Grace and Peace to you all from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
As most of you know, it’s stewardship season here at St. Matthew! We’ve been engaging with the many ministries we have at this bustling and thriving church and today is no different, we just heard Ben give a brief Temple Talk on behalf of the Property Committee which holds the ministry of tending to this building for use by our congregation and the community.
And I am so glad that I’ve been gifted THE PERFECT Gospel today to talk about the value of giving of what you have to the church! Did you know, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
Except… Except…
I’ll be the biggest hypocrite in the room if I gave a sermon like that! For heaven’s sake, my salary and benefits are paid to me by the church! I didn’t give up everything I have to follow Jesus; everything I have is because of my job following Jesus and helping people see the work of God and hear the Good News about Jesus Christ in the parish church. And I am grateful for the living, which I am blessed to make by doing this work.
And I suspect all of you are also very grateful for what you have, whether it feels like an abundance or if it feels like just enough to get by.
So, I’m not going to harp on about the rich man who is asked to give it away – and I’m not going to say “so are you.”
Now, at the same time as you may be thankful I’m not going to do that you may be thinking, Jesus DOES tell the rich man to sell all that he has, give it to the poor and follow him. So, Rev Ryan, if you’re saying it’s good to have the things we have, why would Jesus tell this person to give it all away if he wants to enter the Kingdom of God?
That tension, I think, is what makes this story a challenge. We simultaneous think: the living I have earned keeps a roof over my head, clothes on my back and some food on the table – and… is Jesus asking me to give it all away to get into heaven…? What are we supposed to do?
And I think most of you have probably read up on this biblical passage or heard a sermon or two before about how those who are blessed by having an abundance should thoughtfully give of those resources to help others. This passage isn’t about feeling bad about what we have, it’s about not being blinded to the plight of others by the things we want or the things we have. And that is definitely a good interpretation - and one I think you all understand.
But that kind of interpretation falls into a common biblical frame which I’ve noticed with frequency in the several churches I’ve been a part of. Afterall, we’ve inherited this kind of interpretation from our church tradition. We have largely been trained to come to scripture looking for it to tell us the right path to follow and to give us the right things to do.
Today, I want to invite you away from that question as we read this familiar passage and instead ask, “What might God be showing me about who God is through Jesus Christ in this story?”[1]
When we ask that, this story starts to unfold in a new way.
When we look for who God is, this story shows us something waaaay bigger than a to-do list.
When I looked for who God is in this passage I stopped focusing on the rich man as the subject and started to focus on the Kingdom of God which is what Jesus is talking about as he addresses the rich man’s question about the Kingdom of God. We learn a lot about God from what we hear from Jesus as he talks about the Kingdom of God.
Here are three things I pulled out about the Kingdom of God:
Number one: The Kingdom of God is accessed through Jesus – verse 21 tells us this as Jesus says follow me.
Number two: The Kingdom of God is a place where earthly riches will not count nor even really matter. We learn about this through Jesus’s stunning request for the rich man to divest himself of his earthly wealth.
Finally, The Kingdom of God is a place where God does the work, through Jesus Christ, to get us there. Which we learn in verse 27 when Jesus says, “for God all things are possible.”
There’s a lot of information about who God is in those three statements about God’s Kingdom.
So, let’s work backwards through my list of three things to pull out the many attributes of God we learn about.
Number 3: The kingdom of God is a place where God does the work, through Jesus Christ to get us there. This means that God is a generous God! God wants to give us the Kingdom– we don’t have to earn it!
We also see that grace is an attribute of God. Because, let’s be honest, there are many people who – according to our laws – don’t really deserve to be a part of the Kingdom of God. And heaven only knows that the partial list of the 10 commandments that Jesus names in this passage are often not kept by people. But, we learn that what we think is impossible – law breakers entering the Kingdom of God - is totally possible for God – like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle.
Number two: The Kingdom of God is a place where earthly riches will not count nor even really matter. In this we learn that God is a trusting God and wants us to trust him too. We are prone to spending a lifetime on piling up earthly riches in order to ensure comfort and protection in the here and now. We put overemphasis on trusting our bank accounts to get us through. Now, I understand that in the global economic system that we all exist within, we all need access to some money to survive. But, I’m talking about an over-emphasis on trusting earthly wealth such that we forget that God is in the picture and we can trust God to do the ultimate act of bringing us into The Kingdom of God – without any of that stuff we pile up.
And finally, getting back to Number one: The Kingdom of God is accessed through Jesus. We learn that the grace of God flows to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. We are guaranteed to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God because Jesus washes all sin and death away through his very own death on the cross and that promise is made real because of his glorious resurrection three days later.
We are set free by Jesus’s death and resurrection, from the hamster wheel of accumulation, and we are set free from the endless to-do lists to achieve God’s grace! God is graciously inviting us to the Kingdom of God and shows us the desperation with which God wishes to have us there! God gives his only begotten son over to the cross to seal the promise of all of us being welcomed into the Kingdom of God.
So. this isn’t only a story about what you and I should do. It’s a story telling us about the very arrival of the Kingdom of God and the promise that we will be welcomed into it through the person of Jesus Christ.
It’s a story that invites us to see who God is through Jesus Christ and what God is intending for the arrival of his kingdom! A Kingdom that is devoid of all striving, piling-up and to-do lists to get in. Rather it is a kingdom that is full of grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, healing and joy for all people because God CAN fit a camel through the eye of a needle.
As Jesus says, “For God all things are possible.” And that is some really good news for us this week.
Amen.
Pastor Ryan Heckman | October 13, 2024 | 21st Sunday after Pentecost
[1] This question was formulated from my study of Meredith Miller and her book Woven, and Luther Seminary’s Faith+Lead initiative where they ask people of faith to notice who God is and where God is at work in the world. This aligns with an incarnational theology – the theology of God coming to be present with us in the form of Jesus Christ and now in the form of the Holy Spirit. We think logically: ‘if God came in the form of a man, and is now present in the form of the Holy Spirit, then God must be active in the world! Let’s look to see!’ Asking the questions about who God is in the story helps us start to notice who God is around us.
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