This is the third of three sermons I preached in St Louis between internship and my first call at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, a church discerning its future. Its Holy Closure came in spring 2025.
Grace and Peace to you from our loving God, whose Word challenges us, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.
Ouch. Perhaps you, too, find today’s words pinch and scratch.
Today’s texts point to a bleak world. A world filled with trouble, with danger, with disappointment, with head-scratching truths. And the common denominator – well, that would be people. While the people in our lives can be our greatest joy, people also can disappoint us. Deeply.
The prophet Amos is warning the people that they are not caring for the poor among them in the way that they should. So their own preparations for the good life will go to waste.
“You have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.”
Amos covered the world they lived in with a gross generality: it’s an EVIL time. The Psalmist could have used the same words, asking God for joy and mercy in the midst of evil and unrelenting pain, most likely while on the way to the promised land. “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews warned of the judgment to come, but that Jesus Christ, the great high priest, was filled with grace.
And Jesus in today’s gospel? Somehow, that grace didn’t seem so obvious in his encounter with the rich man – although I assure you it was there. Somehow, with all of his possessions, this rich man was concerned about his future – certainly not his earthly future, but his eternal future.
The man ran to Jesus and knelt before him. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus’ response to him is puzzling. “No one is good but God alone.” What? Haven’t we recently come to know Jesus, through Peter’s declaration, as the Messiah, as one with God? Yeah, I’m sure of it – I preached on that text the last time I was here!
Thousands of sermons have covered this topic. Why exactly would Jesus reply to this man’s respectful question with this denial and more questions? We don’t know anything more about the rich man from Mark’s account. Was he dressed in a specific way, or was he known to the community as rich? No idea.
Was Jesus speaking to him personally, or using him as a lesson to a crowd? Again, we have no idea.
Was Jesus trying to figure out what kind of spiritual sin was troubling him? Perhaps it was pride – since he stated he fulfilled ALL of the 613 commandments in the Jewish law to the letter, since he was a child. Or perhaps it was greed – was he in love with his possessions?
Did Jesus understand that if he pushed hard enough, this rich man would walk away? <Shrug>
I wish Jesus’ explanation to his disciples afterward shed more light on the situation. But I think it only muddies the water:
“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Cue the awkward silence. The glances from one disciple to another. Each of the disciples must have been going through their own mental checklists. What had they left? What did they still own? Finally, Peter, never the shy disciple, speaks what all of them must have been thinking: “Look,” he said, “we’ve all left it all behind to follow you.” So, where do we stand?
I’ll admit, it’s a troubling text. This story has created fear among Christians almost from the beginning. It was texts like this that made the desert fathers and mothers leave everything behind to go listen closely to God’s voice in the wilderness. And it is these texts that make serious Christians wonder how much is too much. “I’m doing well in my job. I’m being offered a promotion. I’ve been able to invest a little, buy a nice home for my family. But Jesus said, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.’ What if our comforts keep me or my family from eternal life?” The story puts our focus on possessions, rather than directing our attention to God’s goodness and care for us.
Grace and Peace to you from our loving God, whose Word challenges us, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.
Ouch. Perhaps you, too, find today’s words pinch and scratch.
Today’s texts point to a bleak world. A world filled with trouble, with danger, with disappointment, with head-scratching truths. And the common denominator – well, that would be people. While the people in our lives can be our greatest joy, people also can disappoint us. Deeply.
The prophet Amos is warning the people that they are not caring for the poor among them in the way that they should. So their own preparations for the good life will go to waste.
“You have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.”
Amos covered the world they lived in with a gross generality: it’s an EVIL time. The Psalmist could have used the same words, asking God for joy and mercy in the midst of evil and unrelenting pain, most likely while on the way to the promised land. “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews warned of the judgment to come, but that Jesus Christ, the great high priest, was filled with grace.
