McKay Coppins is a man of deep faith and a staff writer
at The Atlantic. He has four kids, a mortgage, a minivan,
and an unassuming demeanor. Last year, his editors
staked him ten thousand dollars to bet on football
games. They called it a “journalistic exercise.” Coppins
got permission from his bishop, and then he set out on
this experiment. He studied the lines. He researched all
the betting sites. A few months later, he had lost it all.
He describes the experience in a piece titled “Sucker:
My Year as a Degenerate Gambler.” But if you read the
piece, you learn the money isn’t the point. The point
is what he found out about himself on the way down.
The way the apps colonized his attention. The way his
ten-year-old son found him huddled in the kitchen
pantry, making prop bets on his phone, and announced
to the whole family, “Dad is hiding again.” The time his
wife glanced down the pew one Sunday morning just
as he was sneaking a quick peek at DraftKings and
stage-whispered, “You are addicted.” The time he sat in
the church parking lot watching a Kansas City Chiefs
game on his phone during his daughter’s Christmas
choir concert.
Coppins’ conclusion is striking. He writes, “I always told
people that I didn’t have an addictive personality. Now
I had to consider a different possibility: maybe I had
simply constructed a life with strong enough guardrails
that I’d never had to test the premise.” The essay left
me with an unsettling question. What is left when the
scaffolding comes crashing down and there’s nowhere
left to hide?
That’s where Mark takes us this morning. He was a
good man, a faithful man—Mark insists on this. A man
who had grown up in the faith, who had kept all of the
commandments of his tradition since his childhood.
What’s more, he comes running to Jesus. In all the
gospels, he is the only person who does that. He runs
to meet Jesus on the road. You don’t run like that unless
you’re looking for something you know is missing.
And so, he asks, “What must I do to have life? To have
life that is really life? Life that is more than this. I’ve done
everything that has been asked of me. What must I do to
have life?”
And Mark reports that Jesus looked at him and loved
him. He’s the only person who receives that look from
Jesus. It is the love that sees the faithful heart and the
hidden wound at the same time. Looking at him, he
loved him and speaks a truth that leaves the young man
nowhere to hide: Sell everything. Give it to them—not
give it away, not give it to a vague charity—but give it to
the poor, to the ones who have nothing. And then you
can come and follow me.
And the man’s face fell to the ground. He walked away
not in anger, but in sorrow. He could not do it. He was
possessed by his possessions. Without them, who
would he be? He could not imagine a life apart from his
wealth. The question this encounter asks each of us is
not how much do you have, but what has you?
The man who sprinted to meet Jesus now staggers
away. Jesus, who welcomed him with love, watches him
go. He turns to his disciples. “It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to
enter the kingdom of God.”
The disciples are astounded. They are astonished. They
ask, “Then who can be saved?” I find that question
fascinating. The assumption behind it is that if not the
wealthy, if not the ones who can buy comfort and power
and the best of everything else, then who can achieve
God’s kingdom? Who can afford the admission ticket?
The disciples’ question reveals their assumption. If this
man cannot be saved, who can? I think Jesus loved
Rev. Christopher A. Henry
Senior Pastor
Acts 4:32-35, Mark 10:17-31 May 10, 2026
that question because he can turn it on its head. You
don’t earn God’s love. You receive it as a gift. God’s
kingdom is not for sale. You don’t achieve entry. You
can’t buy a ticket to the kingdom of God. But you must
be transformed if you are to enter it. You must open
your hands.
This week and next we’re peering into the life of the
earliest Christians. We sometimes mistake them for
ancient saints living always in the glow of resurrection
light. But the truth is, they were like us. They were
flawed. They were frightened. They were ordinary
people. They had rent to pay and children to raise and
neighbors around them who had less than they had,
some who had nothing.
The resurrection did not raise these ordinary, flawed
people out of reality. It sent them straight back into it.
Jesus’ final words before he leaves them are to send
them back into the city, where they will encounter the
real world of need and opportunity. The resurrection
does not raise them out of this reality. But it had
shattered the logic they had lived by. The resurrection
transformed them. They simply stopped believing in a
society built on scarcity.
