Wild Things

Mark 10:35-45

There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very grieved because he had worked so hard for his money and wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him. An angel heard his plea and appeared to him.

"I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You can't take your money with you."
The man begged the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules. The man continued to pray that his wealth could follow him into heaven.

The angel reappeared and informed the man that God had decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathered his largest suitcase and filled it with pure gold bars and placed it beside his bed. Soon afterward, he died and showed up at the gates of heaven to greet St. Peter.

St. Peter, seeing the suitcase, said, "Hold on, you can't bring that in here!"
The man explained to St. Peter that he had permission and asked him to verify his story with the Lord. Sure enough, St. Peter checked it out, came back and said, "You're right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I'm supposed to check its contents before letting it through." St. Peter opened the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaimed, "You could bring anything you wanted, why did you choose to bring pavement?” (The streets of heaven are paved with…)

There was another man who had worked all of his life and had saved all of his money. He was a real miser when it came to his money. He loved money more than just about anything, and just before he died, he said to his wife, "Now listen, when I die, I want you to take all my money and place it in the casket with me. I wanna take my money to the afterlife."

So he got his wife to promise him with all her heart that when he died, she would put all the money in the casket with him.

Well, one day he died. He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black next to her closest friend. When they finished the ceremony, just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said "Wait just a minute!" she had a shoe box with her, she came over with the box and placed it in the casket.

Then the undertakers locked the casket down and rolled it away.

Her friend said, "I hope you weren't crazy enough to put all that money in the casket."

She said, "Yes, I promised. I'm a good Christian, I can't lie. I promised him that I was going to put that money in that casket with him."

"You mean to tell me you put every cent of his money in the casket with him?"

"I sure did, " said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account and I wrote him one big check. If he can cash it, he can spend it.”
Today, we hear a story about James and John. In it, we find out that just like the two men in these jokes-they want to go to heaven with gold bricks in their pockets and a big check in their wallets. “

Jesus sets them straight, or at least he tries to when he essentially tells them “It doesn’t work that way.”

Others have captured this wisdom over the years. Someone somewhere said “You can’t take it with you.” Another anonymous person put it into these words “Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.” Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are” understood this too. Here’s what he said about it: “There must be more to life than having everything.”
His book was recently made into a movie that was released this weekend. In short, the book is about a little boy who imagines a world of Wild Things and retreats there when his mother sends him to his room without supper.

When we’re not satisfied with what we have we run the risk of becoming like James and John. When this happens our imaginations run wild with impossible ideas of personal greatness. Ideas that include special seats at the right and left hand of God. Ideas of suitcases that are full of gold bricks. Ideas of big checks to stuff into our wallets.

As we find out in today’s lesson, these are ideas that God cannot bless. If we listen closely, we realize that we are fortunate that God does not bless these ideas.
I think God wants us to use our imaginations to come up with all kinds of wild things. I think those wild things might include working to make seats, not for ourselves, but so that other people will have a place to sit. A wild thing that God could bless might look less like a suitcase of gold bricks, and more like bricks that build foundations for places where people can gather to hear a story of hope for all, not just a few. I think God would like us to make some wild things happen by opening our wallets and checkbooks to find more imaginative uses for what we find there.

Maurice Sendak wrote the book, but I think God is the master of wild things. God created this wild world, but He wasn’t satisfied with it until people like you and I were living here. When we came up with all kinds of wild ideas that God couldn’t bless-God came up with the wildest one yet. Jesus was born. God was born into our world. He lived as we do. He saw what we see. He walked through the world and shared wild things like unconditional love, complete forgiveness, and real life with anyone who was willing to listen. In this wild world, Jesus does all kinds of wild things-but none was wilder than venturing into the wildest, most untamed place we could imagine-into death and back out again. In doing this one wild thing, Jesus frees us from all those misguided imaginings and frees us to be wild things just as he was.

When we’re not satisfied with what we have we become like James and John. We start thinking about ourselves more and more, and thinking about the people around us less and less. When this happens, we come up with all kinds of wild things-seats in heaven, suitcases full of gold, and big checks with our name on them.
I think God wants to let us in on a little secret: When we get to that place where God’s glory shines the brightest, that place where James and John wanted those two special seats on either side of Jesus-we won’t care about most of what we had in this life. It just won’t matter anymore.

But, all of those things we had in this life will be left here when we go. They will speak to what kind of people we were in this life. Will people tell stories about you and I? They certainly will. And you and I will write those stories today. It’s up to us. They can tell stories of the gold bricks we packed up in our suitcases and the checks that went un-cashed and unused. Or, they can tell stories about people with great imaginations who realized that there was more to life than having it all, and upon realizing that-did some really wild things to serve the people and the world that God loves. If we’re successful, one day people will point to the seats that we set, the places we build, and the things we imagine and say: “That’s where the wild things are.”