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The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always precede and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 23)
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The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
The Eye of the Needle
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” St. Mark 10:17-31
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today we have Saint Mark’s powerful story of Jesus and the rich young man. Significantly, this follows immediately a scene where Jesus took a child in his arms and said to his disciples, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it.” (Mk 10:13-16) The Evangelist now illustrates what Jesus means, by way of an adult contrast with the child.
There is something in the rich young man’s approach and exchange with Jesus that, for all its politeness on the surface, signals trouble deeper down. The man runs up and kneels before Jesus, but instead of saying, Have mercy, or Help me, says “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus notices. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God.” In other words, “You falsely call me a Good Teacher, unless you believe that I and my teaching come from God.” Furthermore, the man has not asked how he may receive eternal life, but, What must I do in order to inherit it? As the Gospel will show, the rich young man has a confidence about himself and his life that will hinder him from following Christ.
Jesus rehearses the man in the basics of the Law, especially the commandments about our relations with other people, to which the man replies, “All these I have kept from my youth.” This is the crisis in the story. If the young man had known himself thoroughly, he would know how liable he was to judgment as soon as he had heard the words, Commandments or Law. But since the bare words, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, fraud, do not arouse in him any sense of inadequacy deeper down; since they do not convict him of envy, lust, covetousness or dishonesty, Christ now strikes him with a life-giving blow.¹ As he does, Jesus looks on the man and loves him, and says, “You lack one thing; go sell all you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”² At this the man’s countenance fell, and he went away sadly, for he had great possessions.
The man’s complacency is linked to his trust in his possessions, a sense of security which limits his awareness of his need of God and his self-knowledge as well. And now that the man has left, Jesus describes to his disciples how hard it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, harder than getting a camel through the eye of a needle. In the Holy Land the camel was the largest animal and the eye of the needle was the smallest opening, so the proverb is fitting. It is also true that “the eye of the needle” is a small opening in the city wall through which a camel, unloaded of all burdens, would have to be dragged by ropes as it was forced down on its haunches. This softens the hyperbole of Jesus’ proverb, but the point is the same. We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. So if we wish to enter God’s kingdom, we have to lose our attachments to the riches of this world, to be willing to give them away, and then to follow Jesus. The disciples are astonished: “Who then can be saved?” This is something that is impossible for us to “do,” Jesus answers, in the sense that the rich young man wished. But with God, all things, including getting a camel through the eye of a needle, moving mountains, and other wonders, are possible.
Peter, speaking for the other disciples, responds, “Lo, we have left everything to follow you.” Peter and his partners James and John had left behind their boats and nets and homes, to become “fishers of men.” And in following him, Jesus says they will have new enterprises, adventures, friends and families, homes, yes, and persecutions too, in this world; but certainly in the age to come, eternal life. They were already entering God’s kingdom here and now, having let go of the kingdom of this world. They were, Jesus said, heavenward bound.
Jesus’ command to the rich young man is not a universal call for all to leave their occupations and families and to enter monasteries or to become Franciscans – although this may be a particular call to some one, perhaps even some one here. Jesus was testing the man at the point of his resistance to God, a resistance that had built up a kind of superficial ethics and religiosity. Neither are Jesus’ words a critique of wealth per se, but a warning about the danger wealth, indeed money, poses, not only to the hearts of the rich but to all of us; and the implications of this danger for membership in his kingdom.³ “If we have food and clothing,” says the Apostle, “with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves through with many pangs.” (I Tim 6:8-10) Thus the rich young man left Jesus and went his own way.
The Lord calls us to be faithful stewards of the bounty God has given us. His call transforms our relationship to the people, places, things and events of life; this certainly includes our relationship to money. The Apostle, writing to Timothy, continues, “Tell the rich in the present age not to be proud and not to rely on so uncertain a thing as wealth but rather on God, who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment. Tell them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, to be ready to share, thus accumulating as treasure a good foundation for the future, so as to win the life that is true life.” (I Tim 6:17-19) The financial turmoil of the past year has surely driven these lessons home to us.
We are to be generous. In so doing, we will see that we have “cast our bread upon the waters,” and that it will return to us in many other forms. Love multiplies, grows, as it is exercised. The more of it you give, the more of it you have. Love is stronger than death. Jesus Christ is the proof. All things are possible with God. The rich man can go through the eye of the needle and join the little child in the kingdom.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
__________
¹John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, pp. 393, 396-397.
²Mk 10:21. I believe that Saint Mark, of all the evangelists, added the words, “Jesus looking upon him loved him,” because he (John Mark of Acts, cousin of Barnabas, sometime companion of Paul, and assistant to Peter in the end) knew himself the issues of having wealth and the trials of courage associated with it. It is even possible that the Evangelist was the rich young man. In any case, Jesus, by striking the man’s false security, was, as Saint Mark himself knew, showing the love that casts our fear
³International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, G.W. Bromiley, ed., Vol. 3, Article “Needle,” p. 510.
