And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time,
and in the age to come eternal life.”—Luke 18:18-30 (ESV)(I am greatly indebted in my understanding of this parable, and of the parables in general, to the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Bailey, author of Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, and many other books, for his work in bringing Near Eastern cultural assumptions and interpretations to bear on our understanding of Scripture—including this passage.)Some of you have probably heard this parable explained this way: there was a small gate in the city wall of Jerusalem which was called “The Eye of the Needle.” This gate was so small that a camel could barely fit through it—you had to take everything off the camel, get it down on its knees, and push it through the gate. Thus, the point of Jesus’ parable is that for the rich to get into heaven, they have to surrender all their riches to God and humble themselves before him. It’s a good explanation with a strong point; unfortunately, it isn’t true: there’s no gate known to have been called by that name, nor were there any gates of that size. One commentator has said wryly that the only gate which could possibly have earned that label was so small that the only way anyone could ever have fit a camel through it would have been to cut the camel into pieces.OK then, so what do we make of this? Well, another explanation is that the Greek word kámēlon, “camel,” is actually a misprint, and that the word should be kámilon, “rope”; there are some ancient manuscripts which have this reading. Then, Jesus would be saying that it’s easier to get a rope through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom. Not easy, but a lot easier than a camel. However, it’s pretty clear that kámilon is actually the false reading, as copyists tried to soften this parable to something they could live with, and that Jesus was in fact talking about a large, ill-tempered mammal with a hump or two on its back and a mean glint in its eye. It wasn’t an original image, or unique to Jesus; in fact, it was common for rabbis to use the picture of a camel—or, further east, an elephant—going through the eye of a needle as an example of something impossible. In other words, Jesus is saying exactly what you think he’s saying.Which of course raises the question: does this really mean that rich people can’t be saved? To answer that, let’s go back to the beginning of the story and start over, with the ruler and his question. We don’t know much about this guy, just that he was a prominent member of the community, probably because of his wealth, perhaps with a formal position of some kind; but a couple things are clear. First, he shows Jesus considerable respect, addressing him as “Good Teacher,” which was a much stronger compliment than it sounds like to us; and second, he’s clearly a religious man, asking in all seriousness, “What must I do to be saved?”The problem with this question is that it’s rooted in an unhelpful view of God and his law, one that sees salvation as something we can earn if we just do enough of the right things; the ruler is essentially asking, “What boxes do I have to check off in order to be assured that I’ve earned eternal life?” He seems to be asking completely sincerely, and out of good motives, but his understanding of God still needs to be challenged, and so Jesus challenges him. First, he questions the ruler’s opening compliment. In the Oriental world, one compliment requires a second, so it might be that the ruler is fishing for a compliment of his own; or he might just be trying to butter Jesus up. In either case, does he really mean what he’s saying? So Jesus omits the return compliment, choosing instead to hold the compliment he’s received up to scrutiny: “Why do you call me good? Only God is truly good; do you really want to apply that title to me?”Though he asks the question, Jesus doesn’t press it—he isn’t trying to push the ruler to a declaration of faith, only to startle him into considering his words more carefully, and so he goes on to answer the ruler’s question. “What must you do? You know the commandments: Don’t commit adultery, don’t commit murder, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, and honor your father and mother.” It’s interesting here that Jesus only mentions the commandments that deal with how people are to treat each other, without touching the commandments that address our relationship to God. It makes a certain amount of sense, when you think about it; how we treat one another is something very concrete, and so it’s easier to tell whether you’ve killed someone than if you’ve kept a commandment like “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” As well, Luke shows a consistent concern for the self-focus that can come from having great wealth, and Jesus’ response speaks to that concern.To this, the ruler says, “I have kept all these commands since my youth.” That’s a pretty bold statement. It was said of Abraham, Moses and Aaron that they had kept the whole Law, but of no one else, and now this young man calmly puts himself in their company; that would seem to open him to a charge of overconfidence, at the very least. And yet . . . as sure of himself as he is, the ruler can tell that something is missing, that somehow he’s falling short; why else would he have come to Jesus in the first place? If he really believes that he’s kept all the commandments all his adult life, then he clearly sees that even that is not enough—that something more is needed. That’s why Jesus proceeds to tell him what he still needs to do: “Sell everything you have and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”To fully understand how radical this command was, it’s important to know that the ruler’s wealth—which was probably mostly in land—didn’t merely belong to him; his home and land were the family estate, and the family estate was of supreme importance in that society. It supported the family, and it symbolized the unity of the family, which was far and away the most important institution and authority in each person’s life; the command to sell it all and follow Jesus was a demand for a complete transfer of loyalty and allegiance. No longer would he be able to put his family ahead of God, nor would he be able to trust to his wealth to support himself and his family; to obey Jesus, he would have to set both utterly aside and trust wholly in God, in defiance of all the commands of his culture and all other authorities. He would have to step out in faith, totally unsupported in worldly terms, with no one to follow but Jesus and no ground beneath his feet save trust in God.