'The Eye of the Needle'
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on the 15th October, 2006 by Rev Dr. Marjory A. MacLean
Readings: Psalm 90:12 - 17; Mark 10:17-31 & Hebrews 4:12-16
Sermon
You are the young man in the Gospel story.
You are completely sincere and totally earnest, and there is nothing more important to you than to ask the biggest questions about life and death and destiny. In front of Jesus all your religious instincts burst out of you and you sink to your knees because that seems the right thing to do in His presence; and you ask what must you do to attain eternal life.You think you know what the answer will be, and in your mind's eye you're already measuring your life up against that answer. You know that you are honest and respectful and respectable. You know that you keep the written commandments in the Bible: you do not kill, or steal, or commit adultery. You are quite good at keeping up religious observances (well, you're here), and you live what society would call a pretty blameless, decent life.
But you're just that little bit anxious about the biggest goal of all getting whatever it is that religion is supposed to give you for ever. And so if there's anything you've missed anything on the list of virtuous achievements that you haven't managed yet you want to know what it is. so that you can go away and do it. And then you'll be able to feel a little more confident about that greatest question, that greatest fear, that mysterious destiny that lies beyond this life and beyond our complete understanding. Jesus' surge of affection and pity at that point must be overwhelming, like sitting too close to a fire. Jesus' heart going out to you must make your stomach turn upside down. You weren't really asking for an intense, intimate emotional experience; you were just asking for an answer to a moral and spiritual question and that would have been quite, quite enough. But here instead is Christ the Son of God reaching out to you as you kneel in front of him, and it's all becoming rather heavy. There is one thing lacking, he says. Not just one more item on a check-list to complete a perfect set of virtues and achievements. No, there is one thing lacking and without it all those other decencies, all those other ticks in the moral boxes will do you no good. Give up everything and follow Jesus' way, turn your life around to a new direction and live by God's ways, throw away the things that give you your clout in the world; and follow Christ.
The young man is gutted and can't cope with the answer because it was not the one he expected. It was not the one he'd spent a lifetime making sure he could live up to, and he turns away in great dejection. And so might you and I in such disappointment. There were in fact two disappointments rolled up in that little story, and sometimes we feel one and sometimes we feel the other. And sometimes we get them confused with religion.
The first problem is the obvious one. Normally this story is told as a warning against the excessive love of worldly wealth, as if the young man just couldn't give up his riches. I used to have it explained to me in my youth perhaps you've heard this too that the Eye of the Needle was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem. A camel could just squeeze through it if it sort of knelt down and shuffled; so you see went the explanation a rich person can get into the Kingdom of Heaven but they have to put a great effort into it. No, no, that's not the point and that's not what people meant by it at the time. The Jews sometimes used this phrase, and they talked of the impossibility of an elephant going through the eye of a needle; they really, really meant something really, really impossible. Good grief, which would you rather worship: a God who ensures that nothing is impossible by telling you that you can do anything if you try hard enough; or God who just goes right ahead and does humanly-impossible things, like redeeming us and transforming us and calling us and using us to do miracles and making holy the whole world. Who wants only the first of those Gods? But who can so much as breathe without the real God?
It's impossible, then, for the rich man to buy his way into the Kingdom of God. I think in our day and age we are sophisticated enough to know that it is not money by itself that people crave. We have all known utterly miserable rich people, and curiously happy poor people. What most people crave is the kind of power and liberty that money seems to bring. What most people crave is the control over their environment, their time, their progress in life and in work that money can buy. What most people crave is the kind of mastery and safety, leverage and security, that come with the control of worldly resources. The young man, and you and I no less, are asked to give away that kind of control and leverage and security, to become the obedient and not the controlling, to follow ways that are not under our command because they are the quirky and unpredictable ways of our God.
I suspect, you see, that the very first thing God did after He created the world was that He fell hopelessly in love with it. Actually I think He may have fallen in love with us and our world even before He created it, which is why it and we are made to be so wonderful. And throughout human history and throughout religious myth and story, God has always called people to throw themselves into that love-affair and become part of the adventure of being in love with the world, and with God, and with all His people. He calls us to go a little crazy, and let go of trying to arrange everything for our own ends, and let ourselves be transformed.
Which has nothing at all to do with putting ticks in the boxes of the kind of good behaviour that outsiders think Christian obsess about. That was the young man's second disappointment well the first one actually in the order of the story, but it's the one that isn't usually noticed first his discovery that all his efforts didn't count for squat in the measure of his religious worthiness. We can choose which bits of the Bible to obey; or we can ape the morality of our grandparents generation; or we can copy the virtues of some ancient Christian community; and we can do any of these things with the most earnest intensity. We can construct for ourselves a moral code that we are sure is God-given, and put ticks in every box of it as if it were an exam paper at the end of the semester. We can set ourselves a pass-mark, and award ourselves success, and preen ourselves on our arrival in our very own invented state of grace. We can use holy language, and do religious things, and spend time in the company of other holy, religious people who are bound to affirm our own way of looking at things. But kneeling before Jesus Christ who is in love with all of us and with the world; Jesus Christ who stopped at nothing not even death to declare and prove that love for us; Jesus Christ who has the power to transform any life without asking permission first: kneeling there we will strangely discover that He is not asking us about the boxes and the ticks. He is not asking us whether we have breasted the tape into the Kingdom of Heaven; he is not asking us whether we are good or bad or otherwise. He is only beckoning, beckoning us to places where we may not be admired, or we may not be in control, or we may not be respectable.
Young adults in this place cannot know and should not try to control where they will end up. You may end up with a great deal of money and power: but you'd be a fool to think it was really all yours. You may end up living a life of conventional virtue and undoubted respectability: but that won't make you superior to anyone else. But if you are lucky, you will end up living a life of passion and surprise, mystery and adventure, with a page of moral boxes unticked but a trail of transforming love behind you and a vision for God's world always in front of you. And as you pursue that vision, the achievements and standards and measures that used to seem important in your Christian life will seem smaller and less important; and the measures by which you judged other people's Christian lives will thank God seem less important too. You will be too busy, too excited, filling God's world with God's love.You will be following the crucified Christ; and what a terrible journey that may be, but what a glorious journey it certainly will be.
Thanks be to God.