And Jesus in today’s gospel? Somehow, that grace didn’t seem so obvious in his encounter with the rich man – although I assure you it was there. Somehow, with all of his possessions, this rich man was concerned about his future – certainly not his earthly future, but his eternal future.
The man ran to Jesus and knelt before him. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus’ response to him is puzzling. “No one is good but God alone.” What? Haven’t we recently come to know Jesus, through Peter’s declaration, as the Messiah, as one with God? Yeah, I’m sure of it – I preached on that text the last time I was here!
Thousands of sermons have covered this topic. Why exactly would Jesus reply to this man’s respectful question with this denial and more questions? We don’t know anything more about the rich man from Mark’s account. Was he dressed in a specific way, or was he known to the community as rich? No idea.
Was Jesus speaking to him personally, or using him as a lesson to a crowd? Again, we have no idea.
Was Jesus trying to figure out what kind of spiritual sin was troubling him? Perhaps it was pride – since he stated he fulfilled ALL of the 613 commandments in the Jewish law to the letter, since he was a child. Or perhaps it was greed – was he in love with his possessions?
Did Jesus understand that if he pushed hard enough, this rich man would walk away? <Shrug>
I wish Jesus’ explanation to his disciples afterward shed more light on the situation. But I think it only muddies the water:
“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Cue the awkward silence. The glances from one disciple to another. Each of the disciples must have been going through their own mental checklists. What had they left? What did they still own? Finally, Peter, never the shy disciple, speaks what all of them must have been thinking: “Look,” he said, “we’ve all left it all behind to follow you.” So, where do we stand?
I’ll admit, it’s a troubling text. This story has created fear among Christians almost from the beginning. It was texts like this that made the desert fathers and mothers leave everything behind to go listen closely to God’s voice in the wilderness. And it is these texts that make serious Christians wonder how much is too much. “I’m doing well in my job. I’m being offered a promotion. I’ve been able to invest a little, buy a nice home for my family. But Jesus said, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.’ What if our comforts keep me or my family from eternal life?” The story puts our focus on possessions, rather than directing our attention to God’s goodness and care for us.
* * * * *
I have to confess two more discomforts with this story, and I’ll end with a promise.
The first discomfort is where it lands in the lectionary. This story comes up every third year in October, about the time most leaders are guiding their congregations to discuss finances for the following year. Stewardship campaigns, if your congregation is on a calendar-year budget, have started. So the story of the rich man often becomes simply an object lesson of someone who doesn’t put God before his wealth. “Don’t be like him.”
Second, we never hear another word in the gospel about this rich man, and we assume that Jesus’ words never landed with him. We think the worst, that he chose his wealth over following Jesus. But all we know is that this man was shocked and went away grieving. We don’t know for certain whether Jesus’ words worked on his heart. Don’t forget, the text says, “Jesus loved him,” and he spoke the words that shocked and grieved him in love. We have no way to know if those words, with time and reflection, caused the man to change his priorities, no more than I know, any time I preach a sermon, whether my words work on people’s hearts and minds days and years afterward. We trust the Spirit to guide people into the truth.
* * * * *
So, finally, we come to the promise. Perhaps, like the disciples, we are left shaking our heads, perplexed, when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Are we rich? While not many of us are millionaires or billionaires, by global standards, we in the United States are rich. Most of us know where our next meal is coming from and have enough to share with a neighbor in need. We shop at grocery stores with 25,000 items, perhaps twice that if you shop in a large mega store. While not everyone has a gold plus health care plan, in a medical crisis, we know an emergency room will treat us. Jesus certainly would have thought of us as rich.
So, like the rich man, Jesus speaks these words to us in love: “'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' They were greatly astounded and said to one another, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.'”
Friends, eternal life doesn’t come from wealth or from the lack of it. From our status or lack of it. From our good deeds or lack of them. Everlasting life comes from God’s grace. As Paul will later explain, “By grace through faith, which is a gift.” God’s grace. Thanks be to God.
Amen
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