Our rich young man from chapter 19, it seems, is serving his wealth. We’re told “he had many possessions” and his emotional response to parting with them reveals a heart that finds it’s worth in material things.

It might be easy to distance ourselves from a character like this, but a reality check reminds us that we are among the most affluent people in the world. We live in a society shaped around consumer culture and I know that everyone reading this will have “many possessions”.

Are we, then, to go and sell all we have and give that money to the poor?

This isn’t to condemn a wider reach of people as ‘sinners’, but to show the universality of a sinful heart. Not everyone will have committed certain acts, but everyone will have experienced feelings of anger, or lust, or jealousy. We are all in need of the loving mercy offered by God.

And we see that same process of Jesus directing us inwards here. He cleverly uses the picture of consumption to highlight the idea of being unclean or impure, and flips it around to reveal new depths.