GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 10:17
What Must I Do?
A colleague told me about a college senior who was dating a fellow senior and wanted to marry her. He planned a memorable moment to “pop the question” at the Junior-Senior Banquet. At the right moment, he knelt before the woman of his dreams and asked, “Will you marry me?” There was an expectant hush among the banquet guests, and then they heard her say, “No.”
I remembered that story as I studied Mark’s account of another young man: “And as he was going out on the way, a man, having run and knelt before him, asked him, ‘Good teacher, what should I do in order that I may inherit eternal life?’” (Mark 10:17) Matthew noted that the supplicant was young (Matthew 19:22), and Luke described him as a ruler (Luke 18:18). Mark alone observed that he ran toward Jesus and knelt before him.
By combining these details, we shift from the banquet scene to see a young, privileged, wealthy man with a familial responsibility within a synagogue. This young man, having apparently heard about Jesus and his teachings, carried a nagging question: What must he do to inherit eternal life? Although he came to the right source, there were flaws in his question—flaws that Jesus would soon reveal, just as the young woman revealed flaws in her suitor’s proposal: wrong time, wrong place, wrong question.
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