Recently I read the story of the rich man who asks Jesus what he has to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. The man says he has done so all of his life. In Mark's gospel Jesus looks at this man in a loving way and then says he has to sell all he has and give it to the poor in order to be a true follower. The man walks away, grieving.
Jesus turns to his followers and says, "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!" (Mark 10.25). This is not a happy story but I smiled remembering first thinking about it. I was both an imaginative and a literal child who once spent a whole afternoon looking for the "elbow grease" so I could scrub the ceramic coffee pot clean for my mom. Eventually I called her at work to ask where it was, frustrated I couldn't find what she always said she used to perform that miraculous feat. She still likes to tell that story.
So there I was squirming between my parents on a hard wooden pew in St. Peter's Catholic Church in Colman, South Dakota when I first heard this story. Arrested by its imagery, I remembered a trip to the Black Hills to visit our extended family. During that trip we went to see a impressive geological formation known as "the Needles." I could picture a camel passing through that needle's eye. You'd just have to get a crane to get the camel up there but it could happen, right? Entranced by the pictures in my head, you could say I missed the point of the story. Or maybe not. My God was as gentle and loving as Jesus was in the story, so I thought a rich person could make it into God's kingdom. Even then, apparently, I had Universalist leanings!
Jesus turns to his followers and says, "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!" (Mark 10.25). This is not a happy story but I smiled remembering first thinking about it. I was both an imaginative and a literal child who once spent a whole afternoon looking for the "elbow grease" so I could scrub the ceramic coffee pot clean for my mom. Eventually I called her at work to ask where it was, frustrated I couldn't find what she always said she used to perform that miraculous feat. She still likes to tell that story.
So there I was squirming between my parents on a hard wooden pew in St. Peter's Catholic Church in Colman, South Dakota when I first heard this story. Arrested by its imagery, I remembered a trip to the Black Hills to visit our extended family. During that trip we went to see a impressive geological formation known as "the Needles." I could picture a camel passing through that needle's eye. You'd just have to get a crane to get the camel up there but it could happen, right? Entranced by the pictures in my head, you could say I missed the point of the story. Or maybe not. My God was as gentle and loving as Jesus was in the story, so I thought a rich person could make it into God's kingdom. Even then, apparently, I had Universalist leanings!
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