Sunday Homily - October 21st, 2018 - Being Rich (Without Possessions)
Jesus and the Rich Young Man
by Heinrich Hofmann (1889)
I.
but I’ll go ahead and inform y’all if you don’t know already:
I’m a huge fan of the art of translating language.
Translation is one of the most interesting things about our world.
Phrases spoken on one language,
make absolutely no sense in another.
“Bite the bullet”: great phrase!
Colloquially, it is usually used to do something painful
or to make a difficult decision.
But, at the plain words themselves,
especially if you have English
as a second language,
this phrase makes next to no sense.
And that is because, at least according to some sources,
this phrase came from WWI when wounded soldiers
had to be operated on without anesthetic
and they literally used bullets to bite down on
to deal with the pain that they endured.
Another one: “Fly by the seat of their pants.”
This is one of my favorites, because it is such an obscure phrase.
Colloquially, it means to improvise, or to perform a feat
without having planned it out.
Literally, it is to make it up
as you go along.
And it has the weirdest origin story!
It originally was used as an aviation phrase,
and was popularized by a 1938 news headline
about a pilot who flew an airplane
without any instruments other than a compass
sitting on his lap.
And, instead of his planned
flight from Brooklyn New York to California
going as planned, he instead flew the wrong direction
and ended up in Ireland!
[see the following link for more details:
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/139400.html]
And then, we have yet another phrase
that seems to make no sense
unless we know where exactly it comes from.
And we have actually already heard it this morning
from our Gospel text:
“Fitting a camel through the eye of a needle."
II.
This phrase occurs in the middle of a very complex account
of Jesus’s encounter with a rich man.
And Jesus utters this phrase
about the rich in general:
“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.”
Jesus is speaking in hyperbole,
intense and vivid language that would give his hearers
a visual image of his point.
And let’s admit something, y’all:
as people who live in the United States in the 21st century,
a country rich beyond compare with most of the world,
what Jesus says this morning is terrifying.
It is easier for a Middle-Eastern pack animal,
a camel,
to be threaded through a needle
that it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God?
But, friends, we miss what Jesus is getting at
if we don’t pay close attention to the context of his teaching.
Because he utters this phrase after a particularly heart-wrenching dialogue
with a man who, at least by all accounts,
may well have actually become a disciple of Jesus.
Notice their exchange:
this rich man comes and bows at Jesus’s feet,
calls him “Good teacher,”
which was a very unusual thing to call a Rabbi
unless one was being utterly sincere
even above cultural norms.
[see Oxford Commentary on the Bible for more details]
And, as a good keeper of the Law,
he has kept the commandments from his youth,
and Jesus’s reaction tells us this morning
that this man was sincere!
Jesus looks at him and LOVES him.
And because Jesus loves him, Jesus gives him an invitation,
THE invitation,
to come follow him as his own disciple.
And to do so, Jesus invites the man to divest himself of things passing
and to embrace things eternal:
would he sell his possessions and give them to the poor
and follow Jesus?
The truth is, y’all, is that the Scriptures do not tell us
whether this man followed or not.
However, I do want to point out this morning
that most times when we talk about this account,
we treat it as if this man went away grieving
because he couldn’t, wouldn’t sell his possessions.
But I don’t think that’s the sense you are supposed to get.
Because Jesus’s little “camel through the eye of a needle” phrase
comes at a very interesting point in the story.
Jesus says this as the man is walking away,
as the man is inwardly saddened at the prospect of selling
all of the possessions in his life.
Rather than seeing this “eye of a needle” phrase as only hyperbole,
what if we took Jesus at the bare physical meaning of this phrase?
A camel, a pack animal, used to transport goods and possessions,
is way too big to get threaded through that needle.
And the point is so simple,
that we miss it if we don’t pay attention.
Jesus is saying that it is impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom,
not because of their failure to observe God’s commandments,
but because they have put their trust in STUFF!
Stuff that, if they hold tight-fisted to it,
will make their loads so wide that one
cannot fit through the heavenly gates
of the New Jerusalem!
The rich man who walks away doesn’t get mad at Jesus,
or irritated, or frustrated.
Rather, without a verbal response to Jesus, he walks away
grieving over the things he has been asked
to give away.
That is not a reaction of someone who is tight-fisted
or heard-hearted.
That is the reaction of a man who truly understands
the cost involved in Jesus’s request.
III.
I think the man actually followed through with it.
I have no way to prove it, no way to argue it,
but I do actually believe he did it.
And what is impossible with us
is not impossible with God.
And God draws the hearts of the rich and poor alike,
calling the rich to let go of their possessions
so that the poor may have provisions
from the abundance of those
who have much.
This account is VITAL to our lives here today in the United States.
Do we here, who are rich,
have the courage to not be angry or irritated or snappy
at Jesus when he looks at you
and says, “Sell all you have
and follow me into the kingdom
of God”?
Do we have the courage to instead
soberly, honestly, reflectively,
assess the riches we have and to give them away
for the good of the poor?
Do we have the courage to be rich toward God
with giving a full tithe of our first-fruits,
10% of our money,
to Jesus’s Church so that we can continue to walk
in the path that Jesus walked?
Do we have the courage to look in our coat closets this winter
as it gets colder
and find those clothes that we don’t wear,
but that Jenny from down at the apartments
who owns no jacket or coat
could wear to keep herself healthy and warm?
Do we have the strength to soberly look at our assets
our cars, our houses, our yards,
and ask ourselves,
“How can I give these up in such a way
that we bless the poor of Searcy
who have no home,
no car, no yard,
no place for their children
to lay their heads?”
I’ll be the first to tell you all:
I’ve got clothes I need to give away.
I’ve got money that I’m grieving over and terrified to give away.
I’ve got cars, a home, a yard, that I haven’t really given up.
And yet, the reason why Jesus speaks this really really hard word
to the rich
is because our riches do not lie in possessions
but in our care, compassion, and love
that we show to our neighbors,
to the “least of these” that live
right down the street.
True riches is found in that kingdom
where there is no hunger, no homelessness, no sickness,
because everyone truly cares for one another
and is cared for by God who loves us.
True riches are found in the living out of a life that is so filled with Christ
that we actually are willing to part ways with the possessions
that don’t last forever,
to instead bless the lives of the poor and needy
in such a way...
...that we suddenly find ourselves
passing through the golden gates
of the New Jerusalem with no possessions of our own
but rather hand-in-hand with the neighbors
who came with us to Jesus through
the sacrificial love of Christ
that they saw in us.
What would happen if we modeled ourselves after the rich man,
who went away grieving because of our many possessions,
but who followed through with Jesus’s difficult request?
What depth of the riches of God’s grace would we find,
if we instead exchanged our excess, our physical possessions
for the REAL riches of kindness, compassion and love?
What if we found ourselves passing through the gates of heaven,
forfeiting the world’s riches,
and instead being made eternally alive
by the richness of God’s love?
In the name + of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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