Rev. Teri Peterson
PCOP
Real Live Camels
Mark 10.17-31
14 February 2016, Lent
1, NL2-23
As he was setting out
on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher,
what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me
good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not
murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear
false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” ’ He said
to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him,
loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the
money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’
When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many
possessions.
Then Jesus
looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who
have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at
these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter
the kingdom of God! 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.’ They were greatly
astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at
them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all
things are possible.’
Peter began to
say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said,
‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or
mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the
good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers
and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age
to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be
first.’
I remember distinctly the very first time I heard this
story. I was in high school, and it was my first time in a church service. I
was a hired musician for the day at a Presbyterian church across town from my
house, in West Valley which was everything you imagine when you hear those
words.
This story was read and I thought “dang, this guy doesn’t
mess around.”
The pastor stood up and I will never forget his first words:
“Jesus doesn’t mean you have to sell all your stuff and give away all your
money.”
I have no idea what the rest of the sermon was about,
because in one sentence he proved to me every stereotype of religion was true.
Not only did they not really believe this Jesus guy, but they were going to
find a way to twist his words to justify their big houses, nice cars, and
sparkly jewelry while over in my neighborhood my family was helping out a woman
who couldn’t afford olives to make Thanksgiving dinner special for her kids.
In one sentence, he told me, on my first visit to a church,
that going to church wasn’t about being like Jesus.
There were two services that day. I stayed through the
special music at the second and then, when I was finished playing, I left, in
the middle of the service. I had no need or interest to hear the sermon a
second time—I’d heard plenty. I didn’t go into church for several years after
that, though I certainly talked about that one time.
The way that pastor probably interpreted the story is a
common one—that Jesus was speaking only to this man, or that he was saying that
the things that get in the way of our relationship with God need to go (but
that might not be possessions and money for all of us). He probably perpetuated
the myth that there was a small gate in Jerusalem called “the eye of the
needle”—a myth created in the middle ages by a preacher who wanted to soften
the blow of Jesus’ words for his patron. Or maybe he used the one about the
word “camel” and the word “rope” being very similar.
Here’s the thing about those interpretations: they sound an
awful lot like a way to justify our comfortable lifestyles and very little like
Jesus. And when I hear it, I wonder what else we’re willing to justify,
regardless of what Jesus says? We already talk our way around “love your
enemies” and around “put away your sword” and “blessed are the peacemakers.”
When someone listens to us talk about these things Jesus said, do they assume
the same thing I did that day 20 years ago—that we have no intention of even
trying to be Christlike?
Jesus is pretty blunt in this story. We are always listening
to parables and wondering why Jesus can’t give a straight answer…well, here’s a
straight answer, but we may not like it, because it feels so very extreme.
The man seems earnest in his seeking. He wants to know how
to be faithful and to experience God’s loving presence. Jesus tells him to keep
commandments 5-10, the ones about not harming your neighbor—don’t murder,
steal, or commit adultery, honor your father and mother. And the man says he
has obeyed them all.
So Jesus looks at the man—really looks at him, sees him to
his core. And Jesus loved him—loved
him enough to tell him the truth: that now it was time to keep the first half
of the commandments too, the ones about love rather than just not-harm. Sell
everything and give the money away, and come, follow me. Jesus loved this man
enough to look him in the eye and say: the idols of your life have to go—and not
just your stuff, but the security it represents for you and the indifference it
shows to others. Redistribute your wealth as a sign that you love God and your
neighbor, and come walk this road with me.
It’s pretty extreme. Sell everything. Give it all
away. The disciples protest and Jesus both commends them and reiterates: leave
it all—family and property, everything that tells us who we are. He uses an
example: a camel, the largest animal any of them would know, and the eye of a
needle, the smallest opening any of them would regularly encounter. That’s how
hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom. And in case we
missed the extremes at play, he finishes with “the first will be last, and the last will be first.”
We want desperately to ease our discomfort and find a way to
make Jesus a proponent of moderation in all things. But there’s nothing
moderate here—it’s all or nothing. Moderation was what the man wanted to hear
too—he has led a good life, followed the commandments. But Jesus loved him
enough to say the hard thing: that the path to abundant life is not wide enough
for all that he carried.
 |
| this is me, riding a camel in September 2005. Riding a camel is not that comfortable. |
And secondly, most of us have no intention of following
Jesus this way either. Now, maybe some of us are already sacrificial givers,
tithing and giving an offering that represents our gratitude for what God has
done. I don’t know about you but I'm uncomfortable with Jesus’ words here. I’m
no biblical literalist, but I have to wonder: what if he meant it? Finding out
that the whole gate thing and the camel-rope mix-up thing were both made up by
preachers as uncomfortable as I am, and that Jesus is almost certainly talking
about a real live camel and an actual tiny needle as a representation of how
hard it will be for me—because even
though I am not wealthy here, I am on a global scale—to enter the kingdom of
God…well, let’s just say that shocked and grieving are polite descriptions of
how I feel about it.
If we want him to be talking about something else, I think
we need to be honest about that—that we would rather Jess be talking to us
about something else that gets in the way of our ability to follow him. And
then whatever that thing is, we need to see if we’re willing to be just as
extreme. Are we willing to give up every little bit of our partisan rancor and
bickering, and actually work for the common good? Are we willing to give up
every aspect of our love of violence—in our language, in our posturing, in our
search for security—and instead learn to love our enemy? Are we willing to give
up our nationalism and seek peace for all of God’s world? Are we willing to
completely wipe out our indifference to the way other people are affected by
our economic and social and political choices? Are we willing to give up any
sense that we can secure our own safety or construct our own identity, and
place our trust entirely in God? Or are we looking for ways we can make Jesus a
moderate?
Lent is a season when we often disrupt our routine—maybe we
fast from something, or maybe we take on something new. It’s a season when we
examine our interior lives and look for ways to get rid of those things that hinder
our discipleship, those things that we have decided—whether consciously or
unconsciously—are more important than God’s call.
Jesus looks at us and loves us—not like hallmark cards and
pink hearts love, but like giving everything including himself to us love. This
isn’t a candy-hearts crush, it’s the kind of love that speaks truth and calls
us into real life. To follow him will ask much of us. To follow him will turn
everything we know upside down. To follow him will change us, and change the
world. For with God, all things are possible.
May it be so. Amen.
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