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.