“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.” This is the punch line to Jesus’ parable for today but instead of it being a referendum on being wealthy, I think it’ a referendum on our open-ness, our willingness to accept God into our lives 100%.
Most of us receive communion like this: [open hands] and like this [tip chalice to mouth]. Have you ever tried to receive communion like this? [clench fists] [clench mouth]
I think it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for us to receive the gifts of God through clenched teeth, clenched hands and clenched hearts.
To receive the Gifts of God, freely given for us, we must be open, we must be receptive, we must be willing.
Willing to let go of everything: our fear, our worry, our doubt and, as Jesus told the young man in today’s Gospel, our possessions.
Everything. We must let go of everything in order to fully and completely receive God. Because without open-ness and willingness, the Gifts of God will fall to the floor, discarded, unused, unappreciated.
When the young man heard this, indeed when Peter and the rest of the disciples heard this from Jesus they were very very sad. [Our translation this morning says they were shocked, but a more accurate translation is sad, very sad].
It’s easy to think that they’re sad because it means they have to give up the stuff they like—kind of like when folks give up chocolate for Lent—but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think they’re shocked, they’re sad because they realized, deep down, that no matter how much they said they loved Jesus, no matter how much they insisted that they had turned their lives over to the care of God, they really hadn’t.
Because to completely turn our life over to God, to completely believe all that Jesus is saying, to be willing to live as God wants us to live, we must discard all that stands in our way.
When Jesus tells the young man to sell everything, give money to the poor and then follow him he isn’t telling him to become destitute, he isn’t telling him that having stuff---even being wealthy is BAD, he’s telling him to get rid of all the stuff that weighs him down, all the stuff that gets in the way. Jesus is saying, open those hands, unclench those teeth and let me in.
Jesus is telling the young man and his disciples and us that what stands in the way of us inheriting the kingdom of God, are our attachments. To make his point Jesus references the material attachments the young man had---his stuff—but if you read more carefully, if you consider the text more fully what Jesus is suggesting isn’t a pauper’s existence, not a life of scarcity but a life of richness, a life of abundance, a life of blessing.
A life where we remember all our blessings flow from God. A life where, before all else, we thank God and we trust God.
We thank God for all that we have and we trust God to help us through the worry and the doubt and the clenched hands and teeth of life in our world, a world with an uncertain economy, a world with lots of debt, a world where fear is splashed on the front pages each and every day. You see it these things--the worries, stuff that awakens us in the middle of the night, the things that cause our teeth to clench and our hands to wring—these things blot out all the blessings we know are ours: all those we love, our church, our faith, our God.
Which is precisely Jesus’ point. Those things that close us up and shut us down; those things that distract us, those things that color all that we do: the worries of our lives---these are the things that keep us from entering into the fullness of God’s Love.
It’s what I’ve been preaching for weeks now, it’s what has been weighing on my heart even longer: when our fear takes center stage, we block out God. When our worry takes center stage, we block out God, when our fretting takes center stage we block out God.
I say it again and again and again: God’s love is abundant, it is expansive, it is never ending and it is available to us, all of us, all the time, no matter what.
But…hear what I’m saying, it’s available to us. Available. We can have these endless, boundless, overflowing blessings, if we AVAIL OURSELVES OF IT.
To avail ourselves of it, to receive the gifts of God, requires our willingness and our openness…. but when we live in a constant state of fear, of scarcity, of worry, we cannot receive the gifts, we aren’t availing ourselves of the gifts, we are blocking the blessings.
And when we block the blessings it’ll be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for us to rest in the abundance of God.
Jesus gave us this parable for the same reasons he gives us all the parables: to turn our thinking inside out and upside down. To make us question everything, to make us confused, to make us dizzy to cause us to lose our way.
Because our way is, more often than not, the way of this world. And the way of this world leads us to a place of worry, a place of scarcity, a place of loss. God’s way, the way that seems so illogical, the Way that at times seems so impossible, the Way that, frankly, at times seems down right irresponsible is the Only Way.
This week marks the beginning of our stewardship campaign: Praise God from Whom All Blessings flow.
This year you won’t see any thermometers, you won’t hear us speak about how many pledging units we need or how much we need you to pledge. This year we are focusing on how we---as a community of faith and as individuals have been richly blessed by God and we will acknowledge that all that we have, all that we are is because of God—for everything EVERYTHING comes from God.
This year is, simply, a blessings drive. This year we trust that, as a community, we’ll act as Jesus has taught us: we’ll detach from worry, detach from doubt, detach from sadness. This year we’ll open our hands, unclench our teeth and praise God, from whom all our blessings flow.
Amen.
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