Killing Camels

Scripture: The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 28), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning we have one of my all-time favorite Scripture readings. It might be straight-up the most Law and Gospel parable that Jesus ever preached. But I used to hate it, because it was taught to me exactly backwards.

A wealthy man comes to Jesus and says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus wryly replies, “Why do you call Me good? Only God is good.” Here we have a little humor on Jesus’ part. By acknowledging Jesus as good, and by coming to Him in order to seek out eternal life, the rich man has already unwittingly confessed Jesus as God. Mark’s Gospel has its fair share of irony.

“You know the Commandments,” Jesus says. “Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t defraud”—that last one’s interesting. I mean, sure, that is part of the Law, but here Jesus lists it with the 10 Commandments. “Teacher,” the rich young man replies, “I have kept all these since my youth.”

And Jesus looks at him and loves him. “You lack one thing,” He says. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then come, follow Me.” And the young man is shocked, saddened really, and leaves grieving, for he has many possessions. Then Jesus turns to His disciples and proclaims, “How hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter God’s Kingdom!”

Boom. Jesus drops the bomb. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. That should hit each one of us square in the gut. This is one of those parables that makes the middle class squirm in our pews. And that’s why I hated this story when I was younger, because it was basically presented to me as: the poor go to Heaven, the rich go to Hell. So you’d best get crackin’ to make yourself poor for Jesus, or else! That’s scary stuff for a junior high kid who finally got a Nintendo for his birthday.

There’s a terrible story that goes along with this one in an attempt to explain it, a story invented in the Ninth Century. Perhaps you’ve heard it. Supposedly there was a gate in the walls of Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle, and it was very narrow and low to the ground. In order to pass through, a man had to divest himself and his animals of all their burdens and squeeze through, humbly, without pretense or possessions, to enter the holy city. That’s what Jesus is talking about, folks claimed. We have to try really hard, and pare away everything else in our lives, until we too are humble and poor and have left everything else behind. Only then can we squeeze our way through into the City of God. Only then can we earn Heaven, earn salvation, earn Jesus, through the eye of the needle.

It’s up to you! Have you done enough, given enough, to be worthy of Jesus’ love? Are you strong enough to save yourself? And like the rich young man we go away grieving, because we already know the answer to that.

What complete and utter hogwash. Never mind the fact that it’s a lie. Never mind the fact that there was never any such gate in the walls of Jerusalem, and if there ever had been anybody with half a brain just would’ve moseyed on down to the next gate over. To teach this parable as being about earning God’s love is to get the message exactly backwards, exactly wrong. Jesus looks at the man and loves him! Right off the bat, Jesus loves him, be he rich or poor or whatever. It’s not about money.

Okay, it is about money, but not in any simplistic or fatalistic sense. Let’s be clear: Jesus had rich friends. Wealthy women provided for His needs. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had a ton of cash. Mary and Martha and Lazarus had a summer home in the suburbs of Jerusalem, and when Mary came to anoint Jesus with a ridiculously expensive jar of ointment, and Judas rebuked her for not selling it instead and giving the proceeds to the poor, Jesus tells Judas to put a sock in it.

Our first reading this morning was from the prophet Amos, who rails ceaselessly against the rich. But let’s be clear. Amos is a dresser of trees and keeper of flocks. He has orchards and livestock: he’s rich. Amos is a wealthy man denouncing the wealthy—not for having money but for how they mistreat the poor. Is that why Jesus mentioned defrauding when he spoke to the rich young man? Were his youthful gains ill-gotten? There’s no way to know. But the point is not about the social or economic class to which we belong. It’s about how we use the gifts that we are given. Jesus would liberate this man from his possessions. To turn that into a message of purchasing salvation through poverty—why, that’s just another way of saying that you have to buy your way into Heaven. And that means that your savior is still your gold.

The Apostles pick up on this right away. These are men, and plenty of women with them, who have left behind their families and their jobs to follow Jesus. They have given up the wealth of the world. Yet when Jesus laments how hard it will be for the rich to enter Heaven, the Apostles immediately freak out. Even after all they have done, all they have given, all they have left behind, they realize that they have not done enough to earn their way into Heaven. They identify with the rich, not with the poor. The Apostles know very well what a camel is, and what the eye of a needle is, and they understand quite clearly that there’s no way that critter is going to fit through that hole without being turned into spaghetti.

So just like the rich man—just like us—the Apostles despair. They go away grieving. They throw up their hands and together we cry, “Then who can be saved?”

And now Jesus has us. Now we’re right where Jesus wants us. The whole story has been leading up to this. “For mortals it is impossible,” He says—not difficult, but impossible—“yet for God, all things are possible.” It’s not about earning Heaven. It’s not about what you do or do not have. It’s not about your wallet or your khakis or your bank account or your job. It’s not about how many followers you get on Twitter. Jesus looked at the rich young man who came to him, and Jesus loved him—right off the bat, loved him—without him having to do or sell or give a single thing. And Jesus would set him free.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot save ourselves. We cannot earn God’s love or forgiveness or salvation. It doesn’t matter how wealthy we are or how much we give away. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to squeeze that camel through that needle; it just ain’t gonna happen. You can’t do it. No one can.

But thanks be to God, you don’t have to. Where the rich young man failed, where the Apostles failed, where we all have failed, Jesus succeeds. Jesus earns the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus earns the love of God, and He pours it out freely upon us all. And that love changes us, resurrects us, kills us and makes us alive again. It frees us from our shackles, from the agonies of poverty and the idolatries of wealth. It makes us into new men and women, clothed in the mercies of Christ.

Who can be saved? No one. Not one, single, solitary soul. Except Jesus. And when He rises from the dead, having harrowed Hell and hallowed Heaven and claimed all the earth as His own, then in Him are we all saved as well. Not because we’ve earned it. Not because we’re so great. Not because we crammed a camel through the eye of a needle. But simply because God is so good that He was willing to come in the flesh and die on the Cross and rise from the tomb, all out of love for us.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.