2025-07-22
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
I’m going to be just as glad to have this July, “Ask the Pastor” series end, because the questions have been tough and make us uncomfortable, and I’m afraid today is no different. They say it’s a pastor’s job to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Well, I’m here to tell you that I like comforting the afflicted a lot better! But I’d be a terrible pastor if that’s all I did, if I didn’t take up the challenging scriptures now and then. But please know that when I preach to you today, I’m preaching to myself as well. So here we go:
The Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, sort of the old classic of commentaries, made me laugh in it’s essay about today’s Gospel about the camel and the eye of a needle, because it included a list of efforts that scholars have made, over the decades, to try to find a loophole in this text. Just a couple of those include the theory that there was, in ancient times, a needle shaped gate in the walled city of Jerusalem, and that as camels entered, they had to drop down on their front forelegs in order to squeeze through. This made it difficult, but still possible, for camels to “pass through the eye of the needle.” Also proposed was the possibility that the word “camel” here could also be translated as “rope.” I’ll admit that I was drawn to both of these theories for providing a way out from the sheer radicality of Jesus’ words. But alas, both of these proposals were proven false in time, by archeologists and linguists respectively. There was apparently no such gate, and the translation is, indeed camel, not rope. It would seem that the only scholarly conclusion about this text is that Jesus meant exactly what he said, that it is indeed easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to inherit eternal life.
But we can still be tempted to look for wiggle room, can’t we? Because the question can be asked who Jesus means when he says “someone who is rich” since wealth is all relative. Surely, I thought, his words must apply to those five men in our country who, according to none other than the US Senate, now own as much wealth as the bottom fifty percent of our citizenry, a fact which I personally and frankly find morally obscene. So maybe they are the rich people? Or maybe it’s all the one percenters, whose wealth would surely stagger us if we could even wrap our brains around what numbers at that level actually mean! And we could go on, defining the wealthy as other than us, couldn’t we? Because let’s face it, it is all relative! The problem for us is that compared to a huge percentage of the world’s population, we in this country and certainly we in this church are virtually ALL wealthy, aren’t we? Indeed, the richest half of American families owned about 97.5% of national wealth as of the end of 2024, while the bottom half held only 2.5%, according to the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve. So maybe they, or dare I say, we, really are the rich. Could Jesus possibly have meant us?
Well, I’m going to play my hand now, and tell you whom I think Jesus meant by “someone who is rich” in this scripture. First and foremost, I think he meant the specific man who was standing in front of him. Luke’s version of this story calls him the rich young ruler, suggesting that he was not only wealthy, but powerful as well. I think Jesus looked into the rich, young ruler’s heart and put his finger right on the central problem, as Jesus was wont to do. I think he knew that this man was, for lack of a better way to put it, hopelessly addicted to money and power. That his whole self and life was organized around wealth and power as his “ultimate concern” as Paul Tillich would have put it. And “ultimate concern” is another term for god. In short, the young man in question was organized around an idol, a false god. And like all false gods or addictions, it demanded ever more of his soul, his life’s energy. So in this scripture, I think Jesus was addressing any and all who suffer from the same malady. As the epistle says: it’s the love of money that is the root of all evil, after all, not the money itself. So the question today is, are you, perhaps, guilty of having an addictive love of money? Of relating to it as your ultimate concern? And has it, perhaps, grown to be something of an idol for you? Well, the problem again is how to discern this because the human capacity for self deception is massive, and addiction, by it’s very nature, is insidious and the more you have it, the more it tells you that you don’t have it. It’s called denial and is one of the primary symptoms of any addiction. It is said about alcoholism that it is the only disease that tells you you don’t have the disease. But I personally think that’s true of all addiction and that it’s what makes recovery so challenging. The condition doubles back on itself in a way that is cunning, baffling and powerful and tells you that you’re OK and not addicted, even if you most decidedly are. So I challenge all of us now to keep an open mind, set aside the natural human tendency to be defensive, and consider if we might, in fact, be someone whose life has become organized around a central identity of seeking wealth as your ultimate concern.
