“Another idol has replaced me…a golden one!”
Ebenezer Scrooge, a young man making his way in the world, was late to meet his betrothed Belle. Ebenezer made his excuses: there were the demands of his business, and his desire to build a solid financial foundation for their future. Belle said their betrothal contract was an old one. Would Ebenezer seek her out now, a poor woman without a dowry?
Ebenezer paused and said, “You think I would not, then?” And with that safe and terrible answer, Belle released him from his obligation. Ebenezer continued for decades a lonely man, wealthy but wretched – until the morning of his reclamation in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
Belle loved Ebenezer, and Ebenezer loved Belle, but he replaced her with his many possessions. Belle moved on. Ebenezer sank under the weight of the links and lockboxes he began to forge, link by link, yard by yard – a ponderous chain, albeit invisible, old Marley, his dead business partner said, when he visited sad Ebenezer one Christmas Eve.
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“Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” What a curious detail Saint Mark provides in this exchange between the rich man and the Good Teacher. It may be the only time Jesus – perfect love incarnate – is said to have loved a particular person. Jesus invited the object of his love to set aside his wealth and to follow him. Jesus’ desire for this wealthy, would-be disciple was deep – how could Jesus’ desire for him be anything less?
The rich man loved Jesus and desired to follow, but, like Ebenezer, he chose another life. The rich man went away grieving – another curious detail Saint Mark gives us – knowing that grief is in direct proportion to love. Oh, how we ache when the one we desire is gone.
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Jesus loves us. His desire for us runs deep. Evidence for this deep desire is his gift of the very sacrament of his body and blood that we’ll soon receive from this altar. At the first Eucharist Jesus told his disciples, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk. 22:15).
Jesus’ eager desire for that moment with his beloved friends was from before time began. God’s plan all along, the Franciscans remind us, is to become one of us in Jesus and, in the Paschal Mystery of his passion, death, and resurrection, to leave us – you and me – with the repeatable feast of the Eucharist every time we gather in his name.
Jesus’ eager desire is for this moment, right now, with us, his beloved friends. Because he loves us and desires us, he makes himself known to us in the breaking open of the scriptures and in the breaking apart of the bread.
Were not our hearts burning within us, the Emmaus-bound disciples said, when he opened the scriptures to us? Did we not see him, they said, when he sat at the table with us and broke bread?
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We have many possessions, you and I. Our time – how we bank it and how we spend it – might be what we hold dearest. Jesus waits for us while we run late and make our excuses. The demands of our day often are important. And so how hard it is for us who have such wealth to follow Jesus, to enter the kingdom of God, to find him in word and sacrament, and to see him in our fellow worshippers and in the poor.
“Then who can be saved?” the disciples ask. It is impossible for us, but possible for God. The One who loves and desires you above all else waits for you. Come, find the Possible One here, and receive back a hundredfold.
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
21 Pentecost B, Proper 23 – October 13, 2024
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“The Possible-One Desires You”
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