A Camel Through the Eye of a Needle

A sermon preached by the Reverend Andy Chrich
on Sunday 25th February 2001 in Trinity College Chapel

James 5: 1-6

¹Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. ²Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. ⁴Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. ⁵You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. ⁶You have condemned, you have killed the righteous man; he does not resist you.

Matthew 19: 16-26

¹⁶And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" ¹⁷And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." ¹⁸He said to him, "Which?" And Jesus said, "You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, ¹⁹Honour your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbour as yourself." ²⁰The young man said to him, "All these I have observed; what do I still lack?" ²¹Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²²When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions. ²³And Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." ²⁵When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?" ²⁶But Jesus looked at them and said to them, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

`A camel through the eye of a needle' ...

A vicar stood at the porch of his church, ready to greet his congregation as they left after the morning service, and a small boy came up to him to shake hands. The vicar smiled in a vicar-y sort of way, and the boy said, `Can I whisper something to you?'
`Of course', replied the vicar, and he crouched down to listen.
`If I win the lottery', said the boy, `I am going to give you a million pounds'.
`That's very kind', said the vicar, `what makes you want to do that?'
`Well', whispered the boy, `my Mum and Dad say that you're the poorest preacher they've ever heard.'

It is a great disappointment to me (and quite possibly more so to you) that I am not at this moment listening to Pete Wilcox addressing this hard saying of Jesus. It will, in fact, teach me to choose a series on hard sayings, but we'll do the best that we can.

I spent my three years as a curate in one of the wealthiest parishes in this country. In the church car park on Sunday morning you'd look along the lines of cars and see BMW Mercedes, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, etc., etc. There were cars there with stickers in the back saying 'My other car is also a Mercedes'. People used to chat over coffee after the service about international finance and the MCC. Each year 1/3 of a million pounds passed through the collection plate. On Mothering Sunday I asked a little boy what he'd done for his Mummy this morning. He said he'd taken her breakfast in bed.
'What did you give her?, I asked.
'Champagne and smoked salmon', he replied.
But if you'd asked many of that congregation whether they considered themselves to be rich - a lot of them would have said, 'No'. When you're a millionaire, it's the multi millionaires who are the rich.
On the other hand, in 1985, the World Bank defined the poverty line as £216 a year. At the time, one billion people were living below that level. From a global perspective, every single person in this country is rich.
Which presents each of us here with a bit of a problem?
For if tonight's saying of Jesus' is to be believed, it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven - very hard - in fact you might say impossible. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. There have been various attempts to rationalise this saying ...
(Perhaps Jesus didn't mean a literal camel and a literal needle ...) Perhaps the needle was a gate in Jerusalem that you could only pass through on foot. Perhaps (ingeniously) you could get a camel through this gate, but only if it wasn't carrying any sort of load (so a rich man would have to unload all his possessions to get through), and perhaps if a camel is a small cigarette if you had a really big needle you could just about do it!
Most likely this is another example in Jesus style of teaching of hyperbole for effect, but the sense remains that it is incredibly difficult, if not downright impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and we're all rich, so we've all got a problem. Even the woman on `Who wants to be a Millionaire' who left the show with nothing this week, because she believed that, Archbishop George Carey was the Marsupial of All England does not have the comfort of thinking that at least she's not one of the `rich' who struggle to enter the kingdom of heaven. We all are, and we all will by virtue of being here.

Jesus said to the rich young man: "Go sell everything you have and give the money to the poor ...". When I stood up to preach in this chapel on this Sunday last year - the newspapers were full of the horrendous story of the attempt to airlift people out of the floods in Mozambique. This Sunday they are full of the same, and its terrible to see. In the meantime, whilst I have tried to be generous in my giving to others, I have come no closer to following the command to "sell everything yeu have and give the money to the poor". And here lies the first tension ...

Most of us feel something of a burden of guilt when we see things like the suffering in Gujarat or Mozambique. Guilty because we have never known anything like that which they are experiencing. Guilty because we have possessions and resources and protection. For some that guilt can become so overwhelming that they are emotionally crippled themselves, and unable to be of any use to anyone else. The Christian faith should come as a healing power for such guilt ... and yet, on the other hand few of us would want to be so free of feelings of guilt that we become blind to the contrast between Christ's ideal and our own.

Guilt about money can be unhealthy and unproductive. Firstly, because our response to all that we have received from God, the giver of all good things, has to be gratitude rather than guilt. We should be able to enjoy the good things that God has given - but at the same time, a sense that all is not as it should be, and a desire for a more just distribution of God's good gifts has to be an essential element of the Christian faith. If there's one thing worse than excessive, useless guilt, it's insensitive smugness and complacency. Guilt can simply spoil your enjoyment of what you've got without provoking you to do anything about the debilitating conditions of others, complacency stops you bothering about others anyway, but genuine gratitude can and should co-exist with a determination to relieve the plight of others in need.

