October 13, 2024, You Are the Camel, Mark 10:17-31 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ October 13, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Jesus had a real genius for creating memorable images when he was preaching: the guy who worries about the speck in his neighbor’s eye while all the time he’s going around with a giant plank in his own eye; the one about plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand; and the one we read today, the one about the camel and the eye of a needle.

People often offer an explanation for this last image. The story goes that there was a narrow gate in Jerusalem or Damascus – there are variations on this theme – that was called the Eye of the Needle. The gate was so narrow that merchants entering the city through that gate had to sort of unpack their camel, take off all the bundles and baggage, before the camel would fit through the gate. Other versions of the story say that the Eye of the Needle gate was also low – so low that the aforementioned merchant had to make his camel get down on its knees before it could enter the city. And of course, those stories make for nice metaphors. Like the rich young ruler in the story, we have to unburden ourselves of our worldly goods before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. Or with version B, the message is that we have to humble ourselves, get down on our knees, metaphorically speaking, to get into heaven.

The problem is, those are just inventions by clever preachers. There isn’t any evidence that there was such a poorly-designed gate in Jerusalem or Damascus or any place else, and there isn’t any indication from what Jesus says that he’s referring to such a gate if it did exist.

But there is an even bigger problem, I think, with these attempts at explanation. The real problem is that they ruin the point Jesus was making. He wasn’t talking about some real-life logistical problem that makes for a great sermon example. He was deliberately painting a totally ludicrous, ridiculously impossible picture to make a point that shocked everybody who was listening. How hard is it for a camel – an animal that is 6 feet tall not counting his hump, and weighs a thousand pounds – how hard is it for a real camel to walk through the eye of a sewing needle – which is so small that most of us, who are of a certain age, can barely even see to get the thread through anymore?

And here’s the point Jesus is making: that is how hard it is for a rich person to get into heaven. (Just for the record, we might as well take note here that everyone in this room is a rich person by any reasonable standard, historically, or globally, or biblically.) So obviously, the rich young ruler was shocked, because Jesus, who looked at him and loved him right off the bat, told him he was doing great, and he only needed to do one teeny weeny thing. Sell all your stuff, Jesus said, give all that money to the poor, and then come, follow me.

But he wasn’t the only one who was shocked. When the young man had gone away, sad, but still hanging on to his wealth, the disciples came to Jesus. They were shocked, too. If rich people can’t get into heaven, they said, then who can get into heaven? Like so many people, they thought of wealth as a sign of God’s approval. Rich people are blessed, right? Rich people deserve honor and respect. Rich people have all the authority – and isn’t that a gift from God, too? The rich have everything. If they can’t get into heaven, what hope is there for us poor schmucks?

And Jesus sat them down and gave them these words of comfort: there’s no hope at all. It is just as impossible for a rich man to get into heaven as it is for a giant, fat, humpy beast to squish through the eye of your mom’s sewing needle. But not with God. With God, everything is possible. There is hope for you. There is hope for that poor, foolish young man. There is hope for all of us.

Jesus meant to offer his disciples comfort. And he meant to teach them about the grace of God, and how all our hope rests on that grace. But he also meant to teach them a radical new way of thinking about wealth, and about money, and about heaping up possessions. In the first century, and in the twenty first century, and in pretty much every other century before or since, wealth meant security, and wealth meant God is pleased with you, and wealth meant status and wealth generally meant something good and desirable. We’ve kind of polished that atttitude to a high gloss in our capitalist society, but I think it’s a universal human assumption. But here comes Jesus, with his weird picture of a camel trying (and failing) to pass through the eye of a needle. And suddenly, he’s telling us that wealth and riches are a hindrance, a barrier, something not to be earned and accumulated and stockpiled, but something to be gotten rid of at all cost. He’s telling us that that wealthy people, specifically, are hindered by their wealth, in a way that affects their relationship with God. And that is not an easy or comfortable or natural teaching for us to hear.

For example, I keep hearing on the news, over and over again, that in the 2024 election, the economy is the top issue among voters. Even though the United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, many, many times richer than any third world country, the vast majority of people in the US are more worried about their finances being affected by who gets into the White House than they are about education, or housing, or war, or justice, or poverty, or racial equity, or freedom. As followers of Jesus who live in a land of great abundance, we need to hear what Jesus is teaching here. We need to allow ourselves to be changed by it, to let ourselves be changed in the way we think and make plans, let ourselves be changed in the way we work and eat and shop, let ourselves be changed in the way we vote. And maybe most of all we need to heed his warning. Maybe we need to let ourselves be shocked.

When the rich young ruler came to Jesus, Jesus loved him right away. The young man asked Jesus, “Good teacher, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus told him, “You only lack one thing. Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And then, come, follow me.” Pretty much every sermon I have ever heard on this passage is very careful to make the point that Jesus is not giving us the eleventh commandment here. We can’t take the story of the rich young ruler and make a law that everybody here should go home and sell everything they own and give it to the poor. And that is absolutely true, as far as it goes.

But we can hear the story of the rich young ruler, and we can see the ridiculous image of the camel and the eye of the needle, and we can let Jesus open our eyes to the way God views wealth and possessions. Which is so very, very different from the worlds-eye view – more different than most of us realize.

Jesus says: “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Jesus says: “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world run after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom… Sell your possessions, and give to the poor. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Jesus was teaching on this day that it’s not about what we need to do to get into heaven. We can’t perform our way into the kingdom of God anyway. It’s as impossible as a big old beast going through a tiny hole. We can’t buy our way to God by accumulating treasures, and we can’t earn our way into his kingdom by giving all our treasures away, or by any other human effort or accomplishment. Not to worry, though, because with God, who loves us, all things are possible.

But he was also teaching us what we can do – what we need to do – which is what the writer to the Hebrews calls us to do: we can “throw off every hindrance, everything that is weighing us down and holding us back,” even the almighty dollar – especially the almighty dollar – and we can follow Jesus.

The world says you can go ahead and follow Jesus, sure, fine, but you’d better keep a good balance in your checking account, and have a good insurance policy just in case. And a decent retirement plan.

Jesus says, “Follow me.”