“When he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.” Partly this was because he loved his wealth and didn’t want to give it up; partly it was because his wealth was the grounds of his self-confidence. After all, he was rich, so obviously God had blessed him for doing good, and he was doing good with his wealth, so obviously he was earning God’s favor; but Jesus blew all that away. Instead, Jesus demanded that he give up his wealth, give up every earthly sign of God’s favor and everything he could ever use to earn that favor, give up along with it his overarching loyalty to his family, and come to God as a humble beggar. What must I do to earn salvation? Give up any hope of earning salvation and accept it as God’s gift, and along the way give up any competing loyalties; and that wasn’t an answer the ruler could accept. In sorrow, he walked away.In response, Jesus said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, this shocked the crowd, and it has shocked the church down through the years—but not for the same reason. Both the crowd and the church take this as a comparative statement about the salvation of the rich versus the salvation of the poor—but they take it in opposite directions. We tend to assume that Jesus is saying that it’s easy for the poor to get into heaven but impossible for the rich, and so we come up with ways to make this something less than impossible, as in the interpretations I mentioned earlier. The crowd, on the other hand, assumed that the poor had a harder time being saved. After all, the rich built synagogues, funded orphanages, gave money to those in need, paid for the upkeep on the temple, and in general did good things that most people could­n’t afford to do. Their wealth was a sign of God’s blessing, and it gave them the ability to satisfy the Law’s demands in a way that ordinary folk couldn’t, and so surely if anyone was saved, it was the rich. If it was impossible for them to be saved, what hope was there for anyone else?Then of course there’s Peter, with a completely different concern: he figures that those who had done what the ruler had been unwilling to do—this being, of course, Peter himself and his fellow disciples—ought to be rewarded, and he wants to make sure they get what’s coming to them. His concern is understandable, because Jesus’ challenge here is daunting, to say the least: “Whatever besides me is most important to you—your wealth, your family, your sex life, your job, your hobbies, your ambitions, whatever—set it aside and follow me”; that’s a pretty high standard, and Peter wants to make sure that he and his friends who have tried to answer that call will get the reward they deserve. Jesus reassures him: those who have denied themselves and set aside all other loyalties to follow Jesus will indeed be rewarded—they will receive the life of the kingdom of God, in this life and the life to come; but still, as the crowd is wondering if anyone can be saved, Jesus doesn’t point to his disciples and say, “Look at them, they’ve done it, they’ve earned eternal life.” No, for them, too, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; for them, too, their only hope is that “what is impossible for human beings is possible for God.”The truth is, salvation is impossible, from our end; it can’t be earned, or man­ufactured, or accomplished in any way, shape or form. We might as well try to drive our car to the moon, for all the good it would do us. Unfortunately, this is something the church keeps losing sight of, as we often fail to take our own sin as seriously as the sin of others. I think that’s why so many of our arguments get so fierce: we assume that our salvation is perfectly reasonable, and that because “they,” whoever “they” might happen to be, are in some way outside the will of God, their salvation is unreasonable. Truth is, all of our salvation is unreasonable; none of us have any hope at all of being good enough to make it happen, no matter what we have or do right. When once we understand the demands of God’s holiness, what he requires of us, and what’s necessary to satisfy him, it becomes clear that we can’t do it, that we could never do it; if we truly see our own sinfulness and our own limitations, we realize that we’d have better luck trying to fly by flapping our arms and diving off the Sears Tower.But what is impossible for us is possible with God, because of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have hope, that’s why there’s a reason for our faith, and that’s why he makes the staggering demands that he does, because in nothing and no one else can we find salvation. He has given us an impossible faith—impossible by our own effort, impossible by our own standards—in a God who has done the impossible for us, and so he makes impossible demands to go with it: “Be perfect, as I am perfect.” “Love your enemies, and do good to those who curse you.” “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” “Die to yourself.” “Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and trust me to provide for all your needs.” We can’t do what God asks of us; but what we cannot do for ourselves, he has done for us in Jesus, and will do in us by his Spirit. And so, we don’t ask, “What must I do to be saved,” for we know that to be a question with no answer. Instead, we celebrate God’s amazing grace that saved us despite ourselves, and we give him all our love and all our loyalty and all our obedience, not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved.