Camels

The lessons we hear each Sunday follow a calendar that was set up years ago. Sometimes I love the lectionary. Sometimes I hate it. And then there are weeks like this, when I’m not sure whether the lectionary is a blessing or a curse.

Because, you see, we’re starting our annual stewardship campaign next week, and here Jesus is talking about camels and eyes of needles.

It’s so very tempting to turn this morning’s sermon into a fundraising pitch. But I don’t think that would do today’s Gospel justice. The Gospel is about a lot more than church finances.

Most of us here this morning probably wouldn’t call ourselves rich. But if you have a roof over your head, clean water, electricity, a reasonably secure food supply, at least some degree of health care, you’re doing pretty well. Whether we realize it or not, in historical terms and in global terms, most of us actually are rich.

And it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

The last time this lesson came up in the lectionary, the dean of my seminary posted on Twitter that he anticipated a lot of sermons telling listeners how to be better camels. Someone else quipped that there wasn’t any need. If you’re wealthy enough, you can have a needle made with an eye big enough for a camel to fit through with room to spare.

For centuries, Christians have tried to wiggle out of Jesus’s language. Maybe the eye of the needle was the nickname of a really narrow gate into Jerusalem that a camel could just barely squeeze through. Maybe the writer got the word wrong in translating from Aramaic to Greek and Jesus was really talking about a rope going through a needle, which perhaps you could thread with a lot of patience and a bit of unraveling.

We can follow their lead. We can close our ears every time Jesus talks about wealth and possessions and money. But I worry that we shortchange the Gospel when we refuse to hear the bits we don’t want to hear.

In my own experience, it’s the bits I don’t want to hear that I most need to hear.

What might we learn if we faced Jesus’s words head on?

It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

And then there’s Jesus’s instruction to the rich man to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor.

A few Christians in history have taken Jesus at his word here. St. Francis, who we remembered last week, rather spectacularly gave up all his wealth, much to his family’s dismay. Stories say that he stripped off his elegant clothes and ran naked through the streets. I guess that’s one way to make the point that you truly intend to give up all your possessions, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

Some monks and nuns take vows of poverty. But most Christians don’t. I’ve occasionally aspired to minimalism, but the sheer number of coffee mugs I own reminds me how far I am from achieving it.

But Jesus said, “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Jesus’s words are challenging. They’re meant to be.

Here’s one lesson I take from today’s Gospel and other biblical teaching about money:

Whatever else you say about it, money is important, and it can be a barrier in our relationship with God.

Money isn’t evil. It can be a gift, a source of great good. We can understand it as a responsibility held in trust for others. It can provide security, and that isn’t a bad thing.

But money can also be a problem. It can allow us to pretend that the poor of the world don’t exist. It can allow us not to see. And it can tempt us to rely on our own resources at times when we ought to trust in God.

Ask yourself this, about wealth and possessions or about anything that you hold on to too tightly: If you can’t do without it, if you, like the man in today’s Gospel, would go away grieving if asked to give it up— If you can’t do without it, is it serving you, or are you serving it?

Whatever degree of wealth we each have, we can all benefit from asking ourselves how our money and our fear of losing it shapes our behavior.

We can all do better, we can all hold our possessions more lightly, we can all give more, we can all worry less.

I guess this is the “how to be a better camel” part of the sermon.

But there’s another insight to be found in today’s Gospel.

Notice something. Before Jesus asked the rich man to give up his wealth, he looked at him and he loved him. The man didn’t have to do anything to earn that love. Jesus looked at him and he loved him.

He looks at you and he loves you.

Take Jesus’s words as the challenge that they are. Think and pray about how they might apply to you. But know that God’s love for you comes first. And that with God every step matters, and with God all things are possible.

I own too much stuff. That isn’t likely to change anytime soon. But I can try harder to hold it lightly. To be willing to give up what I have at need. To use my resources to help others where I can.

And above all to remember that God’s love comes first.

Whatever we do with our money should flow from that knowledge, from that certainty.

And so, yes, over the next few weeks, we’ll be asking you for money. We’ll be asking you to support the work that we all do here together. We’ll be asking you to be generous. We’ll be talking about stewardship.

But stewardship is about a lot more than money.

The theme of our stewardship campaign this year comes from the letter to the Ephesians: Walk in love. “Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.” I say those words almost every Sunday as an offertory sentence, beginning the time in the service at which we offer money, bread, wine, and our very selves to God.

“Walk in love.” Loving others and knowing that we ourselves are loved. When it comes to untangling all this money stuff, walking in love is a pretty good place to start.