I understand that St. Andrew’s Parish is, today, beginning its annual stewardship campaign, so I suppose it’s appropriate that we heard the story of Jesus being confronted by the wealthy man who wants to inherit eternal life in today’s Gospel reading from Mark. This tale must have been an important one to the earliest Christians, because we find it in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. Mark tells us only that the man is wealthy; Matthew adds that he is young; and Luke informs us that he is a ruler of some sort. But none of those details really changes the basic nature of the encounter: a potential disciple comes to Jesus seeking guidance and Jesus tells him that he must give up everything he possesses – “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor….”[1] The obligations of discipleship, in other words, are total.

Preachers through the ages have sought to soften the demands of this story. Generally, they’ve taken one of four approaches to make the story seem less burdensome. The most popular for quite a while was to interpret Jesus’ comment – “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”[2] – to mean something other than it seems to mean at first blush.

To do this, they turned to the legend of small gate in the wall around First Century Jerusalem. Supposedly this gate was called “the eye of the needle.” It was so small that any merchant who hoped to get their camel through it would have to remove all of the cargo from the camel’s back, get it down on its knees, and coax the camel to sort of crawl through the tiny opening. If this is what Jesus is referring to when he makes that comment, then Jesus is not saying that it is impossible for a wealthy person to get into God’s kingdom; he’s saying that it’s just really, really difficult for a rich person to do so. And there’s a big difference between impossible and barely possible. This gives the wealthy some hope that they can make the cut.

Unfortunately, there was never such a gate. The legend was a medieval fiction.

A second way to soften this text is to suggest that Jesus made some sort of distinction between what is required of “ordinary” Christians, i.e., the laity, and what is required of “perfect” Christians, i.e., the religious and the ordained. There is, however, not a single shred of evidence that Jesus made such a differentiation or ever would. Certainly, there is nothing in the story itself to suggest such a division, and the Protestant reformation with its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers made it irrelevant.

A third re-interpretation is to cast the rich man as a special case. Relying on John’s observation that Jesus “knew all people [and] knew what was in everyone,”[3] as well as Mark’s words here that Jesus looked at the man and loved him,[4] preachers have suggested that Jesus knew this man was particularly greedy and therefore crafted a demand intended for him alone. If this is so, then the rest of us are relieved of the obligation to sell our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor; it doesn’t apply to us at all. But, again, there really isn’t anything in the story to suggest that this is the case and, as one commentator has suggested, “[that] Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command!”[5]

The fourth notion often used to soften the text is to argue that it only applies to the disciples called to follow Jesus personally in 30 A.D. but isn’t meant for those who came after them in later ages. But if that is true of this command, how is it not true of others? How is one to distinguish those of Jesus’ demands which were only for his immediate contemporaries and which were for Christians in all times and places? Obviously, one can’t! This argument simply makes no sense.

The demand cannot be softened. It is harsh and onerous; it calls for sacrifice and, when asked of an individual, it is impossible. If this is the test of personal piety and individual worthiness for entry into heaven when we die, nobody can pass it. But that’s not what it is! It’s not about individual merit and it’s not about the rewards of the afterlife.

If we had heard one of the lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures that our lectionary pairs with this gospel, we might have gotten a hint of what this story is really about. We might have heard part of the story of Job, a man who was rich and had everything stripped away from him because of a bet between Yahweh and Satan. We’d have heard Job protest the injustice of that loss. We’d have heard him state his desire to take God to court: “I would lay my case before him … he would give heed to me … I should be acquitted forever….”[6] Or we might have heard the Prophet Amos condemn the wealthy who “trample on the poor” and “push aside the needy,” encouraging them instead to “hate evil and love good, and establish justice.”[7]

Those lessons paired with this story make it clear that Jesus’ demand is not about individual worthiness nor the afterlife. This is a communal demand for justice and it’s about life in the here-and-now.

In the Gospels, when the evangelists use the words “eternal life,” “kingdom of heaven,” and “kingdom of God,” they are not talking about an otherworldly, after-death existence. Like their Jewish rabbinic contemporaries, they use these terms to refer to not only to God’s rule over all humankind at the end of time, but also to God’s reign in the present age.[8] When the evangelists quote Jesus using these terms, Jesus always refers to the Kingdom in the present tense! For Jesus, eternal life or the kingdom of God is not something that comes later, not something to be attained after death. It is here, and it is now. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”[9] Present tense.

