"The Imagination of Their Hearts"

The Sadducees were the keepers of Judah-ism. They were its rulers, its guardians, its enforcers. But, Jesus says, even its legitimate teachings fall short of the Kingdom of Heaven. They will not lead a man or woman into the upward path of theosis. They will not lead to God. They are little more than a rational checklist:

There's no spiritual father in Orthodoxy today who would say this is an examination of conscience.

May I something to one side of this thread? I realize that I have completely missed the meaning of this passage in previous years. As a Roman Catholic professor of theology, I been too conscious of the Roman Church attempting to be rid of the Ten Commandment, and this dominated my reading of this Gospel. You see, my mentor was one of several notable teachers asked to to compile The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). He told me of how this little commission was flooded with modi (requests for modifications to their draft), especially from bishop is the West, to bitterly oppose inclusion of the Ten Commandments in the Catechism.. I was so overjoyed to point to the Gospel, where the Son of God approves them (which He most certainly does), that this has eclipsed a more balanced reading of the passage. I have committed the grave error of importing the issues of the twentieth and twenty-first century into first-century Judah. This error is called anachronism. The issues that greatly matter to me were unknown to thought-world of the first-century Levant.

In the context of the time, Jesus holds up these commandments, and asks (rhetorically) if they will enable a man to inherit eternal life.

If I were to ask to today, would not murdering, not committing robbery, not committing adultery, and respecting your parents were enough to bring you into the Kingdom of Heaven, what would you say? Isn't this the bare minimum of decency? Actually, it is less than the bare minimum.

The reason Jesus rehearses this list, the reason He surfaces it to consciousness, is to show that it is lacking. "You lack one thing" (Lu 18:22). And what is that thing. It lacks real relationship with God.

What you are truly a child of the Most Holy Theotokos, praying to her throughout the day, speaking to her, you go far beyond the Ten Commandments in your striving after holiness. You guard even your thoughts. You fast. You pray.

He lacks intimacy with God. And this is what Jesus offers in His phrase, "Follow me." In following Him, in selling everything that we have, we demonstrate that we love God. With this invitation, the Master has invited the άρχων into authentic religious life, which always means, then and now, the stripping away of worldly life and baring yourself to God. And this the árchon cannot accept. He chooses Mammon instead of God. He richly adorns himself with layers and layers of the world. He is far from baring himself. After all, he oversees a civil religion. It is about a well-ordered society. but it will not lead to the Kingdom of God.

As the άρχων walks away, Jesus comments, drawing on the sayings of the Hebrew elders (we have these sayings today because they were collected in the Babylonian Talmud):

Dreams, Jesus says, are not pure fantasy. They do not display outlandish things, such as a palm tree made of gold or an elephant (or camel) passing through the eye of a needle. But the heart of man (which was believed to be the seat of the imagination) works out man's striving thoughts in his dreams. Indeed, what the rich árchon represents is a whole thought-world worked out by the Sadducees — one in which conversion of life is not included. There's nothing in the Ten Commandments that includes the transformation of your mind after the pattern of Jesus.

The general problem, Jesus suggests, is that we just don't see ourselves as we really are, but instead live "in our heads." That is, we take refuge in our vain imaginings. Examples in our own time abound. The obese woman looks in the mirror and does not see her corpulence proven by the bikinis she wears at the beach. The lecherous man does not think people can see his thoughts proven by the fact of his chronic leering at women in public. The greedy man marks up his miserly behavior to prudence. He thinks that he is not seen as a miser. And this rich árchon sees himself as a faithful man of God. In the end, only God sees our true selves. Only God looks upon us with brilliant clarity, missing nothing.

This is the theme of Chapter Eighteen in Luke, that we live in a "dream world." But at the Last Judgment, all the lights will shine on us.

Hasn't this been a primary theme of St. Luke's Gospel from its beginning? Adherents to Judah-ism live in a dream world. They imagine that they are worshiping God in their Persian Temple, but they are not. And the Son of God, the Final Judge, has come to awaken them from this nightmare of nightmares: permanent separation from God. In this sense the entire Gospel of Luke is bathed in the light of the Eschaton.

The theme is plainly announced in Chapter One. The Archangel Gabriel shatters the delusions of Zacharias, a priest that has denied the existence of angels, and when this Temple priest protests, Gabriel strikes him dumb. This is no dream. This is no illusion. His sensory motor system governing speech has left him in a state of aphasia.

