“Through the Eye of the Needle” Mount Olive Lutheran Church Season of Pentecost Sunday Sermon October 20, 2024 – Mark 10:23–31

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday October 20th 2024: Season of Pentecost / Mark 10:23–31 “Through the Eye of the Needle”

And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to Him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to Him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for My sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends here we are again considering contentment in our Christian life. The Preacher, the wise King Solomon, whose wisdom was a gift of God—taught, in part, through experience to him by the Lord—writes, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.” Artist, Poet and Religious Crank, William Blake mused that, “You never know what is enough, unless you know what is more than enough,”[1] this is sort of a philosophy of life where you can’t know the safe limit of a thing until you have pushed past it. This is like the kid caught smoking whose father makes them sit down and smoke a whole pack of cigarettes to teach them not to smoke. When is a murderer, or a thief, or an adulterer satisfied, should they be encouraged to find out by experience what “is more than enough” for them? No. And so it is likewise with greed. William Blake is a fool, King Solomon is wise. Blake would say ‘strive after money until you discover how much is too much money for you in your life, you know, that point where you’re no longer personally made happy by it,’ while Solomon says ‘if your happiness is tied to money you will never be happy, for the accumulation of money cannot provide happiness to you, it cannot in The End satisfy the soul of anyone.’

Saint Paul warns Saint Timothy, in his letter to the pastor charged with watching over the churches in the area entrusted to him that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” Paul continues to say, “It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs,”[2] which is to say they have caused themselves much misery, distress and dissatisfaction all over their relationship with money, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.”

Dear ones here’s a little English proverb about contentment and a healthy way to look at satisfaction in life, “better are small fish than an empty dish,”[3] and so Solomon says, “Sweet is the sleep of a labourer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.” Learn to be satisfied with what you have been given in your daily bread, learn to be happy with a little and you will be better able to be happy with more. Fail in being content with more and you will struggle to be satisfied with less. Lose sight of what is most valuable in the eyes of the Lord and you will find yourself clinging to rubbish just because the World says it’s gold.

Dear ones be careful what you ‘wish’ for: lottery winners often fail to be happy when they receive their winnings, they often come to a sad end the harder they wrestle with the greased pig of wealth; and folks who come into a windfall of money may be too soon poor and too late wise, which leads to the other warning Solomon provides when he teaches that an increase in money can bring around people who want to eat that money up. The core, then, of this wisdom and what Jesus teaches in our Gospel reading today revolves around being wise with what money you’ve been gifted and what wealth, property and things you’ve accumulated, by the grace of God, in life. To look at them and see them for what they are, to be careful not to cling to them over and above the true and lasting riches provided by the Lord, in His Son Jesus.

When Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” He could just as easily have said that it would be easier ‘to drive a semi-truck through the front door or your house, than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’ And I don’t mean just plowing through the front of your house; I mean actually fitting that semi-truck through the door jams and driving through without a scratch. Camels like trucks were used for transporting goods, and rich people had goods to transport and they transported those goods to make a profit and that profit was money in their pocket, the kind of money that made them rich. Now when we reflect back on the parable we heard last week from Jesus about the rich famer and his barns, the major problem was that this man was resting his contentment on his surplus crops and goods. His relaxation, his future relaxation in life, his food and drink, the potential happiness of his heart were not built on his trust in the Lord God, the giver of the gifts, but on his momentary stewardship of these things. Blindly leaning on the gift and not the giver of the gift is a danger. When a person relies on money for their happiness and contentment they are in danger. Right before Jesus teaches about anxiety and contentment in the Gospel of Saint Matthew Jesus warns us, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”[4] Dear ones where then should we look to find contentment and happiness? Can you still be satisfied in life if you have holes in your socks and holes in your roof? If your bank account and your gas tank are as empty as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboards is it possible to have any satisfaction in such a life? Is your entry into the kingdom of God paid for with silver and gold? “Children,” Jesus says, “how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

