|
|
            
|
|
A Story About Camels
A sermon preached by the Rev. Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s, Bethesda, October 15, 2006
Verna Dozier died a few weeks ago. She was an uncompromising student of scripture. She listened, as few people are able, to what Jesus said and to what he meant. In her book, The Dream of God, Verna said many things that either made your ears perk up to listen again to Jesus or made you want to run away. One statement is particularly haunting – we can follow Jesus or we can worship him. [1] The worshiping is easy. The following is hard and mostly impossible.
Jesus was also an uncompromising character. He saw all too clearly what gets in our way of being the people God calls us to be. And he seldom had the good grace to keep quiet about it.
The gospel has a Jesus who tells it like it is and says the most astonishing things. His words can take our breath away, cause to soar and hope and dream like no other. But he can also set our teeth on edge and make us want to run away.
And here we are, all of us, sitting here with a sincere desire to do the right thing, to be the right kind of people. Here we are listening to a story about Jesus and what he had to say to the rich young man and we are not comforted. This story may be one of the most discomforting of stories of the good book. Jesus tells his disciples, tells us, tells the church, that it would be easier for a lumpy, bumpy smelly camel to get through the eye of a needle than it would for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.
This is one of those stories that makes it hard to follow him. I would like to just make a few slight alterations, just so that I’m not confronted with a story that has my name written all over it.
Yes, my name’s on it – this story of the rich young man. I’m rich by almost every standard except my own, of course. I make more money in a year than most people make in a lifetime. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. Nor am I asking for a salary reduction. I don’t want to be a poor person.
But I know that this rich young man and I have something in common. I am not comforted by following this Jesus. The only comfort I have is that maybe I am standing here facing a few of you who share the same boat. We’ll just have to sweat it out together and know that this church, like a lot of churches, is a church full of camels. [2]
We want to follow Jesus but it’s hard and sometimes feels downright impossible.
The rich young man thought he had it all figured out. He was blessed for his righteousness and his wealth was a sign of God’s blessing. He didn’t really need to speak to Jesus, but perhaps he thought he would just get a little affirmation that he did indeed have it all figured out.
Being a young man with an apparently high emotional IQ, he addressed Jesus with flattery. Flattery even then was thought to get you anything. He said, “Good Teacher”, that’s the flattery part. He’s trying to impress Jesus with a compliment and get a compliment in return. Tit for tat, that’s how it worked in those days, one compliment required a second.
And the young man continued, saying, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Strange, he knew that eternal was an inheritance and an inheritance is a gift. There’s nothing we can do to earn a gift.
But there he was recounting all the reasons why he has earned eternal life. He’s kept the commandments, led an exemplary life all in all, not just lately but ever since he can remember. He’s the kind of person that’s just too good to be true. Everyone says so. He wouldn’t hurt a fly or say a bad word about anyone. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. He is loyal as the day is long.
Even with all of that there’s something troubling him. He can’t shake that feeling that he’s not doing enough. There’s something missing and he can’t quite put his finger on it. Whether or not that’s what drove him to seek out Jesus I don’t know. Maybe he was just looking for reassurance that he was okay.
Unfortunately Jesus never was very good as telling people what they wanted to hear. He was very good at telling people what they needed to hear.
Jesus loved the young man enough to tell the young man what was waking him up at 3am in a cold sweat.
The rich young man was a rich poor man. [3] His wealth had him all locked up.
Jesus told him to get rid of it, the prison he’s in. Jesus said give it all away. Trade your gods for the God who sets you free.
That wasn’t quite what the young man had in mind.
Sometimes it is our material goods that give us the illusion that we are okay in this life. We lock our hearts away by clinging to our money. But the truth is, and we all know it’s true, we never have enough. There is always that little bit of emptiness that tells us we’re longing for something more.
Jesus is not saying that money is a problem and that we should give it all away in order to be right with God. What he is saying is that money, like good looks or talent, or our homes, or our families or our piety can end up owning us, and making us all rich but poor people.
We can have everything, is seems, and be the poorest people in the world.
We can have everything and yet have a hole in our hearts.
You see what we have, our health, our families, our good looks, our intelligence and our money – all of that is just gravy, just icing on the cake.
Who we are just by the fact of our birth is a sign of our rightness. We are the beloved of God, that’s our inheritance. We are prized and we have done nothing to earn it, nor can we change that fact by anything we do.
Baffling, isn’t it? Sometimes I don’t like it all – the fact that we all get to be loved without so much as lifting a finger to make it so.
The love is free but feeling it doesn’t come easy. We often get so bound up by those things that demonstrate our worthiness that we can’t feel what we are worth.
So, God comes along to bug us with those troubling words of Jesus who says we don’t want to hear and levels us with his honest appraisal of our lives so far.
Honesty is not always welcome, especially the kind that Jesus dishes out. I would rather worship him than really listen to what he is saying.
He makes life uncomfortable with his honesty. And his asking of us to ‘let go’ and follow could lead us to considerable despair because such following feels so impossible. We know that with all our good intentions and fervent desire we’ll fall back into our old ways. We try to follow but go back to our other gods hoping those gods will fulfill our dreams. We know it will happen. It always does.
We can look at ourselves as a bunch of camels and despair at the impossibility of these camels going through the eye of the needles. We could despair but hear again the story.
In conversation with the rich young man, Jesus “looked upon him and he loved him.” And later he would say to his disciples, “All things are possible with God.”
That love with which we are held follows us, as we try to follow him. This is no sentimental love that pursues. This love of God is the power of the universe itself and promises to take hold of every heart.
The rich young man worshiped but was left wanting. He had everything and yet he knew there was something more. That more said let it go and follow me and yours will be the treasures of heaven.
The sentimental God is what we worship. The love of God is what we follow. God’s love is real, trustworthy, steadfast and anything but sentimental. And that love will follow us until the day comes when we are able to let go of all other gods, to give over the holes in our hearts to their intended part, and these camels at last squeeze through the eye of the needle. For, ‘all things are possible with God.’
[1] Verna Dozier, The Dream of God. (back to article)
[2] Laron Hall, No Darkness at All. (back to article)
[3] Laron Hall (back to article)
|
|
|
|
