In today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, Jesus’ beloved follower comes to him with an uneasy sense that he has fallen short of his spiritual goal of inheriting eternal life. The passage has many names for that mysterious spiritual reward such as, the treasure in heaven, salvation, the kingdom of God and the 100 fold reward. The mystery deepens when Jesus confirms that the devoted follower is off target and that in order to achieve his goal he must do things that are frankly unthinkable to him. The follower and the disciples are all dismayed as the gap between worldly rewards and spiritual practice opens up before them. How can it be that being very good just may not win you salvation? Keeping the many names for the mystery in mind, today I will refer to salvation as peace, and I hope that together we will begin to unravel just a bit of its elusive nature.

Many of us are confused and pained to hear that while being good is important, ultimately, it may not result in inheriting eternal life. It seems unfair. But Jesus and many other sages seem to insist that if we seek eternal life, that peace that surpasses all understanding, then every day notions of fairness or rewards are not the entire point, they may even be far from the point, but if we can let go of those notions, then, we will be at peace.

I think of one of the young Olympic skiers who, when fielding questions from the press about how it was that she managed to win the gold, was asked how she managed the pressure… they asked, “Wasn’t it excruciating?” And she answered, “I knew that I had to have the best run of my life…but as far as I can tell, pressure is just a made up thing. I sometimes remind myself that I am not doing this for airtime on NBC or for the people watching at the bottom of the hill…I am doing this because I love to ski. I just want to ski.” As one who has always been wary of the enormous sacrifices made in the name of sport, at that moment I wanted to hug her sports psychologist for guiding this fierce competitor to look beyond the external rewards in favor of love of her sport. I know she was overjoyed to win the gold, but in that high risk world, if she truly believes what she said about loving to ski, in the long run her life may be saved by that spiritual perspective.

What this has to do with the story in the gospel of Mark is that the encounter between Jesus and his beloved and devoted follower presents a similar spiritual challenge. When he asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life…he wants to gain the spiritual equivalent of the Olympic gold medal, salvation. Just his follower’s need to ask tells Jesus that the man is far from the kingdom, so he tells him to keep the commandments… but at the same time, to let go of all of his investments… personal wealth, property and relationships…only then will he gain salvation, or peace. And by the way, he reminds him that he also should expect persecution. Yikes!!

What adds to the follower’s and the disciples’ confusion here is that in a way, they are right. It is true that being good is important… Jesus affirms this…but then adds that following commandments may still land a person far from the kingdom of God. This distance from the kingdom of God, or unfathomable peace, represents the difference between worldly ambition and spiritual practice. As usual, when a misunderstanding occurs in the Bible between the followers and Jesus is it because they are talking in worldly terms and Jesus is talking in spiritual ones.

So…they want to know, as I suspect most of us do, if not through the gateway of good deeds and living a good life, then how does one enter into that profound peace that Jesus calls the kingdom of God? I understand Jesus’ instructions to mean that after a certain point, salvation is not so much about deeds, as it is about taking on a new perspective. He is saying something like… “As hard as it is to believe sometimes, pressure is pretty much a made up thing.”

We can see how this particular perspective might be most challenging for those who have taken on much responsibility, and through responding well to that pressure, have experienced great personal success in the world. How difficult it could be for them to comprehend eternal life, or peace is not a reward…rather, that treasure in heaven is far from the economy of this world. It is peace that surpasses all understanding.

This spiritual mystery is an existential puzzle found at the center of all spiritual and religious life. How do we find eternal life if we are not goal or reward oriented? I believe that Jesus who reminds us to follow the commandments and the modern sage, poet Mary Oliver who tells us that we don’t have to be good, would agree that when it comes to finding profound peace, the answer to the question, “Do we have to be good or don’t we?” is yes and no…not really.

Jesus broke his followers’ and his disciples’ hearts (or at least bruised them) when he informed them that the usual rules do not apply here.

If you want to realize eternal life, peace that is unshakeable, then let go of your wealth…that is, all that you have accumulated in this life…anything you hold on to as yours. What you hold to as yours is exactly what you must leave behind in order to inherit the kingdom of God, eternal life. Jesus was pointing out the existential vice that we are in. We are called to love…above all things, to love…and we are called to let go of everything. Again, that gap between worldly ambition and spiritual practice rears its ugly head.

