The company threw a lavish dinner to honour its CEO upon his retirement. His rise to the top spot in the company was dramatic; his management of the company, through tough times and boom times, had been flawless; everything he touched, it seemed, turned to gold. He had made himself and the company’s senior managers and stockholders very wealthy people.

At the retirement dinner, the CEO addressed his remarks to the company’s young executives:

I know you want my job, and I’ll tell you how to get it.

Last week my daughter was married, and as I walked her down the aisle, I realized I did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read, or her favourite colour. That’s the price I paid for this job. If you want to pay that price, you can have it.”

Sometimes it takes an accounting of what we possess to discover what we are missing; in confronting the extent of our wealth we understand how poor we really are. Jesus’ words today are echoed in the CEO’s rather sad parting speech to his young executives: We can become so absorbed with building a career that we fail to develop our full potential and talents as human beings; we can become so obsessed with creating and maintaining a lifestyle that we do not live a life worth living. Christ calls all who would be his disciples to lose life’s obsessive, meaningless and petty pursuits in order find a life fully human and alive in hope and joy.