How then do we enter the kingdom of God? Those who were rich in those days were also seen to be religiously devoted and spiritual in the positive sense of the term, but Jesus knew the hearts of the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians and to such people Jesus said, “Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”[5] The appearance of a thing, the appearance of a person is not the whole story, in our day Instagram and FaceBook and other social media platforms hide the rough and pitiful parts of the lives of the people who use them, they show a life of satisfaction while often sidestepping any personal struggle to be satisfied and content in life, but before you get to judgemental think back on the photo albums and baby books, those ones that were made in the past. Maybe you still make them even now, but they were more popular in the past. How often did people include the hard parts of life, the disappointments and sadnesses? All this to say when Jesus’ disciples heard Jesus say “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” their exceedingly astonished reaction was based on the prevailing ideas about wealth and righteousness in their day. Jesus was teaching them the hard lesson that true contentment and satisfaction was not to be found in earthly riches. This is like loving the tool box more the than the sense of accomplishment that comes from building something with the tools, so much so that you never build anything but simply gaze upon the tool box. A way of living that Solomon would call vanity.    

The disciples ask, “Then who can be saved?” And Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Of this same Jesus Saint Paul would later write “for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.”[6] Who then has accomplished the difficult task of being thread through the eye of the needle, who has accomplished the impossible task of entering the kingdom of God by their personal merits and efforts? Jesus. Upon the cross He had nothing of earthly riches, they were all stripped away from Him, in fact hanging their naked, bruised, beaten and bloodied Jesus didn’t even have a pocket to put a penny in and yet when He said, “It is finished,” and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit,[7] would He not be satisfied in the knowledge that your sins were atoned for, that the serpent’s head was crushed, that death was swallowed up in His death, and that His righteous blood spilt upon the parched ground of the World beneath the cross of His crucifixion would forever cry out for your redemption and not for your condemnation. The love of money could not buy this.

Now in our Gospel reading today it is Saint Peter who says to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed You.” But Saint Peter and the rest of them had not fully learned the lesson of the cross, the truth Jesus was teaching them concerning contentment and satisfaction in life. But Saint Peter would learn it, for later Peter wrote these words, “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” And Peter continues then to say, “He [this Jesus] was foreknown before the foundation of the World but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God [His heavenly Father], who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”[8] So that your faith and hope are in God and not in money, not in the accumulation of wealth, not in a surplus of crops or goods, not in the things the World vainly values over and above eternal redemption, forgiveness for today, and the love of God in Christ Jesus. You will not hear this preached to you in a bank, or on Wall Street or Bay Street or in the halls of Goldman Sachs or BlackRock.  

Solomon teaches “As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This [Solomon says] also is a grievous evil: just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?” Because the life of Christ Jesus was lived not for earthly gains, not for personal gains at the expense of others, not for selfish gains that benefited no one but Himself, Jesus’ righteous toil was not a striving after the wind. It is true that Jesus came into the World naked born of the Virgin Mary, and it is true that He entered death as naked as He came into the World, but because of His faultless life He didn’t leave this life empty handed. Saint Paul explains what Christ in His death brought with Him, what Jesus in His resurrection brought with Him into Eternal Life, what in His ascension Jesus brought with Him to the Father’s right hand, when Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians,

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says,

        “When He ascended on high He led a host of captives,

               and He gave gifts to men.”[9]

Dear ones in Christ Jesus you no longer need to be captive to the pursuit and love of money. Jesus has taken you for Himself as a treasure, and He has given Himself to you as a treasure beyond anything you could accumulate or gain in this World by your personal toil and striving. What you now have together as brothers and sisters in Christ is worth more than what the World gives, worth more than anything the World tempts us with. Hold fast to Christ, hold fast to each other, be at peace, and strive to avoid letting concerns over money drive a wedge between you and God, between you and each other—whether it is a little money, as small as a widow’s mite,[10] or a lot of money, as big as a billionaires fortune. In Christ you have all that you truly need. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] William Blake (1757-1827) ‘Proverbs of Hell’ (1790-3), Oxford Treasury of Sayings & Quotations, Oxford University Press 2011, page 395.
[2] 1 Timothy 6:10
[3] English Proverb, late 17th century, Oxford Treasury of Sayings & Quotations, Oxford University Press 2011, page 395.
[4] Matthew 6:24
[5] Matthew 23:27–28
[6] 2 Corinthians 8:9
[7] John 19:30
[8] 1 Peter 1:18–21
[9] Ephesians 4:4–8
[10] Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4

Photo Credits: Main Photo composite of camels at dusk from pxhere with a needle with thread from flickr.