Matthew 19:23-26
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible
This is the part of the story that stings for most of us. Don’t get me wrong, we feel bad for the rich guy who wanted to follow Jesus until Jesus told him to give everything away, but it only gets personal now. Now when Jesus says that it’s going to be really, really hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Because wherever we may consider ourselves to be on the economic ladder, most of us know we’re a lot further up it than most people in the world and way further up than those in Jesus’ audience.
So it’s a hard word, and for years we’ve tried to explain it away with two strategies in particular. First, we’d say that Jesus was speaking metaphorically, explaining that there was a gate in the Jerusalem wall call “the eye of the needle” that was so narrow you had to take all the baggage a camel was carrying off its back in order to enter. Just so, this interpretation went, we need to unburden ourselves of our “spiritual baggage” before entering the kingdom. Sounds great…except there is no such door in the Jerusalem wall and there never was. Not in Jesus’ day; not in ours.
When that explanation didn’t work, we’d try a second one, saying that Jesus didn’t really mean what he said, that he was setting us up for failure in order to show us that we are saved neither by our wealth or by giving things up but only by grace alone. After all, he even says that for mortals it’s impossible. But I have a hard time believing Jesus didn’t think it was really, really important to give what we have to those without. Given the rest of the Gospel, saying that Jesus was only kidding this time just doesn’t sound like him.
So what does Jesus mean? I don’t know for sure, but I do know from personal experience that it’s really, really hard to trust God for all that we need and that it’s really, really easy – or at least a whole lot easier – to trust things we can touch, feel, and control, like money and possessions. So maybe it’s that simple – maybe Jesus is just saying that the more we have around us that provides some measure of material comfort, the harder it will be for us to not get used to looking for our security there and trust God instead. Which means, in the end, that it really will have to be all up to God. Not that there’s not lots for us to do in the meantime, but ultimately the radical trust that enables us to share with others and depend on God’s grace alone… Well, that’s just sheer gift.
Prayer: Dear God, you alone can save us from ourselves and our penchant to locate our security and our future in material and finite things. So do it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
I appreciated the commentary. Read this after giving my “Canadian” thanksgiving sermon this past weekend. In it I couldn’t help but ask if we really need God, given what many of us in North America have and take for granted. A couple of years ago, my local Ukrainian Catholic priest ask me to pray for some of his friends in Syria who had attended at the seminary with him, in the Vatican. He said they had been kidnapped and no one had heard from them since. I’m not sure if they ever where heard of again.