Feeling hard done by, a young lad who had tried so hard to be good, shares with us his frustration at Jesus…

Why?  Why did he have to ask so much? Anything else, and I am sure I would have given it to him!  But then, how can I talk of ‘anything else’ – how can there be an ‘anything else’ when he asked, quite simply, for everything?  Everything!

I walked away in utter despair, reeling at the impossible high jump Jesus had set me,

Shocked and angered by his greed.   Hadn’t I given enough already?  Every day I sought to fulfil the letter of the law with all its demands: giving the right offerings, making the right sacrifices, honouring God, the priest and the poor.  I’d done right by him …

but did that count for anything? No!  He still demanded more.

That was hard, don’t you think? 

No recognition of donations given so far, just a further demand to give it all!

It was just too much.  Too much for him to ask.  And too much for me to take.

I walked away, my head spinning, completely at a loss to know what to think.

But I did catch a quick look at some of his followers as I left. I could see the questions in their eyes too.  More than questions; there was shock and bewilderment there too.  I wonder what he said to them when I had gone?  And could they accept it any easier than I had?

After we spoke, I went to find my way to a quiet place, out of the city. I always like to sit out in the hills to think. Rumour has it that Jesus did the same too.

For some reason, it was incredibly busy on the main street, so I headed instead to a small pedestrian entrance I know, called ‘the eye of the needle’.  It’s a good route to know about… a handy short cut for non-commercial traffic.   The gate there, you see, is so small you can’t get much through it.  A very skinny, unladen donkey might make it through, I suppose.  But a camel? that would be difficult!  And a fully loaded camel, packed for travel or trade – simply impossible.

The traders, business men and the wealthy travellers with their big and showy beasts all have to go and queue at the bigger, busier routes. Only those who travel light, without baggage and trappings, can get through the needle.  Everybody knows that – or so I thought until today!

I could not what I saw!  It was so funny, I almost thought it a Godsend to shake me out of my despondency!  In the crowd, a rich man I know well (a rather pompous business associate of the family, as it happens) was making a right spectacle of himself. 

He was fuming!  It seems he’d been sat in the traffic jam at the main gate, obviously put out by the beggars queuing beside him.  (Not the usual company he liked to keep – that’s for sure!  They made him feel uncomfortable.)  Then, can you imagine his face when the gate keeper called the poor beggars ahead of him?  They, you see, carried nothing, so the guards pointed them to the Needle gate.  They were through in no time, probably home before you could say it; while he was left waiting, queuing in the crowd and heat. You could see the colour rise to his cheeks, and then a look of grim determination settled on his face; He was not going to be outdone.  So, he kicked his camel, and pulled it round to follow where the men had gone.

The camel stalled, as you can imagine, refusing even to try to do such a stupid thing as go through that tiny gap.  But the man kept hollering, and screaming, and kicking and whipping till he was blue in the face! And still the animal would not move.  Could the fool not see the impossibility of it? 

No matter how determined he was, he could not get through that tiny gate.

None of his pomp, none of his posturing, could get him through.

And (even if that was the way he was used to things working normally) his money just could not buy him a way through, either.

I thought, what a fool!  It was clear to everyone watching (and there were several of us highly amused by the spectacle) that it was not just going to be hard, but impossible to get that camel through the eye of the needle.  And yet, I mused, it was probably easier for that to happen than for this rich man to see any sense!

At that thought I froze; realising that if I laughed, I laughed at myself.

All this Tom-foolery I was witnessing before my eyes – well, how was I any different?

Hadn’t I, in my own way, thought I could buy my way through… Not the Eye of the Needle, but the way into God’s kingdom?   If not with my riches, then with

credits earned for good behaviour, brownie points for religious observance, gold stars awarded for acts of kindness and charity. Surely this amounted to something?

But suddenly I saw that it doesn’t work that way.  My whole approach had been wrong from the outset – which is why Jesus spoke as bluntly as he did. 

Everybody was taken aback when he questioned the way I addressed him. ‘Why do you call me good?’ He demanded. ‘There is no-one good but God’.  I realise, now, that this was not just an abstract theology lesson.  Jesus was questioning the very basis upon which I judged anything ‘good’ — the way I might even have thought myself ‘good’.   If there is no-one who is good but God, then why do I go on bending over backwards trying to be good?  It’s impossible!  

And, surely, the key is not to be good, but to be godly; and that is a wholly different thing.  It’s not about trying to do the right things and win approval, but about throwing my whole trust and confidence on his mercy alone. It’s not about putting my trust in any goodness of my own, but relying on his.  It’s about living in relationship with the one who is good, so that maybe something of his goodness will rub off on me.

For that to happen, nothing else can be allowed to get in the way.  I have to let go of relying on myself, or finding my security in anything I can do or own. I have to trust myself completely to the good and perfect God.  For me, because I am possessed by great riches and, I have to admit, great pride, that might well mean taking the radical action Jesus asked of me.  To give it all away, let go of my self-dependence – to unload, so that I enter through the narrow gate to life.

I remember the fool, trying to buy his way through.

So loud, so pompous, so funny and so futile.

He could push and shove, shout and curse just as much as he liked, but it doesn’t work that way –the camel of the rich man was too heavily loaded to fit through the eye of the needle. He was attempting the impossible task.

I see that now.

And with it I see again the eye of the Saviour as he gazed at me before I turned away;

His eye, full of sadness and compassion; His heart, bleeding for me as I dared to tell him he asked too much.

But he wasn’t being greedy, was he?  He was being real!  Saying it like it is!

We can only go through the eye of the needle unloaded, unburdened, empty handed.

That’s why he demands everything, isn’t it?  Because none of that is necessary and none of it counts. It simply gets in the way.

That look he gave me set me wondering just how much I have to lose by holding on to my life, rather than giving it away.  Didn’t Jesus say something about that once?  It’s part of his crazy idea that it’s better to give than to get, that it is in giving that we receive, that in dying we are born to eternal life. It’s part of living in his crazy upside-down world in which the first will be last and the last will be first. The madness of his Kingdom!

But after what I witnessed today, I have to ask myself just who it is who crazy – and whether it’s his world or mine that is truly upside down.

Lord

There are no half-measures with you

You give your all

You demand our all.

It seems too much – how can you ask this of us?

But, then again, how can we ask so much of you?

Lord, help us to focus

not on our own wealth (to whatever extent we think we may or may not have it),

But on the richness of your grace.

Teach us to trust not in our own goodness, but in yours alone.

Fix our minds not on your demands,

But on your self-giving love.

Perhaps only then will be free to give as you give.

Perhaps only then will we understand the way of your kingdom, and willingly give our everything.

Interpretive Note: 

Jesus’ saying about the eye of the needle is widely contested.  The tradition that there was a gate in the walls of Jerusalem goes back a long way, but others argue there is no evidence that such a gate existed.  The naming of the small gate in the picture above might have gained its name from the phrase, rather than given it . However I found it helpful in this instance. But also acknowledge that the word ‘camel’ might be a mistranslation from a similar word meaning a thick rope, like those used to tie up ships in harbour.  That would be impossible to get through the small gap in a needle and is the kind of ridiculous hyperbole Jesus would draw.  Then again, He could have equally drawn up the daft contrast between the largest animal around and the smallest gap.  A camel through the eye of a needle: that works too!