Weston Bampfylde, Trinity 19 (Proper 23), 14/10/2012
‘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 tonight. [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 reality that the rich were rich because (deliberately or not) they exploited and brought suffering on the poor. And Jesus said that if they continued to exploit and bring suffering on the poor then they would not enter the kingdom of heaven.
‘You shall not defraud’, said Jesus, inserting a new commandment into the list he recited to the rich man. It meant, ‘You shall not keep back the wages of one of your contractors, you shall not refuse to return goods or money which someone has deposited with you for safekeeping’. Jesus was telling the man that the way he could make restitution would be by returning his wealth to the poor people, whom he has defrauded.
The rich man was looking for a God who would sanctify his lifestyle without requiring him to change it. The problem with the rich man’s God is that this is a God who allows other people to suffer. Conveniently ignoring the realities of the way he gains his wealth, his idea of God allows the rich man to believe that the suffering of the poor is caused by their own sinfulness.
The rich man’s image of God compounds the suffering of the poor by permitting the accusation that the poor bring it on themselves, thus absolving him from any responsibility to others. His image of God extends the exploitation of nature by permitting the excuse that while the rich man may be consuming the earth’s resources, other people are doing it too, some people are doing it more, thus absolving him from any responsibility to reign in his overconsumption.
It’s no joke, this attitude. And we may be feeling rather awkward about the rich man’s story, for we know that in absolute terms we are the rich today, in this wealthy part of the world - and we benefit from the mechanics of wealth creation just as the rich man did, from its economics and its theology. Even if we don’t mean it to, the wealth and ease of living we enjoy is at the expense of others, at the expense of the earth
But God is not in the business of guilting us; in scripture it is Satan who is the accuser, God is the one who brings good news. [3] This story might make us feel awkward about our own relative wealth, but we shouldn’t feel condemned. Because this potent piece of scripture contains good news both for the poor and the rich.
This is the key: remember the reason Jesus told the rich man to sell up and give his money to the poor. 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 the 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’. [4] And you may have read about the growing body of evidence that the countries with the greatest inequalities between rich and poor - countries like ours - are the most inefficient, unstable and suffering a serious breakdown in social cohesion and trust. [5] Releasing us from these burdens, is surely the loving thing to do.
As now, so then; Jesus sees the side-affects of wealth creation and his heart fills with love for a rich man lost, in search of release from all that harms his well-being, the deepest things which money cannot buy. Jesus wants to help the man turn away from a worldview, a theology, in which the rich man’s God props up an alienating lifestyle, Jesus longs to turn him towards another way of being altogether. He wants to turn him towards the God of love, whose love for him can release him from his own wealth addiction, into new, redeeming relationships with those others - the poor of the world - as he shares his life and wealth with them.
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 was greatly challenged by a quote I read this week 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. [6]
This uncomfortable quote, I think, links us in our time, and our dilemma, to the rich man in his time and the very same dilemma which he faced, and which he brought before Jesus. But then I read another great contemporary Christian writer and activist Jim Wallis, reflecting on the two commandments of Jesus which we hear each time we meet for Holy Communion - to love God and to love our neighbours, [7] and this is what he writes,
Christianity is not a religion that gives some people a ticket to heaven and makes them judgmental of all others. 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 effectively called the rich man to love his neighbour, knowing that in so doing both would find life in its fulness. ‘This call to love our neighbour is the foundation for re-establishing and reclaiming the common good, which has fallen into … neglect.’ says Jim Wallis.
Now we might say that these are nice words, but an impossible task in these selfish, self-absorbed times. That’s what the disciples said to Jesus too.
And Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ [9]
Praise the God who loves poor and rich alike, and who can liberate us from our addiction to wealth-creation and relentless consumerism, into relationships of quality, integrity, love, with others and with the earth.
Notes
[1] This talk uses core 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] See my Mark 8 - Satan the Accuser and God the Chooser, based on a sermon of the same title by Paul Neuchterlein.
[4] 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.
[5] Clare Bryden, Peril of eating all the pie, Church Times 12 October 2012, reviewing Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality.
[6] Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps, widely quoted online.
[7] The Summary of the Law in the Book of Common Prayer.
[8] Jim Wallis, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good, p.3/4.
[9] Mark 10.27.
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