Next, Mary discloses God's nature:

Do you see the pattern? Those who can afford to live in a dream world, kings and the rich and the like, God has no heart for. But those who are stripped down, who are bared before God, who have nothing, these are the ones whom God sees and hears.

People who have read the Magnificat interpret it as proof that God will correct of inequities on earth. But this would be our fantasy. God is interested in this world only insofar as it leads us to His Kingdom. Remember, Jesus has said, "I do not pray for the world, but only those gathered in the Kingdom" (Jn 17:9).

You see, God lives outside of time. He sees the fulfillment of our timeline. He sees everything in the light of the Eschaton. And in that light our vain imaginings instantly vanish. Our frames of reference, on which we have relied for self-justification; our possessions, our furnishings, our plastic surgeries which have propped up our false identities; our class status and worldly importance .... all gone, vanished in an instant.

What will remain will be only ourselves shown in the light of unsparing truth. Excuses? They're all gone. It turns out, God does not have compassion on our vanities. It is only when we have been completely stripped and bared that His compassion begins. And this helps to explain His special heart for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. They have been stripped down, and their hearts are tender toward Him.

I was a chaplain in an oncology ward. I have literally seen people stripped of even their flesh. Believe me, when we are stripped down to our souls, our hearts become very tender. We finally have come on to God's wavelength. And God has compassion on us in these hours of searching.

Let us quickly get our bearings in Chapter Eighteen. We begin with the corrupt judge who neither fears God nor his neighbor. He imagines that his high office and authority will cover his sins.

Next, we encounter the proud Pharisee. He attempts to eclipse his shortcomings with the failings of his neighbors (a very common strategy):

I suppose this is a classic of any age. We look at the worst around us, and account ourselves to be the very best. But in turns out, God does not grade on a curve. We either are virtuous, or we are not. By contrast, the penitent tax collector suddenly sees himself as he really is .... and is shattered by the vision and profoundly humbled.

As with the two thieves Gestas and Dismas, another pair contrasting pridefulness and humility, we see that two responses are possible in the light of the Eschaton. Their names mean "the day is done." Gestas' name means "the deeds we have done"; Dismas' name means "sunset." Their lives are being reviewed.

The impenitent thief, Gestas, is humiliated as his life is plainly seen for what it is, and his response is rage and insolence. Have you never seen a teenage boys whose sins are exposed? He is likely to scream at his parents, "Leave me alone!"

By contrast, Dismas, experiencing the very same thing, responds with regret and is filled with humility as he sees what he has done with his life.

Doesn't this cover the waterfront when we have been found out: insolence to the bitter end or regret leading to humility? Dismas says,

Or as the penitent tax collector says (as we pray many times a day):,

God watches for this all-important breakthrough. The Prodigal Son's vain dreams of a gilded life have been shattered. He lives in his head no more. He is apt to die of exposure. He fights off hogs for kernels of grain in the mud. Oh yes, his dream world has been shown for what it is. And God watches. Like the Father at a roadside, God watches for what he will do next. God is not sympathetic to our fantasies, He is not sympathetic to our dream world .... but quite the opposite. He wants to see that world, that dross, burned off that the gold beneath might be revealed.

Words of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

Here, and only here, real life can begin.

Jesus' disciples are troubled at the Master's comment,

So He adds,

In this He returns to the sayings of the elders (this saying was preserved by being collected in the Jerusalem Talmud, later turning up in a Midrash on the Song of Songs):

The needle's eye, which is needful, is the little chink in our armor of ego that lets divine light in. Just a little chink.

I have been working lately in a crawlspace, lying on my back in the dark (midst the spiders and other denizens of the dark), and there was a little hole above. I called to my friend Heamasi who was above. He has a flashlight. And just that flashlight coming near caused light to flood that crawlspace around me.

Just a little chink and through that we are flooded with divine light — first revealing all, humiliating us, but then relief, the relief of a smothering longtime burden being lifted, for our egotism, with all its high maintenance, finally has fallen away.

Like the wealthy ruler, we may clutch at our material attainments and possessions but the time is coming and now is, Jesus says, when only our spiritual lives will matter (Jn 4:23-24). Only our spiritual lives will endure

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.