James 3: 1-10 & Mark 10:17-31
Challenged by Jesus
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:25)
This week I was reading an article from “Sojourners” a Christian group based in the USA which seeks to inspire hope and build a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world by articulating the biblical call to racial and social justice, life and peace, and environmental stewardship.
In the article the author, John Pavlovitz, a Christian Pastor raises the issue of what it is to follow Jesus-how should we live out this life of discipleship? He writes that he sees countless proudly unloving people claiming to be followers of Jesus living a Christianity of cruelty, and it’s baffling. He goes on to say, “If you profess to be a follower of Jesus, I’m not concerned with your politics and I don’t care about your doctrine. I’m not interested in the Scriptures you can recite or the prayers you utter out loud. Show me a working theology of empathy.”
Both of our readings for today (The James reading we read a few weeks ago) have to do with compassion, empathy, understanding, and what we hold to be of value.
If a man from Mars, or a woman from Venus, arrived incognito among us to observe what each of the earth’s religions regarded as the worst sins, what would they deduce from our Christian outbursts of moral indignation and how we treat each other?
My suspicion is that they would regard sexual sin as the most morally repugnant to us. General Assemblies of our church, (and other denominations) and the media frenzy which occurred there, shows that nothing is likely to generate more heat and public comment than what is perceived as sexual permissiveness. For most of its history, the Christian Church has had a thing about human sexuality, way out of proportion to other sins.
(Maybe in light of the sexual abuse that has come to light over the last few years – it had good reasons to be concerned.)
But if we look to Jesus to see what he condemns most in his society it was not actually sexual laxity. Jesus actually reserved his gravest words for three other evils: namely wealth, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness. Money, and what it did to people particularly evoked his warnings.
In our reading from Mark’s Gospel for today it was not sexual permissiveness, nor self-righteousness, nor hypocrisy but riches, and the affect that these had on people that Jesus commented on.
Let’s review the incident.
One day, on his way, Jesus meets a man. Mark casually mentioned as Mark was wont to do, that Jesus was ‘setting out on a journey.” You know what that means. You know where this journey is going to end in just a few more chapters – it ends for Jesus on the Cross. So, as Jesus begins this fateful journey, he is encountered by a man who has ‘great possessions,’ who addresses him as ‘Good Teacher.’
Now this young man is religiously inclined, and maybe as fanatical about his faith as those who bail you up on the streets asking you “Whether you are saved or not?” This young man is not too concerned about what happens to others in eternity, but he is concerned about his own future in eternity. “What can I do to have eternal life?” he asks Jesus.
Jesus seems to have as much tolerance for this young man as we do for those who bail us up on the street. Jesus tells the young man to go and obey all of the Ten Commandments and then come back and they can have a chat.
But the man startles Jesus by saying, “Oh, I’ve obeyed all the commandments since I was a kid in Sabbath school. I’ve never broken any of the commandments.”
It turns out that this man is not only successful in the material realm of things, he is also successful spiritually. Jesus has before him a man who is a higher achiever, a great success.
So maybe in one last attempt to really sock it to him, Jesus shows empathy and understanding of the man and his values. “I love you, and because I love you so much, I’m going to give you something I don’t just give everybody. I want you to go, sell everything you’ve got, give it to the poor, and then come follow me.”
With that Mark says this man slumped down, became very depressed, for wealth in his day was seen as a blessing by God for the faithful, hoped back into his gleaming Ferrari and left.
You see riches signalled God’s favour. He was shocked by what the exceedingly astonishing good teacher told him. He couldn’t give up his wealth and the freedom this gave him! But he wasn’t the only one who was having major difficulty with what Jesus had just said.
His disciples were also absolutely amazed. “Who wants to be a millionaire?” “We all do!” cried back the disciples of Jesus.
“Man it’s hard to save these young upwardly mobile, wealthy ones!” commented Jesus.
“How hard is it?” asked his disciples.
To this questions Jesus replied, “It is about as hard as to get a fully loaded camel through the eye of a needle! Impossible! Of course, with God, I suppose anything is possible, even this.”
Like us, the people of Jesus’ day believed that prosperity and wealth were a sign of God’s blessing. If you are successful in business then that is a sign of God’s blessing, or of your own hard work, or the hard work of your employees. As one employee said to his boss when he saw he had a brand-new limousine “New car again this year.” To which the boss replied, ‘Yes. And if you work hard, I will be able to afford a new one next year.”
Jesus didn’t actually teach that. He taught things like, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:33-34)
“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15 ff)
How about us? Have we taken heed of what Jesus; the exceedingly astonishing good teacher taught?
We have to say that there is a massive gulf represented between investors’ expectations and what Jesus is saying. As far as I can see all indicators of the investment market, especially with regard to housing, are looking for significant returns. The down side is that those who can’t afford their own home and are in rental accommodation are having difficulty in paying the rents being asked to match the expected investment returns.
Well, what are we to make of this for our day?
The rich man who came to Jesus was an earnestly religious fellow – his difficulty was the same as we find so much in our modern society (not that this is different from past generations) and that is that he still trusted in his wealth to give him security, more than he was willing to trust Jesus. Rather than his wealth being an asset, Jesus saw it as a barrier between the young man and abundant life.
But money isn’t the only hurdle. We shouldn’t imagine that it is. There are others; plenty of them. For some, it might be ambition, their favourite pleasures, or their desire to be accepted-no matter what the cost, or sport – the ‘one thing lacking’ can take a variety of forms.
Nevertheless, the warning about the dangerous power of money stands. Jesus’ outrageous picture of the camel trying to go through the eye of a needle is as powerful today as it was when he told it 2000 years ago. My suspicion, though, is that we have as much difficulty with this exceedingly astonishing good teaching as the young man and the disciples did.
To God be the glory. Amen