Last week, in a conversation with Steve Matthysse, a particularly philosophical congregant, I was considering how the words “let go” relate to peace when, as he often does, he said something that struck me. Steve quoted his movement instructor who had told him: “No alignment change comes about through force. It's always from letting go." Steve told me that when one "lets go" one finds that the body has, through its intrinsic structure, effortlessly acted to "hold" and "support" as needed. He said that the opposite of "letting go" could be said to be "forcing." Just as with the skier’s speech, I have to say, these athletic folks really have the spiritual thing going on!

When, in response I mentioned the expression, “grace in gravity” Steve threw out yet another gem that I felt expressed the human condition beautifully. He said, “You know… the other day I decided that I don’t like gravity.”

I laughed in recognition of the fact that, while Steve was speaking as a dancer and his wish to float, we all want to defy gravity in one way or another…and Jesus’ teaching to “let go” is such an appropriate response to the special suffering that is our resistance to the fundamental realities of life. I want to share a story that speaks to that kind of spiritual struggle and my own experience of the difference between holding on and letting go.

At 19 years old I was earnest and determined to undo all of the things in the world that I had understood to be wrong up to that point. As is true for many people that age, I was the center of my universe and my story of suffering and heroic striving was enormously consuming to me. As an adult now I can see that I actually had been through a great deal and at this point was looking for salvation through good deeds and academic study and success. Had I been a Christian, I might have been seeking something like the kingdom of God, or eternal life, but I didn’t have that language then. I operated in the worldly economy of right and wrong. Salvation…or finding peace… by sheer force of character was the best treasure or heaven that I could imagine…but my entire life was about to shift.

I didn’t know it then, but in the Buddhist tradition, one who enters into the spiritual life is aptly called a “Stream Enterer.” I was certainly positioning myself and posturing endlessly on the banks of spiritual life, but I wouldn’t say that I was exactly entering. Although I had always thought of myself as brave, I have since come to see that in some ways my investigation into justice, love, peace and goodness was an attempt to buy security… Perhaps like Jesus’ follower, I hoped by being good I would safely earn my way out of a very painful existence. I was tiptoeing around the spiritual stream out of deep respect for its power. I had seen many strong swimmers drown there.

Nothing short of a violent act was going to get me into that water…and so that is what had to happen. Afterward I experienced that peace that surpasses all understanding…and if not for the specific religious connotations, “being saved” would be good words to describe the feeling of it.

I went to college in Colorado to escape my home in the east. I suppose I needed a big space for big questions and feelings. While there, I tried to spend as much time as I could outside.

In the Rockies, during the spring thaw with the rivers at their highest, I went to the foothills with my friend Christopher Young to see them. In later years as I remembered this story, I realized the poetic significance of Christopher’s name which means “bearing Christ” and was used by early Christians as a metaphorical name, expressing that they carried Christ in their hearts. And his last name, Young…well it means young. To me, his part in this story brings to mind a young Christ...a pure heart.

Christopher was a big, strong, Texan athlete who was less burdened with questions than I. One measure of his good nature was that he put up with my gut twisting angst about the matters of existential truth and beauty and encouraged me to lighten up and play more. As was his style, when we came to the full river, he began to leap across it without even thinking twice. His feet landed securely on the school bus sized boulders sticking up above the wild torrent of water. Forgetting that I wasn’t a Texan lacrosse player I followed him…and as we reached the middle of the roaring foam, I leapt and as my foot slid down the rock, he grabbed my hand. My whole body and head were instantly pulled beneath the surface of the water and pressed against the stone by its weight. Christopher had a firm grip on my hand and we both held on tight, but within moments it was clear that due to the force of the river, he couldn’t pull me free.

From my perspective, there were no thoughts…the experience was pure sensation. Time between the rock and the raging water was what I think the Greek writers of the Bible mean when they use the word Kairos, or “God’s time” it was oddly outside of any of the usual frames of reference and therefore, eternal. I hung there by my arm, connected to Christopher, knowing that this water had me and it wasn’t going to let me go… for once fully aware that I was not in control and that my own actions would not save me.

Christopher’s head and mine were only feet away from each other, but they were in different worlds, his in the air and mine below the surface of swift moving water… it was an eternal moment. As our predicament became clear it was as if our hands reached an agreement and of their own accord, they let go. He later described the horror of watching my body disappear under another boulder in a gush of water.

