Hebrews 4.12-16, Mark 10.17-31
Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 14 October 2018
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
‘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.’ Here’s Jesus is trying to be funny. We’d call it satire. Just like the satirical jokes we’ve been looking at together today. [2]
But the ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ joke was no joke to the rich man, who knew that in repeating it Jesus was echoing the dark humour of every poor man and woman in their society - a humour based on the observation that the rich were rich because (deliberately or not) they exploited the poor. And here’s Jesus saying that if they continued to exploit and bring suffering on the poor then they would not enter the kingdom of heaven.
When Jesus recited the commandments to the rich man he included a new one: ’You shall not defraud’. Many poor tenant farmers in that society would experience their payments being held back, or their deposits of goods or money not being returned. So if a wealthy person had defrauded any poor people in such ways he could make restitution by reimbursing them.
But we get the impression that this particular rich man wanted a God who would sanctify his lifestyle without requiring him to change it. The problem with that sort of a God is that he can only achieve this by allowing others to suffer. That sort of a God absolves a rich man from any responsibility to the poor by permitting the accusation that the poor bring it on themselves. That sort of a God absolves a rich man from any responsibility to the natural world by putting economic growth above care for the earth and its creatures, by making an idol of consumerism.
We can satirise it, but really it’s no joke. And you and I may feel awkward about the rich man’s story, for we know that in absolute terms we are the rich of the world today, that we benefit from the mechanics of wealth creation just as the rich man did, its economics and the theology which underwrites it. Even if we don’t mean it to, our comfortable living comes at the expense of others - it troubles me to know that I composed this sermon on a laptop computer produced by Asian children working excessive hours in dangerous conditions for poverty wages. Our comfort comes at the expense of the earth - as this week’s wake-up-call from the United Nations on climate change once again clearly shows. [3]
But please hold onto this thought: God is not in the business of making us guilty; in scripture it is Satan who is the accuser, God is the one who brings good news. [4] This exchange between Jesus and a rich man might make us question our own wealth, but we shouldn’t feel condemned by it, for this potent piece of scripture contains good news both for the poor and the rich.
The key to understanding all this, is the reason why Jesus told the rich man to sell up and give his money to the poor. Mark says he did it because, looking at the rich man, he loved him.
Now, this is a remarkable statement. This is the only place in Mark’s gospel where Jesus is said to have ‘loved’ someone. Jesus felt keenly, deeply, for the rich man in his situation. Jesus set the rich man his challenge because that was the loving thing to do.
But how could that be? It makes no sense to us in our driven, acquisitive, privatised society where the compulsion to own and consume more and more for ourselves is just like the compulsion which drove Jesus’ rich man and his peers to grab more and more land, taxes and property from their poor. Surely, our culture says, the loving thing to do is to look after ourselves and our families first and forget the rest - not give away what we have to strangers.
But you may have heard of the concept of affluenza, a condition of our age defined as the ‘painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more’. [5] There is a growing body of evidence that the countries, including ours, with the greatest inequalities between rich and poor are the most inefficient and socially unstable - we are suffering a serious breakdown in social cohesion and trust. [6] Lifting such burdens from us, is surely the loving thing to do.
So Jesus sees the consequences of wealth creation and his heart fills with love for a rich man lost, a man searching for release from all that harms his well-being, longing for the deepest things which money cannot buy. Jesus invites the man to turn his back on his alienating lifestyle, he’s guiding him towards another way of being altogether, in turning his heart towards a God whose love for him can release him from his wealth addiction, and free him to create new, redeeming relationships with others who he will no longer view as competitors, but companions with him on the journey through life.
This has taken us all a long way from that quip about the camel and the eye of the needle. It’s not a joke any more, what Jesus is doing, but it is a wonder, it is a joy.
I read a challenging quote by the Franciscan friar and well-known author Richard Rohr, saying that,
Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We are often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of ‘Christian’ countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else - and often more so, I'm afraid. [7]
The alternative way which Jesus offered the rich man, he also offers us. Summed up in two commandments: to love God and to love our neighbours. ‘Christianity is not a religion that gives some people a ticket to heaven and makes them judgmental of all others,’ says the writer and activist Jim Wallis. ‘Rather, it's a call to a relationship that changes all our other relationships. Jesus told us a new relationship with God also brings us into a new relationship with our neighbour, especially with the most vulnerable of this world, and even with our enemies.’ [8]
In loving the rich man, Jesus invited the rich man to love his neighbour, knowing that in so doing both would find life in its fulness. The notion of The Common Good has fallen into neglect in our times. But it can be reclaimed - and this call to love our neighbour is the foundation for re-establishing and reclaiming it. [9]
Now we might say that these are all nice words, but an impossible task in these selfish, self-absorbed times. That’s what the disciples said to Jesus too. But Jesus just looked lovingly at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ [10]
Notes
[1] This talk is an altered version of Love comes blinking through the needle's eye, preached in Somerset in 2015, using material from The rich man’s God or the God of the victims?, preached in Devon in October 2012. My exegesis of Mark owes a great deal to Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: a Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, p.271-276.
[2] The cartoons on this page, lifted from the internet, were handed out for the congregation's amusement with the orders of service.
[3] Ethical Consumer, Shopping Guide: Laptops; Jonathan Watts, We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN, Guardian, Monday 8 October 2018
[4] See my Mark 8 - Satan the Accuser and God the Chooser, based on a sermon of the same title by Paul Nuechterlein.
[5] John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylor, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, quoted in Wikipedia, Affluenza. With acknowledgement to Paul Neuchterlein’s sermon, Maybe this is Good News after all, delivered at Zion Lutheran, Racine, WI, October 15, 2000.
[6] Clare Bryden, Peril of eating all the pie, Church Times 12 October 2012, reviewing Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality.
[7] Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps, widely quoted online.
[8] Jim Wallis, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good, p.3/4.
[9] Wallis, p.3/4.
[10] Mark 10.27.
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