So, what did they do? They sold their land—actual
land with deeds and titles and inheritance and the
status that comes with ownership—and they brought
the money and laid it down at the apostles’ feet. It
was distributed not as any had earned or deserved or
contributed, but as any had need. This was not charity.
Charity by itself leaves the system intact and lets us
feel generous within it. But what Acts describes is
something far wilder. They used their money to tear
down what money often builds: distance and comfort
and walls between our lives and their lives.
Why did they do it? Are you ready? Easter. Because
death had been defeated, they could stop building their
lives on fear. If the tomb was really empty, then nothing
about them could be the same. The way of Jesus really
was the way to life that is life. And so, they opened
their hands.
My professor Stanley Hauerwas has spent his entire
teaching career saying this one thing: the church exists
to show the world another way—to bear witness to the
kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this age.
The temptation is always to settle for less. To become
useful on empire’s terms. To become chaplains to the
comfortable who already have enough. But Stanley
insists that the world is watching, desperate for a
witness to a deeper truth. The world is dying for a
people who don’t simply reflect the ethos of the era.
The world is watching and waiting for those who refuse
to bow to idols of market or nation or political tribe or
prevailing trend.
I find it much easier to admire the early church than I
do to follow them. I envy their faith, and often I resist
it. Their life together makes my life look calculated and
careful and controlled by comparison. Our family tries to
give generously as a practice of our faith. We want our
two sons to learn the value of giving and the importance
of the spiritual practice of giving away what you have.
And then there are these moments when I walk through
our neighborhood and see a new patio going in, or
hear about a trip someone is taking, and I catch myself
running the numbers in my head.
If we 0kept more of what we earned, what’s ours, what
we deserve, we could do that. And suddenly, our patio
starts to look small. Our giving starts to look optional.
You’ve worked so hard. You deserve this. You’ve earned
this. And because those voices always sound so
reasonable, you almost never notice that it has you.
Friends, the man who meets Jesus on the road is no
villain. Jesus saw his faithful heart, his earnest desire to
follow. But when his moment of transformation came, he
missed it. Why? For he had many possessions.
I was on a plane Friday afternoon coming back from
Atlanta. It was a small jet. Tight quarters. The man next
to me opened his laptop, which also took up part of my
lap. The man spent the entire flight refreshing the Dow
Jones average. I’m not kidding. For over an hour, he
watched that number. Checking. Refreshing. Running
his hands through his hair. I looked at the man, and
I could see why Jesus would love him. He was not a
villain, but he was possessed by the need to know just
how much he had.
I thought of the many faithful souls I’ve had the privilege
of being with in hospice care, in those tender days when
THE PLACE OF POSSESSIONS
everything unnecessary falls away and all that remains
is only what was always true. Not once—not a single
time—have I heard a dying person wish they had held
on tighter. Not once in all my years have I heard anyone
mention the patio or the bank balance or the business
they built. They always talk about the people they
love. They always talk about the moments they were
present for. They always talk about the faith that gives
them hope. And so, I must conclude that the things
that endure are not the things we earn but the ones we
never could.
I know many people, good people, people Jesus would
just love, who are tethered to a life that no longer fits
them. Perhaps it’s a profession that pays the bills but
has slowly hollowed them out from the inside. Or maybe
it’s a role constructed over so many years that stepping
out of the role feels like disappearing altogether. Or
a political allegiance that has started to feel less like
conviction and more like a cage. They hear something
calling them toward a life that would feed their soul and
serve God’s world. They hear someone calling them to
a life of beauty, a life of meaning, a life of genuine use, a
life that is really life—and they cannot move. Their feet
are nailed to the floor, their shoulders weighed down by
all they carry, the quiet desperation of the self-sufficient
and soul-starved.
Maybe you know such a person. A good person, a
faithful person. Maybe you are one. Consider that Jesus
is looking at you right now, his eyes filled with love for
the good in your soul. You lack one thing. Just open your
hands. Just take the first step in faith.
The man on the road walked away carrying his wealth
and his fear and his sorrow. His journey with Jesus
was over before it even began. The earliest Christians
walked out to meet the needs of neighbors, to welcome
strangers, to live unafraid. The journey they began
continues to this day.
And the gap—between the one who walked away and
the church that moved in—is where freedom lives. So
open your hands. Run to meet him. Come and follow
him. Amen.