God? That wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, however down in the dumps I am, however depressed I am, that word's coming into my vocabulary so often every you're reading it all the time today it seems. Depression, depression, suicide, depression. Do I think enough of my contact with almighty God that I can't escape him.
It isn't a fact of my finding god. He's there. He's after me. Francis Thompson's hound of heaven. He's pursuing me.
I can't escape him. Oh, yes. But I close him out. Remember, with your one little old finger, you can close out the sun anytime you want to. But, of course, the sun is still there, isn't it?
The only thing is it's not there for you. Dostoevsky, in his brothers Karamazov, he says and remember, he's living in a time when socialism was was just beginning and was all a fire in in France and in and in Russia. Remember, there's a great deal going on in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and he was against socialism. Why would he said all socialism. Why did he say that?
Because he said it took God out of the picture and focused on man, and made this world the end of his living. And that's the essence of Marxism. That's absolutely the essence of Marxism, that you can create a a paradise in this life. So get going and do it. Suffer the pains.
It's worth it, he says. And so I quote this to this man knows what he's talking about. He's not a priest speaking from a pulpit. Here, he was in London speaking in the guild hall. And he got he's get he got a prize given for an outstanding person who is a champion of religion.
And so let us take this to heart in our own lives. We're Christians. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe in God. Let's make that an instant existential reality in our daily living, Our daily living today.
The name of the father, of the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.