So to the second tension ... If we are taking Jesus at his word, shouldn't we all be in convents or monasteries where we possess nothing, or working for charities and aid agencies and refusing anything but food and shelter for payment? Some early Christian commentators basically took this line. Eusebius in the 4th century, argued the following:

`Two ways of life were thus given by the law of Christ to his Church. The one is above nature and common living. It allows not marriage, child-bearing, property or the possession of wealth, but wholly and permanently separate from the customary life of human beings, devotes itself to the service of God alone ...
`The other life, more humble and more human, permits people to unite in marriage, and to have children, to undertake office, to command soldiers who are fighting in a good causea kind of secondary piety is attributed to them, giving them such help as their lives require.'

If this is true, perhaps because at Trinity we are all supposed to be striving for excellence, perhaps I should be telling you all to become monks and nuns. I was here for the female voice compline last week, and if chanting were the sole requirement we have some fantastic nuns in the making in the choir. If monasticism doesn't appeal to you, perhaps you should all become clergy, when at least you can be sure you won't get paid much. And if that doesn't appeal either - you are just going to have to accept that you're stuck with a secondary piety: OK, but never quite up to the mark.

But Jesus doesn't ever seem to talk about a two tier discipleship. One level for the professionals and another level for the rest. He seems to expect that whoever we are and whatever we're doing we offer ourselves whole-heartedly in his service. Martin Luther argued that if a job is necessary to the working of human society, then it's an honourable Christian vocation. By that token it's as honourable to be a banker as a bishop - a stockbroker as a nun So if withdrawal from the world to avoid having to deal with wealth is not the answer and if we become rich inevitably by our participation in the Western world, what are we to do?

Well, let's take a look again at Jesus' words. When Jesus told his disciples that the rich would struggle to enter the kingdom of heaven, it would have come as a surprise. Mostly because, in Old Testament teaching, prosperity is often taken as an indicator of God's blessing. So if the prosperous can't enter the kingdom, `who on earth can?', ask the disciples. From Jesus teaching, it would appear that the answer is simple: `Blessed are the poor ... or blessed are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' So who are the poor - and why exactly are they blessed.

Let's be clear about this. Poverty in itself is not a virtue - a billion or more people live below the World bank's poverty line, and that is an evil injustice. Enforced poverty is to be confronted rather than celebrated. Poverty can degrade and dehumanise. So in what sense are the poor blessed?

• When riches are stripped away, perhaps we come closer to what really matters. If you've seen the film American Beauty, you'll know that one of the central strands in it is the breakdown of the relationship between a husband and wife. He is beginning to question the values of American middle-class culture. She is driven by materialism. At one point in the film they almost reach a point of reconciliation, and they begin to make love in the living room. All's going great until she says:
  'Careful of the sofa!'
  'It's JUST a sofa' he replies.
  'It's not just a sofa - it's a $5000 Italian leather sofa' she says ... and they're back to square one.
• A friend of mine went with a charity called Latin Link out to Ecuador - he visited and worked for a while in a remote village where the people had next to nothing. When he and his team arrived the villagers killed the best animals they had to provide a feast for their visitors. Those with little often seem to be able to be remarkably generous.
• Faith is at its most real when its built on a clear of our need of God. The poor have fewer resources available to them to cover up their need of God. The media magnate, Rupert Murdoch is apparently quoted as saying he expects a religious revival in the West as people's material prosperity increases. If Jesus is right about human nature, sadly the reverse will nearly always be true.

So, why are the poor blessed and the rich always going to struggle to enter God's Kingdom? Because the coming of the Kingdom of God always comes as the possibility of transformation. So, we can only hear and receive that good news if we are aware of the need for change, liberation and transformation in ourselves, in our world, or in both. We can receive all of this when we are able to come to God with outstretched empty hands conscious of our poverty and conscious of our emotional, moral or spiritual bankruptcy.
As R. S. Thomas put it:

When we are weak, we are
Strong. When our eyes close
On the world, then somewhere
Within us the bush
Burns. When we are poor
And aware of the inadequacy
Of our table, it is to that
Uninvited the guest comes.

Jesus' words to the rich young man remain hard words, because like so much of Jesus' teaching they cut right across the culture we are part of. Like so much of Jesus' teaching the message seems to be, `Do not allow anything to hinder your ability to love God and to love your neighbour.' That's very hard, but God is very gracious, and by the grace of God, it is possible for even the rich to share the plight of the poor, to confront injustice and in doing so, experience the kingdom gloriously breaking out amongst them. When it happens it's electrifying. Jubilee 2000, the campaign to cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries had a big impact on a lot of Christians, and saw many at their best.
I want to end by quoting one of the organisers:

They were at their best because they stopped worrying about themselves and their future and joined hands with people of other religious faiths and none in a just cause. For once they resisted the temptation to privatise the Gospel. They insisted it was not just about their souls and their sins and their individual relations to God. It was also about their relations with brothers and sisters all round the world and the structural sins that deny so many of them a chance. And they seem to have discovered in a new way that Jesus and his followers are anointed by the spirit to bring good news to the poor. So the churches went into glorious overdrive with a public and political mission to cancel debt and change the world in favour of the poorest. They became as biased as God.