October 11, 2015
Wis 7:7-11; Heb 4:12-13; Mk 10:17-30
Brookdale
Of all the mysterious sayings in the Gospels, one of the most mysterious is this one about getting a camel though the eye of a needle. Many ingenious explanations have been proposed. Some years ago it was popular to explain that there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem, called the Eye of the Needle, that was so narrow you couldn’t get a loaded camel though it. You had to take off his burden for him to squeeze through. A neat explanation, but it has since been discredited. There was no such gate. A more plausible explanation is that the phrase contains a typo: the Greek word for camel is camilos, but the word for rope is camelos. The typo explanation makes a lot of sense, since Jesus’ message here is that for the kingdom of heaven, less is more. A thread looks puny next to a rope, but if you want to thread a needle, you need the thread.
But more important, what is Jesus telling us in this Gospel? Does he want all of us, who are in fact pretty rich, to liquidate our savings? Should you really give it all away and then walk down route 96 to Ithaca and find a homeless shelter? I don’t think so! I think the message here is about priorities, and wealth is an insidious corrupter of priorities.
Our priorities are not always what we think they are. A young couple in Silicon Valley once listed their priorities in order: 1) God; 2) family; 3) health; 4) work. Then they listed in order how they actually spent their time and energy, and the list was exactly the reverse: 1) work; 2) health; 3) family; 4) God. After some discussion they made major changes in the way they lived, involving new jobs and a more modest lifestyle. The young man in today’s Gospel passage is similarly blind to his actual priorities. He believes that he wants first of all eternal life, but he clings to his wealth. In fact, it is more important to him.
It’s not that wealth is bad in itself. The two richest people in the United States are Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffet. Both have pledged to give away 95% of their vast fortunes before they die. You might think that 5% of many billions is still a lot more money than we will ever see, but each of these men has shown that money is not his highest priority. Bill Gates lives in a palatial home near Seattle, but he retired very young to devote himself to giving away the $42 billion of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to improve the health and well-being of the poorest people in the world and to improve education in the US. Warren Buffet still manages his investment company, but he gives his money to the Gates foundation because he trusts Gates to do the most good with it.
So wealth is not evil in itself, and Jesus does not want us to live in poverty. But we do have to resist its insidious temptations. Pope Francis showed us how when he refused to move into the traditional papal apartments in the Vatican but instead kept his modest room in the Vatican guesthouse. In a similar vein, Warren Buffet lives in an ordinary suburban home in Omaha, Nebraska, and drives an old car. His children grew up never knowing that their father was one of the richest people in America.
Helen and Scott Nearing once wrote, “Money has to be paid for, like anything else.” People often come to regret the price they’ve paid for money, in human relationships and lost opportunities. The young man in today’s gospel passage clings to his money, at the price of eternal life. Jesus wants us to choose better priorities. The kingdom of Heaven is like the eye of the needle: to get through it, less is more.