No Rich People In Heaven

No kingdom of heaven

 "Jesus looked around and said to his disciples:" How hard 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. "

In any journey as a trek through the bush is exciting parts, like when we start out (maybe) and when we are near your destination, there are relatively boring parts, and there are patches that are just hard work. In our journey through the Gospel of Mark we seem to have reached an unpleasant stage of their journey - a very delicate line.

In last week's reading, we heard Jesus hammering divorced man (or so it seemed) and many of us said 'Ouch'. And now this week we have the story of the rich guy whose money apparently creates an impenetrable barrier between him and Jesus, and again, it is an unpleasant passage.

It is one of those stories that makes us squirm, including because most of us would really like the rich man - gentle, respected, upright, wealthy, and because many of us think we already are!

And this is where we expect the priest - as a charitable tour guide who has knowledge to lead his fellow passengers safely down more treacherous parts of the track - to get us through this seemingly threatens stretch without letting ourselves get entangled in thorns. 

It's kind of what I did last week. Jesus seemed to hammer divorced man in his statements on divorce and remarry, and I questioned whether there might be other ways to interpret what Jesus said and I ended up suggesting that there was another way to read it and that Jesus was almost certainly not directed against those who experience marital disruption, but rather individuals who were hypocritical and legalistic.

 

And maybe there is a quiet hope that I will be able to perform a similar act of exegetical sophistry this week - to show that Jesus' problem with the rich guy was not entirely because he was rich as such, but that he had another problem with him entirely, related to his wealth, but we must admit from the outset that Jesus' statement looks pretty impenetrable.

"How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven .. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a person who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Is it possible to interpret these words of Jesus, so that they do not mean that following him requires us to throw our riches? Well ... you may be encouraged to hear that there actually has been a proud history of interpretation within the church who are trying to do exactly that - to take the sting out of this painful passage!

The most famous of these interpretive masterpieces dating back to at least the fifteenth century, and possibly the ninth, and you might have heard about it. It is proposed that when Jesus referred to the "eye of the needle" He was not in fact refer to an ordinary needle at all (as we could use in sewing), but that he instead had to refer to a small gate in the wall the city of Jerusalem, known as the "needle's eye!

According to this thesis, was the "eye of the needle" a special little slot that was used to give people in Jerusalem only at night, after the main gates were closed, and this port was actually too small for a camel to go through below. The creature was unloading his luggage first and then get down on his knees to crawl through the opening.

Now if we can hold out historical judgments about the existence of the gate for a moment, you can see, I think they are fantastic homiletical possibilities that this interpretation gives to the priest. The rich man can get, but, like the camel, has its final approach to God, to be made with his baggage removed, and in humility, on his knees! 

As you can see, this medieval discovery of the "needle gate" is a preachers dream! The only problem with that is that it is also a piece of pure fiction! For while indeed there are references to this supposed gate in the Christian literature in the 15th century, while in fact the idea may be traced as far back as the ninth century, there is not a gate like this at all before the 9th century!

In other words, the first thousand years of Christian history and for the entire period before that, in both religious and secular literature, the suspected port never get a mention, and the only plausible explanation is that such a gate has never existed, which is why you will not find any self-respecting scholar today to support the 'needle gate' theory, and yes, if you think about it, it makes little sense that any architect would design a port town and forgot to make it big enough for a camel to get through because it gives even less sense that if there was such a port, the authorities should choose to as a gate to be opened up at night to usher weary travelers!

No, unfortunately, "Needle-gate" is an imaginative construction of the medieval imagination, but do not despair, because there was only one of a series of sophisticated tests done by our ancestors to reinterpret these wealth-threatening words of Jesus. And yes, the theory that I find far more intellectually stimulating is it to suggest that early copyists mistook words for 'camel' and the word for "rope"

In Greek, (the word for camel kamelos ') is only one letter different from the word for "rope" as is "kamilos'. And as we know, all the early copies of the New Testament were copied by hand. And so the theory is that early on someone wrote 'kamelos' instead of 'kamilos' and that the error was then unknowingly passed through copyists!

