“THE EYE OF
THE NEEDLE”
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A sermon preached Readings: 1
Tim 6:3-16, Luke 18:18-30 |
As
part of our series on the hard sayings of Jesus,
we look tonight at passages about wealth.
Luke 18:22, 25
”… Sell everything you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven….
…It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
A
little boy is going to Church.
His dad gives him two coins – a £1 and a 50p –
He says, son –
you put whichever one you think is right in the collection.
When the boy gets home, dad says which did you put in?
Well says the boy, I was going to put the £1 in,
then I remembered that the Lord loves a cheerful giver,
and I thought how much more cheerful I’d be
if I put the 50p on the plate and spent the £1 on chocolate,
so that’s what I did.
Then
there were the three clergy discussing their finances.
The English vicar said
“I take the small change out of the collection plate on a Sunday
to cover my expenses; the rest goes into Church funds.
The Irish priest said
“Because I have no other income,
I put aside the copper and silver for God, but the notes I keep for myself.
Finally the Scottish Minister says,
“I take a more theological approach –
I put all the money in a blanket and throw it up in the air –
God keeps what he wants and throws the rest down to me.”
Well,
with the reassurance that all collections here go without fail to Church funds,
let me remind you of that familiar verse from 1 Timothy (one of today’s readings)
-
“The
love of money is the root of all evil”.
Not
money but the love of money.
Money
itself is neutral – it can be used for
chocolate or collection, swords or ploughshares, for hospitals or hi-jacks.
But
the love of money – that is the real danger –
for that means we place material wealth on a pedestal
and subordinate other desires and concerns to it.
In
the days following Sept 11,
the World Trade Centre was frequently described by the media as
“the most potent symbol of our civilization”.
If
that is really is the case –
that our civilization is best represented
by a building of glass and concrete dedicated to commerce –
then we have indeed become a society in love with the false god of money.
But
loving money or making a god of it is no answer –
particularly in days such as these.
As
Martin Luther King once described the false gods of our age:
We
have genuflected before the god of science
only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb,
producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate.
We
have worshiped the god of pleasure
only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived.
We
have bowed before the god of money
only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship
that money cannot buy
and that in a world of possible depressions,
stock market crashes, and bad business investments,
money is a rather uncertain deity.
These
transitory gods are not able to save us
or bring happiness to the human heart.
Only God is able.
[Strength to Love, p. 51]
And
yet so often we prefer to follow the example of the silversmiths of Ephesus –
you remember how they attacked Paul and his teaching –
why? – because they were frightened that the Gospel
would undermine their livelihood in silver statues of the goddess Diana.
The
spiritual successors of the silversmiths of Ephesus
were of course among many others the slave traders
and later the arms traders of our own society –
But
not just these -
We are all tempted to put gold and silver before the wealth of the Gospel.
I
saw a lovely cartoon the other day –
two workmen are digging up the road with pick axes.
The road is bright yellow,
and they are shovelling heaps of what looks like yellow earth.
They have hard hats, angel’s wings and haloes.
One workman says to the other
“And people on earth actually fall in love with this stuff?”
The
streets of the City of God may be paved in gold,
but it is not the streets but the Lamb of God which we worship there.
Yet
so often we get our priorities and values all wrong,
like the man in scripture who built bigger and bigger barns
but then one day his life was demanded of him and all his wealth was as
nothing.
Tolstoy
wrote a story about a farmer who wanted more of everything.
One day he received a novel offer.
For 1000 roubles, he could buy all the land he could walk around in a day.
The only catch in the deal was that
he had to be back at his starting point by sundown.
Early the next morning he started out walking at a fast pace.
By midday he was very tired, but he kept going,
covering more and more ground.
Well into the afternoon he realized that his greed
had taken him far from the starting point.
He quickened his pace and as the sun began to sink low in the sky,
he began to run,
knowing that if he did not make it back by sundown
the opportunity to become an even bigger landholder would be lost.
As the sun began to sink below the horizon
he came within sight of the finish line.