Perhaps a few diagrams will help. I came up with these when I was a chaplain at Hazelden early in my ministry and had to give a lecture on spirituality and addiction once a month. At the time I was talking about alcoholism, but you are free today to substitute any false center with which you might struggle: drugs, gambling, food, relationships, money, whatever.
The first is a diagram of a person’s life who has a healthy, non-addicted spirituality. You’ll notice that the center is God (or call it love or the mystery or the Spirit of life, whatever works for you.) The various aspects of the person’s life are centered around a healthy core, and the arrows point out, indicating that energy flows from the center out into the various dimensions of a person’s life. This is the healthy state, and how we’re designed to be.
The next diagram is the early phase of what I’m calling addiction spirituality- the early stage of the addiction. You’ll notice the substance, alcohol, drugs, in today’s case, wealth, has taken over that central place in a person’s life, and obtaining the substance has subtly become the chief concern, even if you don’t consciously realize it. You’ll notice the arrows now point in as energy now begins to flow, not out into life, but in, into getting and maintaining the addictive substance.
And then as the addiction progresses, you’ll notice that more and more of the diverse and healthy parts of life are taken over
and squeezed out by the addiction until, in it’s late stages, most of a person’s life has become about the addiction.
Recovery starts when the addictive substance is removed as center. But that is only part of recovery. Essential, as well, is reorienting your life around a healthy, life-giving center, what the twelve steps call a higher power of your understanding.
And here’s the deal- only you ultimately know if you are in trouble with addicition to anything, wealth being just one example. But here are some questions to maybe ask yourself: do you find yourself thinking about the addictive substance a lot? Do you find that when you acquire it, it is never quite enough and you keep wanting more? Perhaps most telling about wealth, do you find yourself hoarding it for you and yours to the exclusion of sharing it with others who have need, or only sharing it in a perfunctory way that frankly doesn’t amount to much relative to all you have? Or do you find that efforts to procure more are taking over more and more of your time and energy? And maybe most telling: are you finding yourself feeling acutely defensive and wanting to prove that this isn’t you, right about now? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you might have a problem and I encourage you to talk to somebody about it.
And here’s the thing: when Jesus says it’s impossible for a rich person to inherit eternal life, I believe he means eternal life starting here and now. The Greeks had two concepts of time: there was chronos time which is chronological clock time, past, present and future. But there is another kind of time called Kairos time which has to do with how fully present you are to the eternal now. And if your life has become centered around an idol of any kind, if you are addicted, you are passing up abundant, eternal life now by worshiping the false center, giving over more and more of the healthy, truly life-giving parts of life for the ever increasing substance in the center, in today’s case: numbers on a screen! And it’s not that God will withhold heaven later as a punishment, or will withhold abundant life now from you, it’s that you yourself are preventing it because the addiction has taken you over, the arrows are pointing increasingly inward as the quest for “just a little bit more” increasingly becomes the ultimate concern.
The challenge is to wake up now and begin eternal life here and now by returning to that first slide (back to slide one) where you are centered around the God of the living, not a little g- death dealing god. Millard Fuller, who along with his wife cofounded Habitat for Humanity, did this in a dramatic way. From humble beginnings in Alabama, Fuller rose to become a young, self-made millionaire at age 29. But as his business prospered, his health, integrity and marriage suffered. These crises prompted Fuller to re-evaluate his values and direction. His soul-searching led to reconciliation with his wife and to a renewal of his Christian commitment. The Fullers then took a drastic step: they decided to sell all of their possessions, give the money to the poor and begin searching for a new focus for their lives. As a result of that search, Habitat for Humanity was born. If you want to read about the Fuller’s journey, check out their book, The House That Love Built.
Now, I’m not saying we all have to do what the Fullers did, but I am saying that our lives can always stand some reassessment to see what they are centered around, and if they are something closer to balanced than dominated by an addiction. It’s that kind of reassessment and restructuring that is the beginning of eternal life here and now. And it leads to God’s vision of healing both for us and for the world that we read about in Isaiah 53:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them, Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly; and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (talk about spiritual health! There’s the definition)
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.