28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 10, 2009
Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 2: 9-11
Mark 10:2-16
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Ever since Jesus uttered this cryptic statement, we have been busy trying to find a loophole;
an escape hatch; a back door; some fine print; a way out.
Ever since Jesus met the rich young man, we have been looking for a way to embrace this passage, without actually having to live it.
We have rationalized it—
Jesus was just reminding us to keep our priorities straight!
We have analyzed it—
The ancient words for “camel” and “rope” are really quite similar…
Maybe Jesus said it is easier for a ROPE to pass through a needle’s eye...
And, if you had a small enough rope and a large enough needle…
We have ignored it.
We have theologized it—
The Hebrew people, thought wealth was a sign of God’s blessing; a mark of righteousness and worth.
Jesus was teaching them new ways of looking at the world.
We have decoded it—
Scholars speculate that this passage refers to an ancient gate to a walled city;
A gate so small—so narrow—that a camel could enter ONLY if its load was removed.
So, Jesus is telling us to give some of our possessions away.
Enough, at least, so we can fit through the gate…
And yes, we have embraced it—
Of course Jesus really meant this, and frankly, I quite agree—
THOSE rich people SHOULD have a hard time getting into heaven.
It’s tough to be poor. I should know…
I lost half of my IRA last year, and I have barely enough for a decent vacation next week!
You know, it’s funny. We expend a considerable amount of energy attempting to prove
that much of the Bible is literal truth.
The Holy Spirit shall come upon you,
and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.
What God has joined, let no one divide.
This is my Body. This is my Blood.
On the third day, he rose from the dead.
All in all, it’s a pretty astonishing list of Truths that we profess to believe.
Like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, we Christians often find ourselves believing as many as six “impossible things” before breakfast.
Yet, when we come across a passage indicating that the rich might have trouble entering heaven, we spend a lifetime trying to explain it all away.
But what if it’s true?
What if this saying is meant to be taken literally?
That it is hard for the rich to enter heaven, very hard, in fact you might even say, impossible.
What if wealth is a barrier to eternal life? What if God is truly calling us to give up everything we own? What if Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi and that weird kid in third grade
who gave his GI Joes to the mission family--had it right all along?
Where does that leave the rest of us?
Maybe it leaves us with the realization that scripture is truly sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
Maybe it forces us to look deep into our own culture and choices.
Maybe it reminds us that God’s view of poverty and wealth is not our own—that the Gospel message looks quite different when it’s viewed from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Remember, when God came among us, he entered our world at the bottom of the socio-economic latter. In Cedar Falls, even the poorest of us is better off than most of the world. Relative to the world’s population, most of us are wealthy. We often don’t appreciate this, since we usually gauge our wealth by looking up at the few who have more.
I don’t pretend to know how to handle this teaching of Jesus. Like most Christians, I struggle to reconcile my love of “things” with my love for God. I do not have the “prudence” the wisdom of Solomon in the first reading today. Solomon realized everything he had was gift from God. That is what made him wise.
Wrestling with this passage reminds me that the Bible talks more often about the evil of poverty
than sexual sins. Yet we as Church turn that around and spend much more time teaching about sexual sins than about rampant materialism.
Maybe Jesus really WAS speaking in hyperbole, overstating the case to make his point. Maybe Jesus challenged the rich young man because money was his addiction, his idol, his secret god.
Maybe Jesus doesn’t really want us to give it all away—to dump our money, our stock, our snow blower, GI Joe or whatever is our toys out onto the front lawn for any passerby to take.
I just don’t know. But wrestling with these difficult stories reminds us of an important truth.
That we spend a lot of time and energy trying to tame God. To domesticate God as if he were a pet. To dilute the teaching of Jesus. To turn his teachings from something wild and raw,
into something bland and safe.
Annie Dillard in “Teaching a Stone to Talk” writes this about faith:
Does anyone have the foggiest idea
of what sort of power we so blithely invoke?
Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?
The churches are children
playing on the floor with their chemistry sets,
mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats
and velvet hats to church;
we should all be wearing crash helmets.
Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares;
they should lash us to our pews."
The story of the rich young man reminds us that if the Gospel no longer has the power to
astonish us, frighten us, anger us or challenge us—it may be that we are no longer listening.
Or maybe we have heard the message so often that we completely miss the radical surprise. Or is it that our hearts are still too small to comprehend it.
Jesus invited the rich, and all of us, to enlarge our hearts and take the risk of being surprised by grace and thus transformed. I am reminded of the proverb from the middle East: If you let the nose of the camel in the tent, its tail is not far behind. We are afraid to let the nose of God in the tent of our lives, for we fear the havoc God’s power will have in transforming our lives.
If we have the courage to accept, maybe then, the stories of camels and needles and rich young men, won’t cause us to search for a loophole, an escape hatch, some fine print, or a way out,
but rather, a way in. A way in to the awesome mystery we call God.
Rev. Everett Hemann
RevEv@saintpatrickcf.org
This week, I am deeply indebted to Susan Fleming McGurgan for most of the ideas in this homily. Dr. McGurgan is the Director of the Lay Pastoral Ministry Program in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.