Amazingly, I remember no fear…only something like curiosity or wonder…and then the letting go and a general sensation of having been placed in a massive washing machine. After some flips and rolls, I pulled my legs in under me and stood up, finding myself in an eddy of ankle deep water. I turned around to see that I had traveled about 100 yards from my friend who remained on the boulder, standing still in the midst of roaring water. His mouth and eyes gaped at the sight of me popping up. From his expression I thought he was seeing something horrible, but looking down at myself I saw only a small gouge in my shin and no other sign of injury. As I took in the ridiculous improbability of the moment and the grace I had just been granted, I was equally aware of each element of the scene…the surrounding mountains, the sparkling sky, Christopher on the rock and this gorgeous raging river…all of which seemed to bear witness to my wonder at being alive. Every detail came into vivid view and for a long time I laughed so hard I couldn’t speak. It was perhaps the purest joy and most heartfelt laughter I have known.

Meanwhile Christopher proceeded to throw up and go into shock. After he made it to the bank, we wrapped ourselves together in a blanket and waited for his shaking to subside before getting back in the car. It took days for him to recover. Christopher had been the one who remained in this world, knowing that he had to choose between holding on and allowing me to be beaten against a rock and drown, or letting go and watching me disappear. He had been certain that I would die either way. Seeing me standing up was miraculous to him. It was against all the laws of physics as he understood them that little old me could walk out of that overwhelming force of nature with only a scratch.

The event itself was momentous, but it also turned out to be a catalyst for what was to follow. I suddenly dropped out of my 19 year old angst into a profound state of wellbeing. I lived for several days in a state of grace, or what Buddhists call Samadhi, a form of peace that surpasses all understanding. I wept with happiness, my body was fully relaxed, my energy was high…even euphoric, ecstatic and I couldn’t recall what suffering had felt like. If you had put me on a scale, I would not have been surprised if I was weightless. There were no mental or emotional obstructions like struggling to forgive those who had hurt me or wishing to be forgiven by those I had hurt. In the realm of religious thought much is made of forgiveness, so the meaning of being entirely beyond that paradigm is very hard to convey, I am not sure I have ever been able to. But imagine the notion that people struggle under a sense of unworthiness or shame becoming absurd and laughable. Imagine being yanked from the worldly economy of earning or deserving salvation directly into knowing without a doubt that everyone and everything is already there, whole, complete and forgiven. I can’t explain it. I can only describe it. Maybe you have been there yourself. I hope you have.

That profound peace remains as my notion of salvation and eternal life. I have seen it in others…even in dire circumstances, like the young woman standing at the top of the one run that will demonstrate the full power of her life’s work as a skier…or like those who can smile and be grateful in the last moments of consciousness before taking their last breaths. Eternal life is that state of peace that allows letting go into death, releasing notions of control, becoming a stream enterer. Well…I didn’t quite enter the stream…I stumbled. But I am so grateful for that fall because it put to rest those notions of attaining personal goodness and earning peace that had been slowly binding me into a state of striving that may have resulted in an academic degree, but would not have brought me peace. After that watery scrubbing, I returned to a world where I could see that my notions of being good had been off the mark and I was so relieved.

I wonder some times if this is the state of peace that Jesus lived in for much of his life. I know that he had moments of doubt when he resisted gravity and feared pain, death and failure…but he somehow managed to let go and return to peace each time…even in death. His disturbing lesson in Mark may have been his way of trying to release his follower into the stream...but the river wasn’t pulling hard enough and his follower couldn’t let go, instead he walked away dismayed. Maybe the world had too strong a hold on this very good and wealthy man, and this is why Jesus points out that the rich have such a hard time entering into the kingdom of God. Those of us who have been rewarded in this world will find it hardest to move beyond our sense of having earned salvation and that fear of letting go of all of those things that we think of as OURS. But when Jesus says that the reward for letting go will be 100 fold, I think he means that our good deeds, belongings, family and life will no longer be burdens, responsibilities and achievements, but they will be recognized as gifts, just as after losing control of my life I was able to receive the mountains, a loyal friend and the sparkling, raging stream. Yes persecution is to be expected, because unfortunately, much of the world manages to hold on and to resist gravity up until the bitter end...and those who let go and challenge their view of control are suspect. But Jesus knew ever present peace…the kind that is not to be attained…nor understood, but that is just there, waiting to be realized.

In Mark Jesus reminds us that he is not good. You don’t have to be good. But remember the teachings of the spiritual athletes: pressure is a made up thing, distribute your wealth to the poor and let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…. Let go, let go, let go…and be at peace.