Redeeming

 

Notes on Mark 10.17-31

The biographer Mark records the account of a man running up to Jesus as he was going on his Way (this is a play on words for journey and way of life), falling on his knees and imploring to apprentice to this Master in living life with a sense of permanence.

Jesus asks the man some questions, to gain a sense of what he has already learnt and put into practice. Seeing the man’s heart for others, and wanting the best for him too, Jesus instructs the man to exchange all he holds, give the money to the poor, and join Jesus as his apprentice. The man is shocked and departed with a sense of bereavement at an opportunity he felt unable to take hold of, because he held the tenancy of many estates.

According to the Torah, the land belonged to God. God was the owner, who distributed the land as he saw fit. The people of Israel were tenants in possession of the land, each allocated an ancestral portion, according to their tribe.

If poverty forced you, it was possible to sell your tenancy to another member of your tribe. You were not selling the land, which belonged to God, but your tenancy rights, for a period of time. Essentially you were leasing out the use of the land.

Every fifty years, at the year of jubilee, tenant possession returned to the original tenant or, if they had died, to their heir. The fellow tribesman who had benefitted from the land received no payment. However, the right of redemption meant that, if you were forced to sell your tenancy, but then your circumstances improved, you had the right to redeem it back at any time before the year of jubilee. In such circumstances you paid your fellow tribesman the equivalent of the rent for the years still left on the lease (so, up to fifty years).

Your nearest relative also had the right to redeem the tenancy you had sold, at any time. In such circumstances, they took on the administration of the land, until the year of jubilee.

The man who sought to be an apprentice of Jesus held many estates. In other words, he had bought the tenancy rights of several members of his tribe, who had fallen into poverty. This was a way, provided by law, for him to care for the poor. At some point, he would have to surrender the tenancies he held (though at this point in their history, the people were not counting strict fifty-year cycles).

Jesus instructs him to allow the nearest relatives, the kinsman redeemers, to buy back the tenancies he held. This would release a significant sum of money (especially where there were many years left on the lease) and Jesus instructs him to give that money to those most destitute.

The man has already acted to support those who have fallen into poverty, but Jesus now asks him to divest of what he holds, to return simply to his own ancestral portion, allocated to his family by God. For then, he will have a heavenly storehouse, God’s storehouse.

It is a radical act of trust, that God is good and will provide.

And the man is unable to take that step.

But the encounter Mark records reveals Jesus to be the one offering himself as Redeemer, to take on the tenancy that the man finds himself unable to administer, living a life with a sense of permanence as opposed to a fear of loss or failure.

When life is overwhelming, as it sometimes is, and as my children’s generation seems to find it more often than not, Jesus still holds out the invitation.