The Possible Impossible

The Possible Impossible
Mark 10:17-27
19th Sunday after Pentecost
11 October 2009

I was seven years old the first time I encountered the rich young man from this story in the Gospel of Mark. My uncle had dared me to read the whole Bible through, and I had taken the bait. I started with the gospels, and had gotten this far without reading anything that sounded particularly foreign to me. Most of the stories about Jesus were somewhat familiar from Sunday School lessons and Vacation Bible School.

But then one night I got to Matthew 19:24, which is repeated here in Mark 10:25: “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.” I had never heard this preached, taught, or quoted before. It was alarmed. I slammed the Bible shut, jumped out of bed, and ran down the hall to my parents’ room. I shook my mother awake. “Mom,” I whispered. “Jesus says that rich people don’t go to heaven!”

“We’re not rich. Go back to bed,” she replied.

I knew better. I knew that I had everything I needed, and a lot of the stuff I wanted. I had seen children on TV who had flies in their eyes and bellies swollen from hunger. I was pretty sure we were rich. In retrospect, I understand that we were a pretty standard middle class American family. But I think my seven year-old instincts were also right. I knew those words of Jesus were clear and hard and scary. And I knew they were meant for me.

Lots of people have tried to soften the meaning of his words. Many people have taught that there is actually a narrow gate in Jerusalem called “the eye of the needle,” through which a camel could not pass unless all of its baggage was first removed. After dark, when the main gates were shut, if a traveler wanted to enter the city, he would have to use this smaller gate, which he could only do if he removed all his belongings from the camel’s sides and then had the camel enter the gate crawling on its knees.

[Having ridden a camel myself, I find the idea of riding one that is crawling on its knees to be a bit laughable.] But it makes a sweet little story, the point of which, presumably, is that if we can just get rid of the belongings which weigh us down, we can approach God. In other words, there is something we can do, ourselves, to be saved. Just get rid of your stuff.

But Jesus’s claim is more outrageous than that. And his story about the camel through the eye of the needle is meant to be ludicrous hyperbole. He is not telling us about something that is merely hard. He is talking about something which is impossible.

The question at the heart of this story is not about wealth or poverty, about possessions or lack thereof. The question is about eternal life. The rich man wants to know how to get it. The disciples want to know who can have it. And the good news that Jesus offers is this: “For mortals, it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

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This story is essentially one of the healing stories. The rich man runs us to Jesus and kneels, just as countless other in need of healing have done through the Gospel of Mark. His running and kneeling show that his request is both urgent and sincere. But he is the one person in the entire book who rejects the healing offered him.

Within the context of the disciples’ wrangling over greatness, we have a glimpse of someone who does have greatness according to the world’s definitions. He is not a disciple, but not an opponent either. He does not resemble the scribes, Pharisees, or Sadducees, who test Jesus, or the soldiers, who mock him, or the passersby at the crucifixion, who taunt him. He looks like all the other earnest seekers who have come looking for a healing. He looks something like you and me.

Those around him believed that wealth and prosperity were signs of God’s blessing. But even with his wealth and status, the man realizes he lacks something important in his life. He has come to the One who has offered sight to the blind and freedom for the demon-possessed. Yet he cannot take the risk of the impossible life to which Jesus calls him. He cannot accept Jesus’s healing, because he does not yet fully see himself as needing to be healed.

And because he seems to reject Jesus, this has often been seen as a story of condemnation, a condemnation of all of us who may love our things too much – which is almost everyone. Ye Mark says this: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” Matthew and Luke leave this out. But Mark, always spare with words, takes the space to note that Jesus loves this man.

In Mark, whenever Jesus tells someone to “go,” it almost always has to do with healing, and it’s always tailored exactly to what that person needs. To the hemorrhaging woman, he said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed.” To the Gerasene demoniac, he said, “Go home to your friends and tell them what I’ve done.” To the rich man, he also tells how to be healed, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

What is the healing this man needs? What he lacks is that he does not lack. This man is possessed – by his possessions. Jesus is offering to free him of his possession, to cure him of his excess. But the rich man turns his back, grieved.

What about you? Do you love your stuff? Do you have more than you will ever need? Do you sometimes feel burdened by all of it, and yet still find yourself striving for more? If we get rid of it all, will we be closer to God?

What can we do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus’s answer is this: Nothing. For mortals, it’s impossible. But not for God. To say we must give up all our possessions in order to be saved puts the burden on us to save ourselves, and we’re not capable of that. There is nothing we can do. Ever. Neither possessions nor lack of possessions saves us. God does.

Even Jesus realized he could not save himself. He reminded us that those who think they can save themselves will surely lose their lives. But those who recognize the utter futility of self-reliance, who realize that by their own doings salvation really is not possible – those who recognize their need will be saved by the God who makes all things possible.

The problem with having so much stuff is that it keeps us from realizing our need for God. We use our stuff as a buffer against vulnerability. We use to fill the emptiness in our souls. We use it to feel less susceptible to the vagaries of life. It makes us feel safe and happy, and it keeps us from seeing how needy we really are.

The rich man’s secure status kept him asking the wrong question: what can I do to inherit eternal life? This was a man accustomed to being able to make things happen. Whatever he wanted, money could buy. Jesus’ response was the opposite of what he wanted to hear. Jesus told him that there was nothing he – or anyone – could do. Jesus advised him to release his wealth and give it to the poor – to get closer to the fragility of life, to take his own place among those who know they are needy.

There is a parade of people in Mark’s Gospel whom Jesus treats with special care: the poor, the sick, the demon-possessed, the women, the children. What they had in common was that they all knew they were needy; they all knew they did not have the power to take control of their own lives. They all lived close to the fragility of life. Maybe that made them more likely and more able to respond to Christ; it certainly made them more open to his healing power.

In many ways we may need to be more like them – like vulnerable children or like who know they are really sick or like those who know they are in bondage to something beyond their own power. Maybe we need to be like them. We need to recognize our vulnerability and our deep need in order to seek and respond to the One who wants to heal us.

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None of this is to say that we have justification to accumulate however much we please and use it however we wish. The witness of Scripture is clear regarding our responsibility to take care of the least among us, to be good stewards of what we have, and to be honest and fair in our business dealings. The rampant consumerism in our culture is at odds with the life to which Jesus calls us. We have to ask ourselves tough questions about how much we need and how much we have, and we have to find a way to live according to the witness of Jesus, allowing his way to govern how much we spend, how much we keep, and how much we give away.

Our wealth and how we use it absolutely matters. But our salvation doesn’t hinge on it. Our salvation hinges on God alone.

Nothing else is the essential thing – not our doctrine, not our denomination, not our determination to live the right kind of life, not our wealth, not our lack of wealth. None of that saves us, none of it fixes us, none of it heals us, none of it puts us right with God. Only God can do that.

A Jewish midrash records: “The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle’s eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?]” In other words, God only need us to open the door of our hearts just the tiniest crack – the size of the eye of a needle is enough – and God will come pouring in to set up room for an oasis.[i]

What must we do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. Not one thing. There is nothing you can do, nothing I can do, to save ourselves or fix our lives or heal our heats. The only thing we need is to realize our need.

The hardest news Jesus has is the best news we could get – our salvation is impossible. “But not for God; for God all things are possible.”

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[i] http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm - Biblical Hebrew and its New Testament Application: Hebrew idioms buried in overly literal Greek. “The camel and the eye of the needle.”