Revd Matt Allen || 26 November 2025
It is a skill to be able to ask excellent questions. Whether in journalism, job interviews, dates, community gatherings, or quizzes. If it is a great question, then it will keep you thinking long after you have answered it. In my ongoing thinking about great questions, as second-year LLM students already know, I have been raving about a great pub quiz round I found online titled “Is it a motorway service station or a type of cheese?” (Ask me if you want know more!)
The central chapters of Mark’s gospel are like the hinge of the gospel where it turns as Jesus begin to prepare his disciples for what he will undergo in Jerusalem. In the early chapters, one of the themes which emerges is that Jesus is trying to teach his disciples and invest in them. However, they seem slow to understand and Jesus questions their lack of insight by asking a series of questions of them (8.17-19). Next, there is an interesting healing in chapter 8. A man’s sight is restored in stages, indicating a move from partial sight to fuller sight. In chapters 9-10, Jesus is the only one who sees things clearly. The disciples continue to display their confusion.
At the point when Jesus starts out for Jerusalem, he encounters a man with a question. This man runs up to him and kneels at his feet, asking, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Here, we might think, is a person with a great question. He asks about ‘the life of the age to come’, and he knows that Jesus is the right person to ask. Mark even tells us that he ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees before him. We later discover he is rich but despite his status he is willing to be humble.
So how does Jesus react? Like he does so often Jesus asks a question. In this instance the man asks: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit the life of the age to come? Jesus responds by asking: Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
Jesus answers the man’s question by directing him to the Ten Commandments. Jesus lists some of them. This is familiar territory for this man. He tells Jesus, “I have been keeping these commandments from my youth.” Jesus looks at him and loves him.
I wonder what Jesus thought as he looked at this guy. I believe that Jesus sees this that what will move him towards the life of the age to come’ is to discover that there is not really anything he can do to inherit eternal life without change from the inside.
This man wants a list to tick for God.
But Jesus wants his heart to beat for God.
The answer Jesus gives fundamentally challenging the man’s values, priorities and commitment. The one thing he lacks is to go, sell his possessions, give to the poor and to follow him, Jesus. At this point we might notice that all of the commandments related to having God at the centre of one’s life were missing on Jesus’s list. These have been swapped for doing whatever was necessary to follow Jesus. Jesus is claiming that the one thing lacking is the placing of himself, Jesus, at the centre, and as more important than the man’s possessions and wealth. And the man walks away sad. This was a seemingly well-intentioned man with what seemed like a good question, who walks away from Jesus disappointed.
In the interaction that follows Jesus says to his disciples that it is hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. In all of this, we see the confusion of the Jesus’s followers; they don’t get it. They ask: Who in the world can be saved? They end up focussing on the sacrifices they have made. Jesus gives them some reassurance that those who make sacrifices to follow him will see that returned in God’s Kingdom. But the situation is not resolved. The disciples are left confused and astonished and no doubt with many questions.
Lots of Questions
To be honest there’s lots in this reading that leaves me with questions. I find myself thinking about the many ways I have heard it preached or taught over the years. Perhaps it is about radical discipleship – we need to make sacrifices to follow Jesus. Perhaps it highlights how wealth can be a barrier for faith when money or security becomes an idol that we worship more than God. I do think it important to remember how unhelpful it can be, especially for those who are vulnerable, to hear a message that seems to say, “God will pay you back in eternity”. Religion has exploited people with big promises of heaven or eternity that don’t take seriously enough God’s justice being seen on earth as in heaven.
As I read Mark’s gospel, what has been emerging as Mark tells the story is that to be a disciple of Jesus is to be a follower of Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus means that he takes the lead. Jesus is the one who sees what is happening on a different level. Jesus knows what is possible with God and that in the reign of God it may look completely different to what we assume – the last first, the first last.
So, I wonder if what it means to follow his lead is to look beyond the questions I have, the questions the disciples have, and the question this man brought. Perhaps the best Jesus is the one Jesus asked:
“Why do you call me good?”
What is Jesus asking of us?
In Emmanuel, we are all on a journey of formation. This work ultimately belongs to Jesus. It is enabled and equipped by the Holy Spirit. It is all about Jesus, the only one who sees things as they really are. In that encounter with the man, I find myself struck by how Jesus knows our level of understanding and the state of our hearts and still he looks on us and loves us.
But I also note that Jesus, deal less in answers I want, and more in questions I need. Jesus asks the crucial question, to keep us moving from sight to insight, stage by stage. It’s a heart-examining question an eye-opening question, a priority-reordering question
a life-transforming question, when Jesus asks: Why do you call me good?
Whether in our placement contexts, classroom learning, or engagement in the ministerial formation programme it help to spend some time, as we did on the supervisors’ day, considering what Jesus is asking of us.
Matt Allen
