Sermon:

What is the meaning of life? How do we live a good life? How do we live a life that is good and just in the eyes of God? How do we get eternal life and salvation? And is it as difficult as getting a stubborn big camel through an eye of a tine needle?

These were the questions that brought the young man to Jesus. These were the universal questions that we have been asking through the history of mankind: how to live a good life, how to be good, and how to be saved.

Trying to find the answers to these universal questions have been a quest for human beings since the beginning of mankind, depicted in Michelangelo’s paintings and described with humor in Monty Pythons movie about the meaning of life.

In our quest to find the meaning of life, we also ask: what do we lack to do? What are we missing? How can we be fulfilled? How can we be saved?

 

The first reading today was from Amos from the Old Testament. Amos was a herdsman by profession and a prophet by calling.

During a time of great prosperity in the time of the Old Kingdom in Israel, the prophet spoke to the wealthy upper class with honesty and urgency. He warned his wealthy listeners that fulfilling God’s demand for justice was what would bring them blessings, while corruption and oppression would incur God’s anger and wrath.

Amos would have understood and loved the image of the struggling camel to get through the eye of a needle, that Jesus used much later. Because it is the same message. And it was the same audience: wealthy, rich, satisfied, corrupted maybe, flawed, and consuming people, who did have an urge to follow God, but had a hard time truly doing so, as there was so much in their way: belongings, possessions, wealth, properties and mammon. And me, me, me.

Amos loudly decried the suppression of income disparity and inequality of his time, - and his words still sadly rings true today. As the comedian and politician Al Franken once wrote in “Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them.”: "It is easier for a rich man to enter heaven seated comfortably on the back of a camel than it is for a poor man to pass through the eye of a needle."

The reality of economic inequality and economic exploitation was the reality of Amos time and is of ours still. Maybe we aren’t so different from the Assyrians, Edomites and Israelite elite of Amos’ day, - and maybe we should listen to the old prophet’s words and warning as we imagine the camel trying to get through the eye of the needle.

“Seek the Lord and live. Seek good and not evil and you may live. Hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate…. Then the Lord may be gracious to you.” The old prophet told his people and told us today.

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Jesus invites the young rich man to relinquish his many possessions and give all he has to the poor: these words were offered in love, but they were refused out of fear. The young man could not see beyond the immediate and shocking pain of losing everything he worked so hard for, or luckily inherited; all of this obsessed him and possessed him.

Since the Middle Ages commentators of the New Testament have considered the possibility that Jesus’ statement concerning the ‘eye of a needle’ may have been a reference to certain doors or gates that existed in his day.

Some homes did in fact have large doors that would allow a fully loaded camel to enter the courtyard. Since such doors required great effort to open, there were often smaller doors cut within them, permitting easy passage of people and smaller animals into the house.

Some commentators have argued that this smaller door was the ‘needle’s eye gate,’ while others have suggested that the needle’s eye referred to smaller doors within larger city gates, such as those at Jaffa and Hebron. Passage through the smaller gate, it was said, would have forced a camel to its knees. Thus, the point of Jesus’ teaching in Mark is supposedly that a rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven only if he falls to his knees.

As compelling these theories might be, they in fact all diminish the power and the force of Jesus’ words. The point is not that salvation is difficult without God but that it is impossible without him. As impossible as getting a stubborn camel through a tiny eye of a needle.

Jesus’ contrast of the largest animal known in Palestine with the smallest of holes created a vivid and memorable illustration. The fact that modern-day gates have been so named can most likely be attributed to the influence of this and similar statements within the Talmud and the Koran.

In Jesus’ original setting, it is very likely that a needle’s eye was simply a needle’s eye.

Did you know that the oldest needle found is 50.000 years old and was found in a cave in Siberia? A small needle of bone with an eye. So just read the story for what it is: an excellent powerful metaphor about the difficulty of being a human being on the quest of salvation.

So, I love the story about the camel and the eye of the needle. I even like the uncomfortable truth as I and we are rich affluent people and are struck by the words, aren’t we ? But the words tell us that we do need to get on our knees, we do need to be humble, we do need to believe in God’s grace to make it anywhere….. That the loving gaze of God sees us as we are: flawed, imperfect, lacking the ability to do right, chose right, be right and be good, because we are human. And we need that divine loving gaze upon us and our lives to breathe, live and believe that we are loved and blessed despite our lacks.

The young man is sincere and serious in his quest for salvation and meaning and directions, he kneels before Jesus and calls him for the good teacher, and he seems to be genuine.

He is truly seeking and asking and knocking on the door.  The young man has been a good law-abiding man since his youth, he is not arrogant, but he is missing the saving point. That he cannot be saved by his goodness, that he can only be saved through faith and grace.

He was in fact asking the wrong question: What can I do? When he should have asked, what may I believe and hope that God will and can do.

The Gospel says: Jesus looked at him and loved him. The loving gaze of Jesus penetrates and reaches the heart. The loving gaze of Jesus sees clearly and speaks truthfully.

“You lack one thing, “Jesus tells him. “Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, then come and follow me!”

Today we might describe Jesus’ word to the seeking rich young man as a form of intervention: a love so bold enough to step up and step between an addict and his addiction. Or simply to tell us that it is not all up to me and my choices and actions, it is all up to God. That might be uncomfortable for us to hear that it is not up to us. That our own goodness always will be flawed……

Many of the stories in the Gospel, ends open-ended, as many of our life stories do too. “It doesn’t end that he lived unhappily ever after” and we are free to wonder, and we should wonder: did he turn around and came back later once he realized the truth of Jesus words? Did he later realize that he in fact did need help to come through the needle eye? That even the impossible is possible for God.

Money can be an enslaving power; possessions have a way of possessing us, addictions make us into addicts.

The only way to break this, is with a divine intervention, with a loving gaze of Jesus. With a truly amazing grace.

At the center is the amazing statement of faith: “For God all things are possible.”

Out of love and not out of judgement, will we be saved. By the amazing grace that we find in the loving divine gaze.

We are bombarded with the message that we will find happiness by consuming, buying, owning, spending, saving, protecting and hoarding. That by our own choices and actions we can indeed be saved…..

 But with the divine loving gaze on our lives and pursuit of happiness, we are told that life is found in sharing, caring, giving, and giving up what possesses and obsesses us. What separates us from loving God with all of our heart, mind and soul, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

We dont need either bigger needles or smaller camels. No, we need bolder faith in an amazing grace that can save any of us trying to navigate through life, trying to find meaning and purpose, trying to squeeze through the narrow eye of the needle or neglecting to honestly accept who we are.

What must we do to inherit eternal life?

 We must let go of all that we have and all that we do that gets in the way of seeing that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. Even then, letting go of it all is beyond our capacity. The hardest news Jesus has is the best news we could get—our salvation is impossible except for God. “But not for God; for God all things are possible.”

For God all things are possible! AMEN