Today’s Gospel lesson picks up immediately from where last week’s lesson left off. You’ll remember that last week we heard about the rich young man who came to Jesus asking how he could inherit eternal life. Jesus lovingly began to explain that you just don’t inherit or purchase or do anything to gain eternal life – it is a gift of our Savior, pure and simple. Jesus knew that the young man had placed his wealth and his own self-importance before God, so He told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. But the rich young man just couldn’t bring himself to do that. As we heard in the final words of our lesson, “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”
Today we continue with the next verses of Mark’s account. The rich young man has left, and the disciples are confused. They don’t understand what has just happened. Mark tells us that they were “amazed at his words.” So what’s going on here?
Throughout the history of the Jewish people, wealth was considered to be a blessing. Today we, too, consider wealth to be a blessing – but there’s a big difference here. To faithful Jewish people like the disciples, the more you had, the more you were blessed. OK, so far. But to their way of thinking, good people were blessed more by God – were given more wealth – than people who weren’t so good. Blessings like wealth directly represented God’s pleasure with you. When God was pleased with you – when you led a good, pious, faithful life – God gave you more than those who weren’t so good, who weren’t so pious, who weren’t so faithful. To their way of thinking, the rich young man was especially blessed by God, so his earthly blessings should have been proof positive that he also would be the recipient of especially generous heavenly blessings. To their way of thinking, he should have been on the fast track directly to heaven.
Not so, Jesus says. Being blessed with earthly wealth has nothing at all to do with the blessings of eternal life. Wealth and money and power have nothing to do with salvation. As we read in the first verse of our Gospel, “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.’ And the disciples were amazed at his words.”
Mark continues with these words: “But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’” Now to me this verse seems pretty simple – but you’d be amazed how many people – how many theologians – have tried to make this verse say something that it doesn’t say.
People who want to marginalize Scripture – people who want to soften Jesus’ words – have had a heyday with these references to the camel and the eye of the needle. Some have claimed that the “eye of the needle” was actually a small gate built into the walls that surrounded the city of Jerusalem. The gates into a walled city were large – large enough for people, for wagon, for animals, large enough for many people and wagons and animals to come and go at the same time. But roughly twelve hundred years ago someone first suggested that a smaller gate led into Jerusalem that was called the “eye of the needle.” According to this theory, this gate was big enough that a man or woman could walk through, but was too narrow for a wagon. It also was too low for a fully-laden camel to pass through, so the camel could only make it through by removing the load that the camel carried and somehow convincing the camel to crouch down. It would be difficult for the camel to pass through – but it wouldn’t actually be impossible. If man tried hard enough, he just might get the job done.
Another variation suggests that Jesus is actually referring to a 6-inch-long needle used to make carpets, and the edges of some of those carpets would be bound with a rope made of camel hair. So in this case it would be difficult to thread this camel-hair rope through the eye of the needle – but it wouldn’t be impossible. If man tried hard enough, he just might get the job done.
The problem with the first theory is that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that a gate known as the “eye of the needle” ever existed. Archeologists have probably studied Jerusalem more than any city of the ancient world, and there is not the least bit of proof that this “eye of the needle” gate was anything more than someone’s over-active imagination. As for the second theory – well, there very well may have been 6-inch needles with ropes of camel hair threaded through them used to bind carpets – but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here. The problem with both theories is that they seek to soften Jesus’ words, to make it seem that perhaps people actually can do something on their own and by their own powers to gain eternal life.
This is an example where the original Greek text is easily and correctly translated into our English language. This is an example where Jesus intends for His words to be taken literally. Jesus is saying that it is impossible for a camel – the largest animal that any of his disciples would have ever seen – to pass through the tiny little eye of a sewing needle. It simply can’t be done. But this thing that can’t be done is easier than it is for a rich person – someone like the rich young man who had just left Jesus and the disciples – to enter the kingdom of God. It’s impossible for man to do it on his own. Impossible because on our own we always can and always will make other things more important to us than God.
These, my friends in Christ, are words of Law. They are words of condemnation. They are words that remind us of our sins and remind us that we can do nothing – absolutely nothing – to satisfy the death sentence that we have earned by our sins. We read before that the disciples were amazed by Jesus’ words, and now we read that they were “exceedingly astonished.” They were flat-out flabbergasted. And they probably were a little scared. They looked at Jesus and asked, “Then who can be saved?”
Notice how quickly now Jesus turns from condemning words of Law to loving words of Gospel. Verse 27: “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.’”
Jesus isn’t saying that rich people can’t be saved and can’t go to heaven. St. Paul writes in First Timothy 2:4 that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus says that “there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Our Father in heaven yearns for all people – rich and poor alike – to repent, to come to faith, to be with Him for all eternity in the eternal celebrations and joys of paradise.
That’s why Jesus did all the work that we couldn’t do by paying the price of our sins by his holy death and resurrection. That’s why He sends His Holy Spirit to bring us to faith.That’s why He gives us Holy Baptism to wash away our sins and gives us the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to feed us with the very body and blood of our Savior.
The rich young man couldn’t get to heaven on his own – no matter how good of a life he led – because ultimately his riches were more important to him than God. The things that he could earn or purchase were more important than the eternal life that he couldn’t earn or purchase. When it came down to a choice between his money and God, he chose his money. And that’s the warning for all of us. We may not have riches, but we often and easily put other things before God. In the depths of our self-centered sin we create our own obstacles to faith. We think that we’re focusing on God – but our real focus is on other things that truly and sincerely become more important than God.
When you go home from Church today, I’d like to invite you to try a little experiment. Cover one of your eyes with one hand – and with the other hand, hold a coin as close to your eye as possible. What do you see? You see the coin – you see the money – and almost nothing else. Not only does the coin virtually block out everything else, but your eye naturally and instinctively tries to focus on the nearest object, the coin. Beyond that, what little you see is just a blur. Now hold that coin as far from your face as possible. Remove the other hand from your other eye. You still see the coin – but it’s pretty insignificant now. It’s pretty small. You see a lot more. I still see the coin, but it’s not the only thing I see. I also see each and every one of you.
That’s what Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel lesson. When we focus only on our riches – when we focus only on our stuff – we can’t even see what’s really important. We can’t see Jesus. We can’t see the cross. In His life and death, Jesus focused on forgiving us of our sins and giving us and all believers the gift of eternal life. And no matter how many blessings we have during our years on earth, Jesus wants us to focus only on him and the eternal blessings that he so lovingly gives us.
Return to Pastor page