Of course it would put a rope through the eye of a needle normally not be much easier than getting a camel through, unless, of course, was Jesus referring to the kind of needle that can be used by a carpet weaver (as theory goes). If it were, to squeeze a 'kamilos' (ie rope) through the eye would take a bit of effort, but would not be impossible when the rich man, which may be necessary to put in a little extra effort to make his way into heaven, but there can surely find its way eventually anyway.

I find this reconstruction of the text to be imaginative, and yet it is honest, even less likely than the little gate theory. For one thing, while there are references to a "rope" to a "camel" appears in manuscripts dating back to (strangely) the same historical period, we discussed before - 9 to 15 century - there is no record of any manuscript goes back before that period that contain the word for "rope" at all.

All the earliest and best manuscripts are clear on how this statement should be understood, and only in case you still have doubts, we must note that in Luke's version of history he uses another word for "needle". He uses the word of a surgical needle, which was absolutely the same size as the one used in normal sewing rather than in the manufacture of carpets.

Now is not the only theories aimed at getting around the more obvious meaning of Jesus' words that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a person who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." There are others, but what fascinated me was that they all seem to have their origin in this period from 9 the 15th century.

So I have a bit of research into what else was happening in the church during this period and I found that actually this period of church history has been appointed as its own specific era, known as 'high middle ages'.

This period, which is dated from Charlemagne's coronation as monarch of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 years, really was the golden era for the church, at least in terms of power in the church and the spread of Christianity through forced conversions, throughout the familiar world.

It was the period when even the greatest of political leaders would have to grovel on their knees before the indomitable force of the pope, and it was from that era also, that the church left us two of his best known and most despised wills : Crusades and the Inquisition. And so it seems that the church in this time also left us with another legacy of dubious value - the doctrine that it is OK to be a disciple of Jesus, and to become rich! 

The "large medieval period" in the church came to a definitive break with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent devastating critique of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, and really, all these scientific attempts to reinterpret Jesus' warnings about wealth and discipleship should have been buried next to their writers as the golden era ended, and they probably would have been had they not been revived by some high-profile preachers of our own generation who were keen to continue the struggle to reconcile their Christian faith with their high remuneration packages. 

Now in truth, let me say that I do not really understand why our forefathers and mothers are going to so much trouble to reinterpret these verses when all you have to do to dilute the teachings of Jesus about the problem of riches is to teach it as I was first taught it in my scripture class at High School:

"The rich young king was obsessed with money, boys and girls, such that he loved his money more than he did Jesus. We may also become obsessed with things that can come between us and Jesus. It may be your money, or it could be your girlfriend or your surfboard, or even your studies that will be your focal point, and then comes between you and the Lord Jesus'

And I am sure that this analysis is correct, as far as it goes, in that the ultimate issue here between Jesus and the rich guy is his preoccupation with money than with money as such, so even what this analysis does not recognize is that it is always money, which we are concerned! It is our obsession with money that keeps us slaving away at the soul-destroying jobs instead of actually doing something more worthwhile with our lives, as is our love for money, forcing us to close our hearts to people in need.

And there was a time where I could preach on this passage with a high degree of moral self-righteousness, and when I could wag my finger at the great unwashed from my position of almost voluntary poverty. But that was before I got myself a mortgage, and that was before I took on the financial responsibility for Binacrombi Bush Camp, and that was before I had to fight several times to avoid bankruptcy and keep myself and my ventures in life, for it was before I had ever experienced the soul-destroying nature of financial stress!

One of my favorite lines in the movie 'Forrest Gump' is when the hero finds that most of his money has been invested in Apple Computers, and therefore he was very rich and will not have to worry about money matters more . "Well," says Gump, "one less thing to worry about", and oh how I wished me one less thing to worry about!

And yet there are alternatives to the soul-destroying nature of financial stress, and Forrest Gump alternative of a sudden unexpected is not the only one. There is another option, known as "faith"!

 

"How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" .. and how difficult it is for us to accept this teaching at face value. How difficult it is for us to accept that we can not serve two maters but Jesus' love excludes the love of worldly wealth. And how difficult it is for us to negotiate our way through this painful part of our journey through the Gospel of Mark, without letting go of everything we have!

"How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven .. It is easier for a camel to go through an eye of the needle than for a person who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."