To inherit eternal life or to live in the kingdom of heaven is to participate in an economy powered by generosity, in the community of God’s abundance.[10] When we hear this story in Mark’s gospel, it comes on the heels of teachings we have heard over the past few weeks about leadership,[11] about generosity and good deeds,[12] about marriage, divorce, and children.[13] The late Eugene Boring, who taught New Testament at Texas Christian University, argued that the reason the gospels group all these teachings together is that matters such as “marriage, divorce, children, money, success, and ambition … are more than individual concerns to be decided by each person. …[In] a community … no decision is purely personal and individual.”[14] All these teachings focus on what Jesus calls “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”[15]

Jesus does not want the rich man alone to sacrifice his wealth and give it to the poor. What would be the use of that? It would simply create one more poor person subjected to the injustice that plagued Job. Justice requires that the sacrifice be shared by all who are wealthy. And who is that? It turns out it’s all of us because we are all richer than someone. And our wealth is to be shared with the poor. But who is that? It turns out that also is all of us because we are all less well off than someone. As an article in US News & World Report noted, it all depends on circumstances: “Someone can be wealthy living in a smaller city or less expensive state and therefore be able to achieve a luxurious lifestyle. Those with a similar income in an area with higher expenses could potentially be struggling to make ends meet. Numbers alone don’t tell the full story.”[16]

Justice in God’s economy of generosity and abundance demands not that the wealthy have less nor that the poor have more, although that may be the means to the end of what justice demands. That demand is that everyone have enough. The earliest Christians tried to do this. The Book of Acts tells us, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”[17] It’s very hard, nearly impossible for us to do that today. As Pheme Perkins, Professor of Theology at Boston College, writes in her commentary on today’s gospel lesson: “Resisting the pressures of a consumer culture, which generates perpetual needs for more and newer possessions, is difficult for many Christians today. Our excess consumption may deprive others of resources they need just to survive. It is a hidden form of structural greed that wastes the world’s resources and creates suffering for others we may never meet.”[18]

When I was in college 55 years ago, I belonged to a food co-op. Our motto was a saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “Live simply so that others may simply live.” Alan Culpepper, dean emeritus of the School of Theology at Mercer University, says that this is the point of this tale of Jesus’ demand of the rich man. This story “calls those who would heed Jesus’ call … to live so that the widows will receive justice, the children blessing, and the poor sustenance. If we can learn to humble ourselves so that the humble may be exalted, then before God the camel may yet make it through the eye of the needle.”[19]

This story calls us as a community, in the words of the prophet Micah, “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with [our] God.”[20] It is a communal demand, but what does that look like for you as an individual? How should you respond when Jesus says to you, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor….”[21]

I can’t tell you. As Professor Boring said, this story “offers a provocative and disturbing picture of the meaning of discipleship, but does not tell us precisely what to do.”[22]

St. Paul admonished the Philippians to “work on [their] own salvation with fear and trembling,”[23] and encouraged the Corinthians to “strive for the greater gifts.”[24] May God bless and guide you as you do the same during this season of stewardship. Amen.

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This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, October 13, 2024, to the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Elyria, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest presider and preacher.

The lessons for the service were Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; and St. Mark 10:17-31; there was no Old Testament lesson read, but the Revised Common Lectionary offers two alternatives which are referred to in the sermon, Job 23:1-9,16-17, or Amos 5:6-7,10-15. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

The illustration is Heinrich Hofmann, Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, 1889, hanging at Riverside Church, New York City.

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] Mark 10:21 (NRSV)

[2] Mark 10:25 (NRSV)

[3] John 2:24-25 (NRSV)

[4] Mark 10:21

[5] Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Eerdmans; Grand Rapids, 1982), page 388

[6] Job 23:4,6-7 (NRSV)

[7] Amos 5:11-12,15 (NRSV)

[8] See Hyam Maccoby, Early Rabbinic Writings (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 1988)

[9] Matthew 6:10

[10] See Paul Milligan, Two Economies: God’s vs. the World’s, Charis Bible College presentation, undated, accessed 12 October 2024

[11] Mark 9:30-37

[12] Mark 9:38-50

[13] Mark 10:2-16

[14] M. Eugene Boring, Commentary on Matthew, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Abingdon Press; Nashville, TN, 1995), page 394

[15] Matthew 23:23 (NRSV)

[16] Geoff Williams, Are You Rich? How the Wealthy Are Defined, US News & World Report, 20 April 2023, accessed 12 October 2024

[17] Acts 2:44-45 (NRSV)

[18] Pheme Perkins, Commentary on Mark, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Abingdon Press; Nashville, TN, 1995), page 649

[19] R. Alan Culpepper, Commentary on Luke, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX (Abingdon Press; Nashville, TN, 1995), page 350

[20] Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

[21] Mark 10:21 (NRSV)

[22] Boring, op. cit., page 396

[23] Philippians 2:12 (NRSV)

[24] 1 Corinthians 12:31 (NRSV)