Gasping for breath, his heart pounding,
he called upon every bit of strength left in his body
and staggered across the line just before the sun disappeared.
He immediately collapsed, blood streaming from his mouth.
In a few minutes he was dead.
Afterwards, his servants dug a grave.
It was not much over six feet long and three feet wide.
The title of Tolstoy's story was:
’How Much Land Does a Man Need?’
We
bring nothing into this world and take nothing from it –
And
between those two extremes what do we need?
In
the ultimate and broader perspective,
money and possessions are as nothing
compared with the real treasures of love and peace and justice and joy.
In
George Eliot’s novel, Silas Marner has turned into a
miserly recluse,
counting his gold every evening
and then putting I back under the floorboards of his cottage.
Then one day he goes to look at his hoard and finds
it is gone –
he has been robbed.
He is devastated.
But then the plot takes another twist,
and a very young child called Eppie appears at his
door –
her mother has died in the winter snow outside.
Marner takes the girl in and
adopts her.
Now he has a real treasure –
he has cast away his riches and gained real wealth.
Or
here is a true story from the USA just a few years ago:
A childless couple who
wanted to adopt a little boy approximately 6 years old.
They had visited several adoption agencies
and finally found a child that was a match for their family.
As they visited with the child, the wife said,
'If you would come and live with us,
you could have your own private room,
a nice yard with play equipment and all the toys and clothes you could ever
want.
Would you like to come and live with us?'
The
little boy hesitated a moment and said,
'No, I don't think so.'
The couple was stunned.
They felt that they had offered the child everything a child could want.
The husband said to the boy,
'We've offered you everything anyone could want. What more do you want?'
In words far beyond his years, the child replied,
'I just want someone to love me.'"
Maybe
in that moment the couple learnt something.
Glenn Adsett
was a minister in China.
He was under house arrest in the late 1940s,
waiting to receive word concerning what the communists were going to do
with him, his wife, and two children.
They said, "You can only take 200 pounds with you."
The family went home and began arguing about what to take.
The conversation got heated around typewriters, vases, and toys.
Finally they worked it all out and packed 200 pounds on the nose.
The army men came for them and asked if they were ready.
"Yes, we are," they replied.
"Did you weigh everything?" They answered affirmatively.
Then the soldiers asked, "Did you weigh the kids?"
Suddenly there was an about-face:
in that moment the typewriter and vase and books
looked like trash in the shadow of their children's combined 200 pounds.
In
the weeks following Sept 11,
I heard a TV journalist talking to a woman on the streets of Manhattan
and asked her how her business was faring after the disaster.
She said, "I'm not interested in making money any more.
My family and my relationships are the most important things in life."
Far too often we have all too easily sat
on our piles of gold,
and ignored the starving children in the snow outside.
Maybe we need a sharp shock to discover
that there is more joy in the eyes of a child than in a bank vault of money.
It is to our shame that we all fall short of God’s loving
generosity –
And what does that mean for us in the
end?
Will there be a place for us in the Kingdom?
Or will we be like a camel faced with a needle’s eye??
Well, one day we will finally reach
Heaven’s gate.
I sometimes imagine that at the gate of heaven we will be greeted by a beggar
in rags.
We ask him where we may find the Lord of Glory
And quietly the beggar will smile gently and say,
“Forasmuch as you did it to one of these my brothers, you did it unto me.
But still I love you and make you welcome here in my heavenly home,
though in truth you are dressed much better than am I, the Lord of Glory.
And will that be our judgement?
The horrendous facing up to what we have managed to ignore all our life.
that in hording our wealth we have turned our back on
Christ in the poor?
It will be hard for us on that day –
there will be such shame and regret for past missed opportunities.
Yet at the same moment such bitter sweet
joy
that we are yet accepted by the one we have so wronged.
24
Jesus looked at him and said,
How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of
God!
25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of God.
26 Those who heard this asked, Who then can
be saved?
27 Jesus replied, What is impossible with
men is possible with God.