Sermon for Proper 23 B
Transcribed from a sermon given on
October 11, 2009
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande CA
There is a story from India of two monks who were total renunciates of the world. They went off into the Himalayan Mountains and found two caves. They had nothing except for some straw on the bottom of the cave to sleep on. They prayed and they meditated and they worked to be unattached to the things of the world. Things get a little musty in a cave in the Himalayas over the long winter so when spring came and the sun came out they took their straw and put it out in front of their caves so the sun could refresh it. Then one of them went over to visit the other, and as he was walking up he accidently stepped on the straw of the other monk. Immediately the other monk got very angry and yelled, “How dare you step on my straw!”
You don’t have to be rich to become attached to things, and I think that that’s what this gospel is about. It’s about our attachment to things. We have here a young man who has been living his life with as much authenticity as he can. He has been trying to follow the guidelines, the Commandments, and he comes and he kneels in front of Jesus. He does everything right. He is sincere. Jesus looks at him, and it says that Jesus loved him. Jesus loved him. It’s very rare in the gospels that such a thing is said about an individual person, but here it says that Jesus loved him. So out of that love for him, out of seeing this sincere young man and out of that love, Jesus tells him what he needs to enter the Kingdom. He tells him that he needs to give away or sell all that he owns, and give it to the poor and come and follow me. Sadly, the young man is unable to do it. You see, Jesus saw in that young man what his obstacle to a full life was – what it was that kept him from being fully alive and living his life with freedom and love and joy and being part of the Kingdom right now, as well as in the future. He saw that he was attached to his money, and his money kept him from being free.
There are lots of different things that might keep us from feeling free. Money tends to be particularly dangerous, because with money, you never get enough. I was watching 60 Minutes last week, and there was this interview with a man who did a Ponzi scheme that had brought in multimillions of dollars. This man was a successful lawyer. He was respected. He was wealthy. He had a beautiful home in New York City. He had everything, but he had a dream of having more – of having a larger practice with people under him. In order to set that up and have the wonderful fancy offices that were in his mind, he needed to borrow money, and he couldn’t borrow it legitimately, so he made up a story to borrow the money. But then when the payments came due, he wasn’t able to repay, so he had to borrow some more and some more, and pretty soon, millions and millions of dollars.
He didn’t need it. He had it all. Any of us would have looked at him and said, “My gosh, he is so wealthy. He has everything anyone could imagine.” But when you’re attached to money, there’s never enough. Each one of us has different things that catch us – that keep us from being completely free; that keep us from being the loving, loved, joyous children of God that God intended us to be. Some of us might be attached or addicted to drugs or alcohol. Or we might find that food keeps us from being free. Or we might find that it is our jobs or old resentments or guilt that imprison us. We may find that we’re in a relationship that keeps us from being whole and healthy. We may find that our relationship with a grown child keeps us tied in and that child from being fully alive. We each have our own ways in which we’re caught and we’re trapped.
I’d like you now to imagine Jesus standing in front of you and looking at you with great love. What would He say to you that you need to let go of in order to be the fully loving, joyous member of the Kingdom of God that you are intended to be?
We all have things that catch us and hold us back. Jesus said to the disciples that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into heaven. Well what does he mean by the eye of the needle? Some people have suggested that one of the gates to Jerusalem was called the eye of the needle, and it was a low gate that a camel couldn’t get through, especially a camel that was loaded down with stuff, and so you had to unload the camel in order for them to get through. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that was built by the mother of Emperor Constantine in the fourth century has an unusual door. Churches almost always have big doors, and the bigger the church, the bigger the doors. They’re very dramatic. But the Church of the Nativity has a tiny door. It’s about four, four-and-a-half feet high, and maybe two-and-a-half feet wide. It’s built that way so you can’t get in riding a horse. In fact, you can’t get in carrying a lot of stuff. You have to put down whatever your loads are before you can enter the place where Christ was born. And you can’t walk in with your head held up high and with pride. You’ve got to bend down with your head down in humility. That’s how to enter. That’s how Christ entered the world, and that’s how we enter where He was born. And that’s the only way we can enter into the Kingdom of God – unburdened by the things that we’re attached to. Humble. Just ourselves.
The disciples are concerned that a rich person can’t get into the Kingdom of God, because at that time in that culture, if you were rich, it was considered that you must be blessed. You must be important and powerful. The rich were seen as better than the poor. Our culture hasn’t changed all that much. We still see the rich and famous as somehow blessed and important. So they said, “Who can be saved?” If a rich person can’t get into heaven, who could? And Jesus’ answer is, “For mortals, it’s impossible.” But for God – for God, all things are possible. For God, the rich young man can be part of the Kingdom. We, with our attachments, can be part of the Kingdom if we offer them to God. If we ask for God’s help, all of us can be the joyous, loving people that God intended us to be.
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