He is a good man, perhaps even a very good man. He comes to Jesus – he ran up to him, we’re told – and he kneels before him with a question. His approach and his posture tell us that he’s not merely asking out of curiosity; he’s not asking to test Jesus or to make him say something that would get him in trouble with the authorities; he’s asking with urgency, and he is sincere, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
We have heard the story before, many times. With him kneeling there, we can already hear those dreaded words from Jesus’ lips, “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.” We know the man will go away grieving, with his many possessions holding him back. Our hearts grieve with him as we watch him go away.
In the entire Gospel of Mark he’s the only person singled out as being loved by Jesus. He’s also the only one whom Jesus called who didn’t follow. Turned around and walked away. And we are once again left standing at the scene, wondering what we would have done, what we would do, what we should do in response to Jesus’ unsettling words.
The writer of Hebrews declares, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, … it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare.” The word of God is not safely contained between the covers of an old book, but living and active, and it cuts with laser-like precision. It gets to us. It unsettles and disrupts. It finds its way to our innermost thoughts and intentions, things we may not even share with our best friends, rendering us naked and bare before God. We have learned to wrap ourselves in protective layers, but the word of God cuts through them like butter; it is aimed at the heart and it never misses. “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.”
Am I too rich to enter?
Do I really want what Jesus offers?
Am I letting my stuff get between me and the life God wants for me?
Is my stuff getting between me and the life I really want?
Do I have to sell what I own and give it to the poor? All of it?
Maybe that was only meant for that particular man, and not for me?
I’m not rich anyway, not really. Rich is relative, and I’m not Oprah or Jeff Bezos.
Our minds add protective layer upon protective layer at the speed of thought so we don’t stand quite so naked and bare before God. Surely this episode isn’t to be taken literally, we tell ourselves. Surely its true depth lies in its symbolism—so why don’t you unfold the metaphor for us, preacher? Give us something spiritually uplifting to cover our nakedness.
It’s been done, quite creatively. In one medieval commentary, a scholar surmised that “the eye of the needle” was the name of one of the city gates of Jerusalem. In order for a camel to get through, the burden had to be taken off its back, and the beast had to get on its knees. This was obviously an excellent interpretation for a time when every bishop dreamed of building a cathedral: tell folks who wish to enter eternal life to get on their knees and write checks to the church until the burden on their back is small enough to let them slip through the gate. Never mind that Jesus told the man to give the money to the poor, not the church. Never mind that there never was such a gate. It certainly was a lucrative interpretation, but the word of God is living and active and sharp, and no effort of ours can render it convenient and dull or dead. There’s no easy button.
Just before this scene with the rich man, Jesus said, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”[1] A little child is the personification of need and trusting dependence. The rich man in today’s lesson is everything a little child is not; he is the personification of achievement and confident self-reliance. He knows how to get things done. When presented with a challenge, he has various options at his disposal, and a solution is never more than a phone call away.
But he ran, Mark tells us, to get to Jesus and ask him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus names the commandments dealing with our responsibilities toward family and neighbors, and the man replies, “I have kept all these since my youth.” Nothing in the story suggests that he is lying or bragging. Jesus tells the man, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor; then come and follow me.”
The two scenes highlight a great irony: the little children who possess nothing, don’t lack anything – the kingdom of God is theirs. Yet this man who has achieved so much and knows so much, and possesses so much, lacks the one thing that would open to him the door to eternal life. “Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor; then come, follow me.” He can’t do it. “Children,” Jesus says to the disciples, “how hard it s to enter God’s kingdom!”
Children he calls them, all of the grown-ups who are trying to keep up with him on the way—and like us, they are perplexed and stunned. The eye of a needle is so very small, too small to squeeze through—then who can enter?
The kingdom of God is not a matter of squeezing through. No amount of knowledge, goodness, or wealth will open the door to life’s fulfillment. The question is not, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We want to believe that with enough effort and control we will be able to secure our own future.
The real question is, “What is God doing to make life whole?” And Jesus looks at us and says, “Come with me.” The fullness of life we seek is found in the company of Jesus. According to Jesus’ response to this man, even those among us who have done everything right and have been very successful in every way imaginable, even those very few, in the end, do not accomplish our way to God’s reign, but enter it in the company of Jesus.
The good news sounds like bad news at first: we cannot save ourselves. But it is indeed good news: we cannot save ourselves; only God can. And so Jesus invites us to trust God with our lives and our future, to trust God completely with the work of saving us. And he helps us turn our attention away from ourselves and our anxious worry about our salvation to the needs of those around us: to the poor, the hungry, the unhoused, the little ones.
For life to be truly fulfilled, the perils of wealth must be addressed as well as the perils of poverty. Jesus gets us to think and pray deeply about those perils with his challenging answer, and his word resists all our efforts to domesticate it or dull its sharp edge for easier handling.
It may well be that Jesus’ call to “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, … then come, follow me”— it may well be that this isn’t meant for everyone; but the call could still be meant for me or for you. We have to let it do its work. “Today, if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts.”[2]
The writer of Hebrews reminds us that
the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.
The language of a sword that pierces and cuts may be offputting, but the reality it describes is a hopeful one: no part of the human life is beyond the knowing gaze of God. We are fully known. In Psalm 139 we are invited to say with the psalmist,
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
It was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.[3]
No part of the human life is beyond the knowing gaze of God, but this gaze is not the round-the-clock surveillance of our every thought, word and deed by the big eye in the sky. It is the knowing gaze of a loving God who wants us to finally be who we were created to be—without fear, without pretense, without hiding.
[1] Mk 10:15
[2] A line from Ps 95:8 which is quoted repeatedly in Heb 3:8, 15; 4:7
[3] Ps 139:1-4, 7, 13, 23f.